We awoke to another snowy (dark) morning in Reykjavik. Today we had a full day’s excursion planned called “The Golden Circle” tour, which took us to 4 key places on the tourist route. The first was a power plant! Usually a power plant would not be a tourist attraction but here in Iceland the hot water and heating system are powered by the earth’s natural resources as the country lies across 2 tectonic plates and can therefore use bore holes to access the extreme heat from the earths core. Well that’s enough of the science!
We drove for another hour to reach our next stop, which was the awesome natural spectacle of the Gull Foss waterfall. The terrain here is very barren, there are few houses, very few trees (because of the weak soil structure and strong winds) and no wildlife to speak of either although that is probably due to the fact it is winter-time, there is hardly any daylight and it is cold. It is so quiet.
After Gull Foss we had a short drive over to see “Geysir”, in fact THE Geysir that gave all the others around the world their name. There was ice on the ground and yet around us there were bubbling, boiling pools of water and the biggest of these was GEYSIR. Every 5 minutes Geysir blew gallons of boiling hot steam and water about 50 feet into the air –he was magnificent! For lunch we went to a restaurant across the road from Geysir that was offering a “eat as much as want” buffet. The food was excellent. I ate Cauliflower soup for the first time, which impressed Saboohi, and we had an array of raw fish, meats, breads, sweets etc. Etc it was all delicious.
Our final stop as we drove back towards Reykjavik was called Pingvellir . This is a historic site, which has been the cradle of civilisation in Iceland since about 900 A.D. It is the place where tribes would meet to discuss and agree the laws of the land – believed to be the site of the world’s first Parliament. It is also a place where the 2 tectonic plates meet and movement over the years has left gorges carved into the landscape. It is dramatic, stark, motionless and beautiful.
Another memorable day!
No comments:
Post a Comment