The Golden Circle

On our second day of touring, we first stopped at Kerid crater, which is an extinct volcano that has filled with water. The level of water in it rises and falls with the water table.

The usually gorgeous turquoise blue water was muted due to the overcast skies all day. We’re coming to learn that overcast (read dreary grey) or rain is very common here.

The “Golden Circle” is composed of three major natural attractions, all within about an hour’s drive of Reykjavik. The waterfall above, Gulfoss, is quite large, and reminded us of the Great Falls of the Potomac, because of the layered cascades. We are definitely liking travel right now, because we literally had the falls to ourselves at one point. [Because this is so close to Reykjavik, probably most of the 2 million tourists who came to Iceland in 2019 visited here.]

The lower set of cascades pour down into the valley:

This was just a random river we crossed over, but the blue of the water and the banks lined with lupines definitely caught my eye -

The second natural area that we visited in the Golden Circle was the Geysir Geothermal area. This is the original Geysir, after which all others in the world are named.

(again, people for scale, behind the greenery at the bottom right of the steam)

This was not the actual “Geysir”, but another that spouts about every 5-15 minutes. This is the original one…

…that only rarely erupts now. If you’ve been to Yellowstone and wandered around the enormous geothermal field there, this stop on the tour would be a bit underwhelming.

Moving on… as the skies lowered and it started to rain, we headed out to hike to Bruarfoss (Blue Waterfall). It was a very easy hike along a river for a magnificent yield -

The power of the water rushing through the narrow rock cut, and being right next to it was fantastic.

The third sight in the Golden Circle is Thingvellir National Park. This area was chosen as the site for the world’s first parliament in 930 AD, and Icelanders met here yearly in the summer to pass laws and render judgments. Steve knew of “Law Rock”, where one third of the country’s laws were recited each year, owing to oral tradition. The flagpole is planted at the site:

You might notice there are blue skies in that picture. We are now into our 3rd day of touring. The main reason we went to Thingvellir was to snorkel between the continents. In this park, the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates are continuing to separate about 2 cm per year.

There are multiple fissures or rifts throughout the area, but the one we were interested in is filled with glacial melt water.

Hopefully, you can appreciate the clarity of that water from the picture above.

So anyway, we got all dressed up in dry suits - meaning, we had long underwear on under a thermal jumpsuit, topped by the neoprene dry suit that was quite restrictive at the neck and sleeves. This is to prevent the 34 degree water from getting in!

(again, make sure you are looking at this post in your browser, rather than your email, so you can see these next videos)

This was unbelievably restrictive, but kept all but our cheeks and lips away from the water. Did you notice the lobster claw gloves? Unfortunately, they were of wetsuit material, allowing water in. I’ll come back to this point later.

Both the water clarity and frigidity were shocking.

The only life to see was vibrant green strings of algae -

And yes, the water was really that blue, and clear. At the deepest point, our guide said the rift was 75 ft deep, but the clarity made that hard to believe.

Now back to the point about the gloves… my hands were so cold after our 30 - 40 minutes in the water, that I couldn’t button my shirt as we were getting dressed afterwards! I could bring my right thumb and forefinger together, but they couldn’t grip the button or shirt material. it was still so worth it, though! What a unique experience.

There was a relatively small waterfall in the park, Oxararfoss, that allowed me to practice some new photography techniques -

I used to be partial to the first shot, where the water is “frozen”, but I’m coming around to the “softer” waterfall. How ‘bout you? We’ll talk more in the next post…