Day 4 - The Golden Circle
Saturday, January 10, 2015
For our final full day in Iceland, we toured the "Golden Circle," a tourist route east of Reykjavik with stops at a number of interesting locations. When we were booking the trip, we decided to forego the travel company's tour and use our rental car to do the trip at our own pace. However, the weather conditions turned out to be a little rougher than we were prepared to deal with, so we decided to book slots on the guided tour at the last minute.
Our first stop, well before sunrise, was the Hellisheiði geothermal plant. There wasn't much to photograph other than some machinery and a little display of trolls, but they did have an interesting exhibit on the system that supplies Reykjavik with hot water.
The sun rose as we drove to our next stop, giving us views of some beautiful scenery – a city in a valley below us, some greenhouses growing flowers, and lots of snowy fields and horses. Our second stop was the Skalholt church, which was rather plain on the outside but pretty on the inside, with an interesting mosaic on the wall behind the altar. There was even a lightly decorated live Christmas tree in front of the church.
Moving on, we arrived at the Gulfoss waterfall, our first natural wonder of the day, just in time for lunch. We only had an hour and 15 minutes for lunch and sightseeing, so we wolfed down sandwiches and then hustled out to as many of the viewpoints as we could. Unlike the waterfalls we're accustomed to, which usually tumble down from somewhere above you, Gulfoss was entirely below us in a canyon. From the visitor center, you walk across a mostly flat area toward the river, which reveals itself and its massive falls in a canyon down below. We stopped at the upper viewing areas first, and then walked out on the lower trail. The far end of the lower trail was blocked off with a rope and a danger sign (not that it stopped some of the people in our group), and I've never wanted to jump a rope so much in my life to get a closer view of the amazing falls, but ultimately my rule-following nature prevailed.
I have a tradition (for no real reason) of wearing a t-shirt from my friend Jeff's band Ping and getting my picture taken in front of interesting things. In keeping with that tradition, I stripped out of three layers of clothes in a stiff and cold wind to get a picture at Gulfoss. Then I layered back up and we got on the bus to travel to our next stop.
The scenery outside the bus window remained beautiful, with creeks and rivers cutting through the icy terrain, along the way to the Geysir geothermal area. We had 45 minutes in this compact area full of geysers and hot springs. The Geysir geyser is actually the source of the word "geyser." It doesn't erupt much anymore, but there's another very active geyser called Strokkur nearby that erupts about every 5 minutes. There were also a few snow-covered trees in the area that I enjoyed taking photos of.
The Strokkur geyser is calm between eruptions, but as an eruption approaches, it begins to gurgle and boil until finally a big blue bubble rises from the central hole and steam and water shoot dozens of feet in the air. We saw a particularly large eruption (it erupted 4 times in very quick succession), and some of us from the tour group waited around for the next one. It took longer than usual and was a dud, and we were almost late getting back to the bus (but at least Julie and I weren't the last ones to return). I also "donated" my right glove to Iceland – when I got back to the bus, I noticed that it had fallen out of my coat pocket while I was taking photos, and I didn't have time to run back and get it.
Our final stop on the tour was Þingvellir National Park. Along the way, we saw some of the prettiest scenery yet, as the bus drove along a snow-covered road with nothing but low hills covered in snow as far as the eye could see on either side. We eventually stopped at a café near the park (the same place we had visited on our first Northern Lights excursion), and we were encouraged by the fact that the weather was clearing up, to the extent that I didn't even need my ski jacket to walk around the snowy field.
Þingvellir National Park is another area where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates are spreading apart. The rift is much wider here than the place we visited on Thursday, forming a wide valley with a lake in it (Þingvallavatn, the largest natural lake in Iceland). Cliffs on either side of the valley mark the edges of the plates. The Icelandic Parliament (called the Althing, which is awesome) met in this valley starting in 930. We didn't have much time at the park, but we walked up a cliffside trail and past a waterfall as the sun was setting in the valley. The views of the lake, a little church, and the sunset were stunning – we couldn't have asked for a better afternoon. The only bummer was that we didn't have more time to explore, so I'd love to go back to see more when the days are longer.
Back in Reykjavik, after spending most of the day on the bus, we had a little time at the hotel to find dinner and get ready for an evening on the bus for our last chance to see the Northern Lights. We boarded the bus around 8 pm and started retracing the Golden Circle route that we drove earlier in the day, to a place where it turned out to be completely cloudy. Spirits were pretty low at that point, and the tour guide said she couldn't remember having even two days of failures in a row, let alone three. I was ready to give up and go back to the hotel, but they decided to try one more place.
We drove forever on treacherous, snow-covered roads in the dark, and were even momentarily held up when the road was blocked by a truck trying to pull a car out of a ditch. The tour bus drivers are superhuman to drive so well in those dark, snowy conditions. As we got close to the destination, we were able to see stars out of the bus window and everybody on the bus pressed against the windows with excitement. Before we even pulled into the parking lot (at 12:15 am – our tour was supposed to be back in Reykjavik at 1 am and we were an hour out of town), we could see the northern lights starting to illuminate the sky. When we stopped, we realized that we were back at the café that we had initially visited on the first night, and then again about 8 hours earlier in the day. As soon as the bus parked, everybody piled out the door as fast as we could, throwing on our warm clothes as we went.
I ran out across the snowy fields, set up my tripod and aimed the camera at the sky, set the camera for a 10 second exposure (total guess), pushed the button, and hoped for the best while chatting excitedly with some fellow travelers whose cameras weren't working. We huddled around to look at each shot as it came up on my camera screen, made adjustments, and then went back to watching the lights with the naked eye. (I got their contact information so I could share the photos with them once we got home.)
The lights started as a faint green glow in one or two spots in the sky and then grew in size and intensity, eventually arcing all the way across the sky. The lights moved and danced, and hints of red and purple appeared. The tour operators took pity on us for all the trouble we had and let us stay out well past our appointed departure time. The lights reached a crescendo around 1 am and started to fade, and about 1:15 we loaded up on the buses and headed back to the city, continuing to keep an eye on the sky as we drove away. I was ecstatic that things worked out in the end – it was totally worth the 15 hours of bus rides and standing around over the course of three days to get one good hour of lights. The only problem is that now I want to see them again!
