Up early again this morning for our next tour, the Golden Circle. Rosie’s starting to suffer a bit with the lack of any daylight before 10am, but still good. We boarded the bus and headed out. The first port of call was a local nursery to see how they cope with the lack of daylight hours when growing food, however, someone had forgotten to tell the owner so nobody was there, and due to it still being dark, we couldn’t see much so we moved on. We had a toilet break on route to Gullfoss (the big waterfall) where we were able to visit a local Lutheran church. Inside the guide gave us a brief introduction, then serenaded us! Turns out he was a very impressive singer.
Gullfoss was our first major stop of the day, although we did stop at a much smaller waterfall beforehand to emphasise it’s impressiveness I think. To be fair, Gullfoss was absolutely amazing! The temperature was very much positive, and had been for a while from what we understood, but the waterfall was surrounded by ice, and the spray was freezing on us almost immediately. It was great, but my camera wasn’t really getting on too well with the rapid formation of ice on the lense.
The next stop on our tour was lunch and the geysers. Whilst most of our group headed out to check out the geysers, we took the opportunity to get in before the rush for lunch. Turns out it was a good move. We strolled around the micro-museum then before heading out to experience the wonder of the geysers themselves. Apparently Geysir is the original geyser that gave it’s name to all other geysers, but it’s very unreliable and hardly every ‘erupts’. So we joined the crowd surrounding Strokkur which is very reliable and erupts about every 5-10 minutes. The pools around the area were bubbling nicely, but the area was also covered in ice, right up to the edges of each of the pools. It was a very bizarre sight!
We left the geysers for Þingvellir which was the site of the first Icelandic Parliament from 930 to 1789. It is also the site of the Mid Atlantic Ridge (or Atlantic Rift depending on who you talk to) where the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates meet. The weather was really drawing in at this point, as well as the night so this was the end of the tour. Even though the weather was so poor and the dark was settling, the views were still stunning! Iceland is definitely a beautiful country.