Category: Iceland

There are an awful lot of waterfalls in Iceland. Some estimates reach 10,000. Truly a fabulous place for a cascade connoisseur. We are strictly amateur in our appreciation of waterfalls. However, we did discover that our increasingly bold offroad excursions were often rewarded by some terrific cataracts in places that were a little more remote and a little less crowded. From Húsavík we continued west, via several lovely waterfalls, round the coast to the Hofssadir Guesthouse. This was another lovely place to stay where we had our own little shed complete with large French windows and a little patio.

Next day was quite a long drive. Obviously we stopped at a few waterfalls but eventually we ended up right out on the Snæfellsnes Peninsula. This is a very dramatic landscape in the far west of Iceland dominated by the glacier capped, Snæfellsjökull volcano, a 700,000 year old stratovolcano. Our knowledge of volcanoes increases by the day, so I can tell you that a stratovolcano is one that keeps erupting. Snæfellsjökull last erupted about 2,000 years ago. The volcano has many pyroclastic cones on its upper slopes while lower down are craters that produced basaltic lava flows. The whole area is dominated by the multiple lava flows of many eruptions. Volcano fans would not be at all surprised to learn that Jules Verne’s famous novel Journey to the Center of the Earth was set here. The general rule in Iceland appears to be that if it looks like a volcano then it probably is. If it does not have a crater then it erupted under the ice during the last ice age. Easy. In the morning we walked up a little volcanic cone right next to road. A steel staircase had been thoughtfully constructed to help us and we did not have to pay to park there. We were very impressed.

We drove directly inland for a couple of hours to visit a volcanic cave, a lava tube Víðgelmir. I had cheerfully assured Diane that it was not a real cave because they only occur in limestone and are caused by the action of water dissolving the rock. However, I had to back-track on this a bit because, much to my surprise, the tube did contain many cave-like features. It was formed as the lava cooled. The low viscosity surface flow cooled enough to create a solid crust forming a roof above the more fluid lava below. The crust is good thermal insulation and so hot lava continued to flow underneath until eventually draining out downhill and emptying the tube. That was in 900 AD so it has had a chance to cool off. You can clearly see how the flow has filled the glacial U shaped valley giving it a flat bottom. We were kitted out with helmets and lamps before being taken down a wooden access ladder that descends through a hole in the surface crust. The tube is long, 1½ km, so we were underground for the best part of an hour. Lighting and walkways have been installed making it a very easy trip. The first cave-like feature I noticed was some stalagmites. Admittedly these were made of ice but even so they were caused by water seeping into the tunnel through cracks just like a real cave. Then I spotted real stalagmites on the ceiling. There were two main types. The first were small, rounded drips which I imagined were formed just after the tube had drained but while it was still very hot and the walls were “wet” with molten rock. The second type we longer and more delicate caused by minerals separating out into liquids with a slightly lower melting point so that they dripped through into the main tube. We saw several other features which reminded me of calcite flows but were actually molten rock running down the walls in different ways.

That was it. We were done with Iceland for now. I dropped Diane off at the hotel in Reykjavik, took the car back to the hire company and enjoyed a pleasant walk back to the hotel. We had a ship to meet the next afternoon, which left us just enough time in the morning to meet up with a correspondent friend called Jón who lives in Iceland. He is building his own expedition truck so we had plenty to talk about. He gave us a brief tour of Reykjavik in his car and his wife prepared a light lunch. It was delightful, thank you.

South of the Vatnajökull icecap are vast plains that are occasionally inundated with glacial meltwater. In places you can see where dykes have been built to try and control this. In other places are previous generations of bridges that have been destroyed. Several glacial tongues push down towards the coast. These have been receding for a few hundreds of years and a couple of them have created lakes by leaving a large terminal moraine that blocks the valley. The weather was a bit gloomy but we still enjoyed walking around one of these lakes and watching the occasional bit of ice fall of the glacier. The next lake we came across had an outlet to the sea. Small lumps of ice can drift out through this and then get washed up on the “Diamond” beach. This is an immense tourist draw. Took a while to find space in the car park. Then I had to wait ages just to get a photograph of a small section of the beach that was not full of people waving their phones around. Thirty minutes later, three photographs and a substantial parking fee later, we left. I hope you enjoy the picture.

We pressed on, taking in the scenery and wondering why there were so many ponies. Properly, the Icelandic breed are referred to as horses. Please do not ask me why or what the difference is. By law, horses cannot be imported to Iceland. Even horses from Iceland cannot come back if they leave. There is just the one sort of equine animal here but there is an awful lot of them. We saw the occasional group out pony trekking, or is that horse trekking? Otherwise, they mostly appeared to be quite happily standing around in fields. We rounded the bottom, right-hand corner of Iceland and had just started making our way north when we came across a flock of swans. We have seen swans before. Usually in small groups. Here we were confronted with 200 or more of them. In a sea water fjord. Whooper swans I think but I will cheerfully admit I know almost as little about swans as I do horses. Made for a very nice scene.

By the evening we had arrived at the little village of Fáskrúðsfjörður, pop 650. The hotel used to be a French hospital looking after fisherman until 1935. This clearly made a big impression on the residents because the village still sports bilingual signs indicating street names in Icelandic and French. The French cemetery with 49 graves of fishermen possibly indicates how busy the hospital was. We arrived just as celebrations for “French Day” were getting into full swing and the place was heaving with French visitors. In the evening there were fireworks. Sadly the weather remained stubbornly overcast and raining. This plus the lack of darkness at this time of year meant the display was not quite at its best.

In the morning we drove the long way round the headland and were rewarded with some terrific views. We then pushed on into the northern part of Iceland and for a few brief hours started to feel like we had left the crowds behinds. There were a few detours, involving dirt tracks, to visit yet more waterfalls. Iceland has a lot of waterfalls in gorges. Apparently this sort of topology is typical of young mountains. Iceland is very young, only 16 million years old – a mere blink on the geological timescale. The young Iceland is perched on top of a massive magma column that reaches deep into the depths of the planet. It erupts onto the surface from time to time. Elsewhere, just a few tens of metres separate the surface from fiery, subterranean heat. In these places the ground can feel alive. Pools of boiling mud, spouts of boiling water and steam escaping from many vents. Multicoloured deposits and the smell of sulphur and worse in the air. Also, there are pay car parks with number recognition cameras.

Having paid our dues, literally, we pressed on across a long mountain road through the highlands. There were lupins here. Brightly coloured flowering lupins alongside many of the roads. These looked lovely. I even took some photographs of them. However, it turns out that all is not well with Lupinus Arcticus in Iceland. Despite being very pretty, it is an invasive species. Introduced from Alaska in 1945 it is doing very well but displacing many types of native plant species. Recent studies show that the resultant decrease in diversity is bad for the pollinating insect population. We met some of these pollinators at the next hotel. Great crowds of them swarming around your head at the slightest opportunity. Fortunately they were not the biting type but they flew into your mouth and ears and eyes making them thoroughly irritating. Why were they trying to pollinate me when there were lots of lupins to go at?

The morning came when we were going to see the whales. Húsavík bills itself as the ‘whale watching capital of the world’ and there may be some justification for this. We were loaded into a rather smart and powerful RHIB along with ten other people. A RHIB, rigid hull inflatable boat, is ideal for this job. Stable, light, fast and seaworthy. As we set off out of the harbour I reflected on how we were going to see whales in a boat invented in Wales. First stop was an island full of puffins. They were very cute and very numerous. Further out into the fjord we caught sight of other whale spotting boats and then there were whales. Loads of them Humpbacks. Each one would come to the surface for a breath, bob up and down once or twice and then lift their tail into the air as they dived. In a couple of hours we saw a dozen or more whales. All quite remarkable really and we were easily getting close enough to take some great photographs. I wondered a little if the whales were bothered by the boats buzzing around but I hope they were not. There is really an awful lot of space in the Skjálfandi bay and the animals could easily have stayed away from the boats if they wanted to. The boats always tried to avoid getting too close or in front of the whale. Trip over, we had a light lunch while we calmed down. The car was now looking quite embarrassingly filthy and we still had plenty of driving to do.

Reykjavik is among the cleanest, greenest, and safest cities in the world. It is small, with a population of just 140,000 and very popular with tourists. Our first hotel was right in the centre. We stepped out of the door onto a walking street packed with souvenir stores and restaurants. The weather was mild and we had a pleasant couple of hours looking at the vast range of goods onto which the image of a puffin can be displayed. Diane eventually settled on a t-shirt and some puffin socks. We also encountered some enormous stuffed polar bears, a vast array of woollen goods, mugs, walking sticks and more fridge magnets than I have ever seen. Eventually we ended up eating noodles with expensive cheap wine at a Vietnamese restaurant. Alcohol is expensive at the bars and restaurants so, apparently, people tend to drink before going out. Beer is becoming increasingly popular and Beer Day celebrating the legalisation of beer in 1989, is celebrated every March 1^st. Before then, Iceland was in the rather odd position where strong spirits were legal but beer was not.

In the morning I collected our hire car and we set off for the “Golden Circle”. The name is a bit of a tourist gimmick applied to a trio of sights readily accessible from Reykjavik; a tectonic rift, a waterfall and some hot springs. It is not really a circle but more of a triangle. The name “Golden Triangle” has been used by the CIA since the 1950s to identify an area of illicit opium production north of Thailand so this might give the wrong sort of impression. Fortunately, there is a mathematic theorem stating that just one circle can be drawn through any three given non-collinear points, you and I would call this a triangle. So I guess the tourist board went for this.

Our first stop was the Þingvellir National Park. This was the site of Alþing, the annual parliament of Iceland since 930 ad. From 1881 they have used a rather nice and much more comfortable building in Reykjavik. Much more interesting to me is that this is a rift valley. The very line where the North American and European tectonic plates are pulling apart. The width of the valley increases by about 2cm a year. My back-of-an-envelope calculation initially suggested that Iceland is getting bigger by 5 sq km a year but later I discovered that coastal erosion balances the expansion so the overall land area remains constant.

Next stop was the hot springs, steam vents, and sulphurous mud pots at Geysir. This was the original geyser from where the name came. It seldom spouts these days but fortunately the Strokkur geyser just a few metres away reliably gushes boiling water up to 30 m into the air every ten minutes or so. During the wait some people inevitably accumulate on the downwind side of the water spout and then get soaked when the great belch of water, steam and sulphurous fumes erupts. I found this oddly satisfying to watch.

Last stop of the day was Gulfoss, a magnificent waterfall that attracts crowds of thousands each day. It is aesthetically a very nice waterfall. There is an awful lot of water doing more than its fair share of falling and is worth a visit. We did find the crowds a bit too intrusive.

Our plan was to circumnavigate Iceland, anti-clockwise in ten days. We had pre-booked the car, the hotels and a route plan. This is quite a popular package and we found ourselves bumping into the same people in the evening at each successive hotel. First step next day was the Lava Centre in Hella. This hosts some very impressive displays to explain the vulcanology of Iceland. It also cost £45 entrance for the two of us. Such is the cost of things in Iceland. We did learn quite a bit and enjoyed some of the displays but in less than an hour we had read all the explanations and were ready to move on.

Next came another very impressive waterfall. Paying at the car park was mandatory and then there was a large queue of people up to what was, presumably, the perfect view point. I took a photograph from the roadside and we pressed on. As we distanced ourselves from Reykjavik, the traffic became less and we started to feel we were getting away from the crowds.

Right down in the most southern part of Iceland, below the Mýrdalsjökull icecap, are the black sand beaches. Lovely sandy beaches with, as you might have guessed, black sand formed from volcanic rock. This was also where all the crowds had come. We avoided the car park fee simply because the car park was chock packed full. We had to walk quite a long way down the road instead. The beach was interesting and we found some lovely basalt columns. Eventually the squabbling children left and could get a photograph unadorned with colourful little darlings. We also spotted some eternally cute Puffins nesting high up on the cliffs. They were safely above the reach of the tourists however the tourists were still well within range of the Puffins, who, being clean Puffins, preferred not to use their cliff as a toilet. Actually, I have heard that Puffins build a separate part of their nest cave as a bathroom. This may be true but I know what I would do if I were a Puffin.

That evening we stayed at the wonderful Magma Hotel. There is a main building for reception and the restaurant. The rooms are a short walk away. Each ‘room’ is actually a wooden hut. Very comfortable and self-contained. The rooms were arranged so that each one featured a large window and balcony overlooking a lake. I enjoyed myself trying to photograph some of the birds fishing in the evening.

Come morning we were ready to set off across the glacial outburst plains below the mighty Vatnajökull icecap. This is the largest glacier in Iceland and occasionally causes a few problems. Volcanoes can erupt underneath the ice creating large pockets of melt water. Occasionally one of these will burst causing a deluge of flood water. The first part of our route took us past yet more waterfalls and then across a rocky plain created long ago by a massive flood of lava from one of the many volcanoes on Vatnajökull. This was a bleak and desolate place with just some sort of lichen growing on the tumbled mass of rock. In the distance we could see glacial tongues reaching down from the icecap above.