Paul drove, and for reasons that I guess had to do with the fact that
I was accurately able to guide us from the hostel to downtown and back
the previous night, I was appointed navigator. Tyrrell borrowed a highlighter
from the front desk at the hostel, and we took it with us. She insisted
that I mark every road we travelled. Tyrrell sat in the front seat and
spent the bulk of the first half hour yelping and reminding Paul that in
Iceland they drive on the right side of the road.
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| Off Route 32, near Stöng |
This was the plan. We would drive to see Mt. Hekla and Þjorsádalur, Hekla's favorite valley in which to spew lava and ash when she erupts. After that, it was off to Geysir, the geyser after which all others are named, then to Gullfoss (think of it as the Niagara Falls of Iceland), then to Þingvellir, the site where Iceland's parliament was founded in 930 CE. If there was time, we'd head down to the Blue Lagoon, where Tyrrell had been the previous day and advertised with a curiously unappealing description of an old lady "with boobs down to here" that she encountered in the locker room. "You guys have got to see it," she said.
But before leaving town, I had to move my belongings, as there was no room for me in the hostel that night. The front desk suggested I move to the Salvation Army downtown. We drove there on our way out of the city. I checked in and dropped off my bags. The room I was in had six beds, carpet, a sofa, and a sink. It was far larger than the room in the Reykjavík hostel, and didn't cost much more. There were a few people in the room, still asleep. I threw my bags on a top bunk, went back outside, and we were off.
Things started off auspiciously. On the way out of Reykjavík the clouds broke, and the sun came out. The mountains across the bay from the city became clearly visible. Within fifteen minutes, it not only became overcast, but dark clouds hung low over the road, and it began raining hard.
It was in this weather that we passed Hveragerði on the highway. Hveragerði sits on a geothermal field, and they use the heat there to warm greenhouses, which, in turn, produce tomatoes, bananas, and a variety of other fresh produce sold around the country. We could see a number of the greenhouses from the highway, but opted not to stop. My travel guide informed me that had we been on a bus tour, we would have stopped for an hour--15 minutes for a greehouse tour, 45 minutes for the gift shop.
The rain continued pouring as we passed through Selfoss, then abated as we approached Hekla. It still came down lightly, but it wasn't bad, and the light was a bit better. We were going to head north on route 26, and started making note of the farms, all of which are listed on the map, as we tried to figure out how close we were to the turn. One farm was called Ashól, a name sure to delight juvenile Americans (and get a smirk out of this one).
We were perhaps 3 kilometers up the road, Hekla looming to our right, her top obscured by clouds, when we ran straight into road construction that left the road impassable. I found an alternate route, through Þjorsádalur, where we planned to go anyway, and we turned around and headed back the way we came. We only had to backtrack 15-20 kilometers before we headed up to Þjorsádalur, through farmland at first, then along a road that hugged the banks of the Þjorsá, Iceland's longest river, of impressive width, and in parts quite impressive strength as well.
As we entered Þjorsádalur (if you're trying to figure out
how this is pronounced, by the way, it's roughly THYORS-ow-dah-lor; also--and
I know a pronunciation guide is really overdue--the ð character is
pronounced like the "th" in "the"), we passed a reconstructed Viking settlement
called Stöng, destroyed many years before by one of Hekla's eruptions.
The valley itself is, predictably enough, covered with ash, and looking
across the ash to the majestic if cloud-obscured Hekla is a bit like looking
at Manhattan from Newark, which is not such a terrible thing to say if
you believe, as I do, that factories and furnaces also have a certain beauty
to them.
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| Hot spring near Geysir. |
After making use of a mound of rocks and ash as though we were dogs at a fire hydrant, we headed onward, deciding to skip a closer look at Hekla as we were uncertain where that would leave us in terms of time, going directly to Geysir instead.
Just outside Fluðir, a peculiar town that seems to have no special attraction but an Icelandair Hotel and proximity to Hekla, Geysir, and Gullfoss, the paved road ended, and we found ourselves on gravel. It appeared that construction was in progress, but we bade asphalt farewell until we approached Geysir, about 30 kilometers away.
Geysir was nearly deserted when we arrived. A few other people wandered around, but the bulk of the people who come this time of year must arrive on bus tours, and we were relieved to see one leaving as we came into the parking lot.
Geysir no longer erupts, though apparently when it did, it would do so quite impressively, shooting to a height of 60m. Now it is a steaming pool of placid blue water. Fortunately for Iceland's tourism industry, Strokkur, Geysir's sister Geyser, erupts with shocking regularity. Every 3-5 minutes it erupts, shooting water 20m into the air two or three times before gathering strength to do it again. It's quite a show. I managed to get pictures of it erupting twice, but white water against a grey sky doesn't create much contrast, so they're far less impressive than they might have been with more cooperative weather.
Geysir and Strokkur are surrounded by a host of other bubbling hot springs
and steam vents, and across the road is a small hotel and giant snack bar/souvenir
shop. Paul, who hadn't worn his jacket, went back to the car to take shelter,
but the rest of us wandered through the geothermal field and across the
road to the tourist facilities. Tyrrell and I were both hungry, and eyeing
the chocolate bars decided to try something we'd never had, so we skipped
the Hershey's and went straight for something Norwegian in red and green
wrapping, which, sadly, turned out to be a massively inferior version of
the American Kit Kat. But it tided us over. We walked back to the car and
set a course for Gullfoss, 10 kilometers away.
 |
| Gullfoss. |
From home, Tyrrell had brought with her one mix tape. Our rental was equipped with a tape player, and as we left Reykjavík Filter and the Red Hot Chili Peppers seemed poised to become the theme singers for our daytrip. Little did we know that 6 hours later we would be on repeat #6 of "Californication" So it was to the increasingly irritating strains of the Chili Peppers that we got out of the car at the Gullfoss parking lot, seeing nothing but a soon to be expanded tourist trap and hearing only a dull roar. No tourist buses here, either.
A long wooden stairway led down the side of a steep hill, where we met a trail that went around a bend--and there was the waterfall. The geological forces that led to this must've really been something. It's a two tiered fall, with massive quantities of water dropping 11m in the first fall, then continuing on a level course for just a moment before dropping another 20 into a ravine that my guidebook reported to be 70m deep.
The great thing about Gullfoss--and another one of those things that makes you wonder about how it was formed, is that there's a substantial outcropping of rock that juts out into the middle of the falls, and you can go stand, and on the left water is falling from the top tier, and on the right the water continues its precipitous fall. The sound is massive. The water falls with such force on the second drop that the mist rises far above the ravine, and the light wind--in addition to the movement of air generated by the force of the water, caused the water droplets to swirl in mesmerizing patterns--perhaps no different than the swirl of steam from a pot of boiling water, but more impressive because of the sheer scale.
Snow was still on the ground in many places, and much of it was covered with swirled black patterns, soot from Mt. Hekla's eruption in March. We took pictures, and though we were ready to go, we lingered a bit. I make a lot of snide comments about tourist traps and the like in this account, but the truth is that the touristy places in Iceland really are worth seeing. These things aren't like the holes people find in their backyards in South Dakota, where they set up shop and post a billboard for "Fabulous Jewel Caverns" or whatever name they come up with; they're not houses of mystery where balls roll uphill (although this particular type of attraction, which I visited near Mammoth Cave, has its own special charm). At Mývatn I wondered what the hell the Vikings were thinking when they settled the area; here I figured the Vikings must've thought they had it pretty good.
We piled back into the car, and it was off to Þingvellir. By this
time we were all sick of the tape, so we put on the radio. I had moved
up to the front seat, and Paul and I, both fans of dance music, were trying
to locate the station I'd been listening to at Ósar, to no avail.
In fact, while we could pick up maybe four radio stations, there was music
on none of them. Perhaps it was time for the evening news, as it was around
five or six by this time. After a while, we were in luck--we hit a station
with a dance beat, and within a few seconds were puzzled by surreal lyrics
about Donald Duck.
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| Þingvellir. The water is still and clear. |
This, however, was just moments before Kevin declared the trip officially surreal. After passing Laugarvatn, an Icelandic resort town, we turned off the paved highway onto a packed dirt road (blame the navigator). The Donald Duck song was over, and after flipping the station to something with horrifying Icelandic folk songs (which, in the spirit of being in Iceland, we tried to listen to briefly), we flipped it again to find "Living Doll," to which, inexplicably, Paul knew every single damn word. "This trip is now officially surreal," Kevin said, as we approached a bulldozer in the middle of the road. The dozer moved to the side, and we continued on our way.
And what a long way it was. The map showed this road--Route 365 for
those keeping score--as being a 30 kilometer shortcut between Laugarvatn
and Þingvellir. It was a very rough road, and Paul drove it at about
20 km/hr. To speak in my own defense here, driving a completely asphalted
route to Þingvellir would have added a couple hundred kilometers
to the trip, and the route, while rough, was in fact very beautiful. There
was nothing here. The other roads we had travelled had farms scattered
every few kilometers, but out here there was no sign of human habitation
other than the road, just fields of moss-covered rocks stretching out into
the mist. Had we broken down, of course, we'd have been in huge trouble,
and had to walk back to Laugarvatn to get help, as none of us had the quintessential
Icelandic cell phone.
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| Rapids at Þingvellir |
After an hour and a half on this road, we finally were approaching Þingvellir. We were all tired, so we didn't stay long. However, the landscape was impressive. Þingvellir is a wide valley broken by fissures. The first one we crossed on a footbridge was filled with clear still water, and under the bridge the bed shimmered with coins. Þingvellir, like Mývatn, sits squarely on the mid-Atlantic ridge, the dividing point between the European and North American tectonic plates. You can see the same processes at work here that you see at Mývatn, but the character of the landscape, while equally if not more dramatic, is gentler, as if the land is at peace with the forces tearing it apart. Here the edges of the fissures are rounded, covered with lichen and moss, instead of the fierce dry jagged rocks found at Mývatn.
Across the valley, a cliff, perhaps 30m high, rose above us. At the base of the cliff, workmen were building a large stage for the celebration on July 1 commemorating 1000 years since Iceland's conversion to Christianity. We climbed a path halfway up the cliff, where the land flattens some and a footpath runs along the length, naturally walled on both sides. To the south of where we stood was a collection of historic buildings, moved to this one site from various locations around the valley. This was the site where the Viking settlers founded the Icelandic parliament, the Alþing, in 930, and they still met at this site till 1798. Walking along the path, a waterfall crashes down from the top of the cliff, creating rapids that run parallel to the path for a bit before falling again to the mossy valley floor, and on to Þingvallavatn.
This is a place to come back to, but we were tired. We headed back to
the car for a quick dinner. John had potato chips, I can't remember what
Kevin had, but Paul's choice of food was truly the most remarkable; white
bread with Heinz Hamburger Relish. I don't know if you can get this in
the US, but it's much like green hot dog relish except it's made with tomatoes,
cabbage, and vinegar. I tried this dubious choice for a sandwich, and it
was pretty good, though that might be the impression of a body whose sole
nourishment that day had been two NutriGrain bars and a poor Norwegian
imitation of Kit Kat.
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| Dinner from the back of the beloved Almera at Þingvellir |
After a frustrating search for an open petrol station in Reykjavík (note: a great many gas stations are open late in Iceland; those in the area around Kringlan, however, close at 7:30), we decided to deal with filling the car up in the morning. We stopped back at the hostel for a couple hours, got drinks from the soda machine on the first floor, brought them upstairs, and mixed them with duty-free vodka the guys had brought from Heathrow. After getting a happy buzz going, we walked downtown for more, stopping on the way at Kebab Husið for dinner. They were all out of döners, but I highly recommend the shishkebabs. Until we ate there, I don't think any of us realized how truly hungry were are, or how ridiculously drunk we'd've been had we headed on to the Victor without stopping for some food.
The Victor was less crowded tonight, but it was earlier than we'd come out the previous night as well. We made plans for the next day. Kevin, Paul, and John had a flight to New York the next afternoon, but if we kept the car we'd have time to all go to the Blue Lagoon and drop them off at the airport. Then Tyrrell and I could have the car for the rest of the day. We planned on that, and after a couple beers, they all went back to the hostel, and I moved on to my new home at the Salvation Army.
The room was empty, though there was evidence of others in the room. I sat on the couch and flipped through the travel guide for a while, then crawled into my comfortable bunk and was asleep in a heartbeat.