Today was another full day. Lots of bus time as we drove to various locations, however I enjoyed our guide much better! The day consisted of driving through lots and lots of lava fields, visiting more bubbling hot springs with the slight (not too terrible) sulfur smell, pristine mountains, craters and volcanic peaks. However, as I've mentioned before, it's very difficult to capture its beauty through the lens of a camera, especially through a bus window moving along at 60 mph.
Our guide talked a lot about volcanoes, both past and present. The highway has been covered with lava 5 times in the past year! Everywhere you see a pile of rock (which is pretty much everywhere!) that is where lava has bubbled up. Of course it is left there. He pointed out the larger volcanoes and talked about their eruptions and also said more than once "if it looks like a geyser, it is a geyser." Driving through the lava fields really does seem other worldly!
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| mountain villages dot green areas |
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| Icelandic horses grazing in a green field |
95% of the water in this area is geothermal and they use it exactly how it comes out of the ground. Its temperature is approximately 180 Fahrenheit and it drops about 4 degrees by the time it comes into the house. It is then mixed with cold water.
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| hot, hot, hot! |
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| UNESCO Geothermal Field - active geothermal area |
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| Gunnuhver Geothermal Field - electric plant |
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| pipes carrying geothermal water |
Thankfully we did have some stops where we could do better. Everything we saw today was very different from yesterday. Along with solid black lava fields, we also saw green areas where Icelandic horses graze, visited lighthouses and ate soup and bread at a local restaurant. Then we continued on along the beautiful Atlantic and stopped to visit 2 more lighthouses before heading back to the ship.
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| Ronnie climbed a very steep hill to this one |
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| sign on lighthouse door |
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| Gardskagi Vitasyningar |
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| Gardskagavati Gamli - 1897 |
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| Valahnukur Mountain and Atlantic in background |
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| volcanic rocks line miles and miles of beaches |
As you can see from the photos, we could not have asked for more beautiful weather! We were told number times how fortunate we were. Friends that we met on our previous Oceania cruise got off the ship yesterday (the end of the 1st segment) and were going to spend a few days there before heading back to their home in Washington state. The forecast sounded like rain for the next 3 days, so they may not be able to enjoy the beautiful weather that we had.
Barb: How beautiful!!Lots of my friends from Hawaii have been to Iceland. They say that it feels "right" to them. They are used to volcanoes -though theirs are Shield volcanoes there. How deep are the volcanoes? In Hawaii, we only saw the top third or so since they start on the floor of the ocean.
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