Tuesday, April 18, 2023

Day 3 - West Iceland

'cause sometimes nothing really makes sense
and I wanna ditch all this and leave
somewhere in the distance, somewhere
somewhere the future's bright
and you don't have a billion things on your mind
Somewhere - Hauskey

Day 3 was spent taking a day trip which was branded as Silver circle. While many tour companies I googled offer similar trips, this was the only trip that I found which was offered just by one place. The driver / guide was an Icelandic girl and she said actually there's no such thing as a silver circle, it's just a branding :D It basically takes you to different places in the western region. It was really cloudy that morning which gave me a rather low expectation of how the day was going to be. Side note: I guess being from the tropics, unconsciously it's just inherent in me that I need the sun. On the first day being back in Singapore after the trip and I went out to do some errand and there was the sun and feeling its heat, I was like I miss you sun. I missed the heat even though that lasted maybe 15 minutes because after that sweat started to form and I needed air-conditioner :D The guide on the other hand argued that it's a good day, it's cloudy yes but it's not raining. She was like, a good weather in Iceland is really relative. It wasn't snowing as we departed but at the first toilet break, I remember the ground was filled with snow and it was quite deep. I had actually been in that rest stop the day before and there wasn't snow, so it was quite interesting to see snow in the same place just a day apart - again all this snowing thing was new to me. Someone used the snow plower to clear it up as we're about to leave. So I guess that's how relative a good weather is. Just a cloudy day is a marked improvement as opposed to snowy day when the snow could be deep and you have to start clearing road.

As we went along, the guide talked about the landscape - volcanoes, lava fields and all. She then said we had time, let's stop to see some lava fields. We approached like a small hill and I was like, oh my is this the same place as the day before, I really don't feel climbing the same set of stairs. Luckily it was different but yes another set of stairs to climb. Again I didn't take note what this place was, but as I was googling places to write this post, it's likely the Grábrók Crater. Either I wasn't fully there the day before to appreciate the view in Saxhóll Crater or the view here was better, I kinda thought it was really cool and more interesting there. The crater was deep and the view around it was pretty and the moss covering the field was aplenty. I remember touching them and yes they were spongy as I was told.

Then it's off to Glanni waterfall. There were 2 viewing points here. On going to the second viewing point, I almost slipped on the icy path, didn't flat out fell but bumped my knee and of course bruised it. Oh how I hate the ice. I don't know if there's a trick to walking on ice but suffice to say I didn't master it. The waterfall is in a long river which Google told me is the Nordura river. Again like the waterfalls in the days before, some parts of it were frozen.

Then it was a short stop in Deildartunguhver which apparently is the the most powerful hot spring in Europe because it produces like 180 liters of boiling hot water per second. Steam was coming out from the little stream and it's kinda fun that the steam could really envelope you and you can't see anything around you.

Next stop was Snorri's pool / Snorralaug in Reykholt. Unfortunately I didn't register at all what was explained to me. There were a few things to be seen here. The Snorri in the name was of Snorri Sturluson, who was a famous Icelandic historian, poet, and politician. I thought the name is kinda cute for a girl, but it's a guy name apparently. The small pool is kinda cute in front of a small door which may be a tunnel that leads to his house - don't quote me, I'm not sure. In this compound, there's also a small church which we entered and like a small old house kinda thing. I think it's called turf house. I did enter it, but there's nothing much inside it.

After that it was a longer stop for lunch too in Barnafoss and Hraunfossar waterfalls. I chose to see the waterfalls first before lunch. First was the Barnafoss waterfall and then Hraunfossar which was a series of smaller waterfalls by the rocks in the river. I have to say they were very pretty with the ice and blue water. It's like one of those pictures you see in a calendar :D There's quite a number of viewing points and I tried to explore all but on one path where the path was really icy, I didn't go all the way.

Earlier that morning I actually bought two Danish pastries from a bakery / cafe near my hotel and I was intending to eat them for lunch, but it was cold out so I wanted to sit inside. Feeling bad eating my own food and not buying anything, I ended up having soup in the cafe and ate one of my pastry which was really good. The pastries were really big, so it's kinda worth the price. In real life, especially with inflation I often force myself to go cheap and that sometimes involve food to the dismay of my mom and aunt who think I should't scrimp on food. They feel we should be frugal on other things but not food if possible. I can't say I don't splurge in real life but I do try to control myself, but out there in the world I do have to say I splurge more, like buying one of those fancy overpriced juice mix, things I wouldn't be able to bring myself to do in real life :D I digress - anyway after the lunch break, the trip continued on to Vidgelmir Lava Cave. On arriving there, our group merged with another group for a guided walk into the cave. We're provided with helmet with light. The guide provided a lot of explanation about the cave, how it came about. As the name suggested lava was involved and of course a volcano once erupted. As Wikipedia puts it, Lava tubes are formed when a low-viscosity lava flow develops a continuous and hard crust which then thickens and forms a roof above the molten lava stream. When the eruption subsides, the still-molten lava moving beneath the crust will continue to drain downhill, leaving an open lava tube. So that's why we have this cave which is like a pipe for lava to go through. The guide who has a master in geology (if I'm not mistaken) explained some of the rocks there which obviously I cannot remember all. There's the straw rocks which are like thin short stalactites. Then the drip drip of lava to the floor of the cave also formed the candle rocks stalagmites. The candle rocks I saw were also short. The most interesting thing for me were the ice stalagmites because it was my first time seeing them. I'm not sure if it's year round.

The whole walk in the cave wasn't very far I think, but it did take 1.5 hours. At the end, the guide switched off all the light for a moment for us to feel what it's like. It's complete darknes and you lost a sense of space. There were people standing near me, but when it's totally dark I couldn't tell how near they were. Obviously I was all calm then, but thinking about that experience makes me think of those Thai boys and their coach who were stranded in a cave for days. I have a newfound admiration for how they could keep it together. First picture below was the end point of our walk and the picture below it shows a little bit of the cave opening.

After the cave, I thought we're done for the day but turned out we had another place to visit. We went to Húsafell and stopped at this open place which I'm not sure if it's belonging to the artist, Páll Guðmundsson. There's definitely his workspace there. I heard he's very nice so maybe that's why we could just stop at his place and walked around. He does sculpture in rocks, many of them are on the ground featuring faces. There's also a small church here with some of his artworks inside. We walked around the area a bit. The surrounding felt calm and his sculptures were interesting. There were stones here as well that were used to the test the strength of men. It's very hard to lift, I didn't even try. The guide said The Mountain from Game of Thrones who's Icelandic could do this :D

For pictures from that day, please go here. For dinner, I went for lobster soup (so it was soup day that day) because I wasn't that hungry and I still had one pastry left. I have this weird thing of not being enticed by Danish pastry but it was really good. The one I had left was the Nutella one and it was so big that it took effort to finish it but it was so good. I kinda miss that bakery now. I kinda want to try all their pastries.

:) eKa @ 8:48:00 PM •