Days and Nights

Days don't turn into night early in Iceland. Darkness falls around 11.30pm and the sun comes out to play around 4am. Its May. In the summer they have even less darkness here. It takes a lot more to fill your days here, days go on for so long you are eating dinner at 10pm and still walking the town at 11pm. The long days and short nights have exhausted my body, I feel so tired and incomplete. So today, after saying bye to our nights sleeping on a stone floor with our host Kevin we decided to check into a hotel and relax. The Capital Inn for 23 pounds a night. Terry has treated himself to another session at the Blue Lagoon and I have stayed in the room recuperating from the past few days.


The last few days have been filled with even more amazement. The volcanic country is unexplored and sometimes forgotten by travellers on their holiday picks. We stumbled accross a large volcanic crater when we were heading towards a lush waterfall. Its depth and length shocked us from our cores as we stood saluting mother nature. The reds and greens of the crater edges and the turquoise blue of the water that had dropped into its centre were as ever impressive with nothing by gray clouds surrounding it. We trekked down the crater to the bottom and sat wondering when and why the earth exploded here. Terry collected hundreds of beautiful rocks and lava and we drove on to our next destination. The town of Hverageroisbear, just 45 kms from the capital city of Reykavik is steaming with geothermal activity. We drove as far as we could down a gravel path to the hillside that overshadows the small town. As you looked up, the greens of the mountains, the blue of the sky and the white of the steam rising from the earth was a sight you could only ever imagine. We trekked up for 4 hours following only a yellow stick every 1000 metres or so. Following waterfalls and hot (unprotected) geothermal mud pools, we were on our way to an 'not even the locals know about it' hot pool. After hours of excitement with our surroundings we arrived to the beautiful river stream. The massive crater of boiling water was just above us as we bathed in the stream of hot water. The wind was rushing through the land as we stripped off our clothes and put on our bathing suits before resting in earth's water. A well deserved break. 

After hiking back, we drove through the town and to the road leading through the mountains to Reykavik. However, the cloud had come over the land so low that the mountain could not be seen at all. The road had disappeared in front of us and a police car blocked the entrance due to an earlier accident between a car and an ambulance trying to save the car. The fog was so bad. We waiting for a few hours until it was safe to pass. In England we would still not have been allowed to drive, but Terry attempted the drive slowly, up and through the mountain pass with only minimal visibility. 


Yesterday, we drove over 400kms around the west coast of Iceland to the national park of Snaefellsjokull which covers the coast line and the mountains. Truly unbelievable scenery, from moulten lava landscapes, to snow capped mountains, to glaciers, to waterfalls and to the ocean. We followed a dog to the top of an amazing waterfall and ate our lunch to the sounds of silence overlooking the epic mountains above. 


With extreme weather conditions, mars like scenery and hot spa pools whether you look, Iceland has it all for anyone interested in geology.