Around the Snowy Circle - Day 2 in Iceland

Our first full day was a golden circle adventure! We began before sunrise, at 10am! Our sunrise drive went by the mountain Asja, which is a beautiful tabletop mountain (the mountains are apparently flat because of the wind) as we headed on our trek. Our first stop was the national park where the worlds oldest parliament was, and this is where sentencing happened for prisoners annually every July (so good luck to those August criminals!) It was very windy and snowy and so many more people than when i was there in April so we didn’t really linger, but it was very cool to see the snow on the rocks as we walked along the tectonic plate. It’s so cool how the topography steps down so drastically between the plates. 






The bonus that I hadn’t seen before was the Öxanáfoss, which is a waterfall that was a short walk away. The waterfall is basically surrounded with solid ice and snow, it was beautiful! 





We also went to a spa called Fontana, behind which were these pits that they bake rye bread. They literally put the bread in pots and bury them next to the hot spring for them to cook in moist heat. The bread was sweet and delicious! We also caught some Icelandic horses up close - can't believe they can survive outside all year round... as long as they have a companion.




From there we headed to the geyser… in an area called Geysir - not a coincidence! I had seen the Icelandic Oíd Faithful before, but this time it erupted 4 times at once! So not exactly clockwork, although it erupts about every 8 minutes. We also went to Gulfoss, the major waterfall fed by a glacier, so majestic, and a different landscape when covered with ice and so frozen. The story is that there was a landowner who was going to sell the waterfall for hydroelectric power and his daughter said that if he did that she would throw herself over the falls. So the father did not sell the land and it remains available to the public today. The landscape around here is very lunar- apparently Neil Armstrong trained here before heading to the moon!



A couple other interesting points - Joost, our driver, is from the Netherlands, and he is married to a Colombian woman living here. So his son speaks English, Spanish, Icelandic, and Dutch. His wife right now is volunteering for the Red Cross helping translate from Spanish to Icelandic for the Venezuelan refugees. There are a lot of refugees from Venezuela, Syria, and Ukraine. Most of the Ukrainians and Eastern Europeans are in the trades, whether it is construction (they unbelievably do construction year round here) or working in hotels or kitchens. The Icelandic people seem to consider themselves a bit “above” these jobs, so they are necessary for the economy. 

Out last stop before spa #2 was a hydroponic tomato farm called Friðheimar where you eat actually in the tomato greenhouses. We of course got all you can eat tomato soup and it was delicious! The amount of tomatoes this particular farm has allows them to export even to other countries. Because power is so cheap here they are able to do things that we would never be able to do because of the power requirement.  They also import flies from the Netherlands to eat the bad flies, and they also have  boxes of bees that they keep on site to pollenate. 






After dinner we headed to the Secret Lagoon, the oldest swimming pool in Iceland. It was a very different experience than the sky lagoon, but seemingly more authentic. The pool is actually situated next to the hot spring that has the boiling hot water coming out of it, versus sky lagoon which is not really in a geothermal area. The communal changing rooms were a bit chaotic, and the pool was super crowded. There were a lot of foreigners in the pool and lots of people getting out of the pool to roll around in the snow and then go back to the pool. This experience was definitely shorter and  more jarring getting in and out!  




A quick stop at the hotel and the Sea Baron for some lobster soup and a fish skewer (salmon is pretty big here - there is a celebration each year when they catch the first salmon in Reykjavik) but I had the blueling) and we were off to our northern lights tour, featuring a beautiful sky of bright stars and no northern lights! It was a good time but we called it at about 10:30 and headed back to the hotel to get ready for tomorrow! 



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