Geysers, Waterfalls, and Aurora

     Drove out into the Icelandic countryside today. As you drive into the mountains, it is still cold enough that you can see the plumes of steam that mark a geyser or stream of volcanically heated water. Not much snow cover for February. I expected more and have seen pictures of areas with much more snow. Guess we got lucky as far as tourist viewing is concerned. 

Our Icelandic Chariot

     Periodically, along the side of the road, there is pull out with a series of map displays. It helps you have an idea of where you are and the local interconnecting roads. In the picture above, we are located at the red square at the bottom center of the screen along highway 36. Also, the Icelandic alphabet contains letters that are not in the English alphabet. The names can also be pretty long! Makes reading a map or keying into a GPS a challenge sometimes 

     Our first stop was at a town named Geysir (gay-seer). Here were several thermal pools and geysers that erupt every 10-15 minutes or so. As the big geyser begins to erupt, the water in the sinkhole rises and falls repeatedly. Then, just before it blows, a large bubble forms. The superheated water shoots a couple of hundred feet into the air and the hole in the ground is visible where the water was. The water falls back down and the hole begins to fill. The process then begins again. 

The Bubble Dome Rising

Then it explodes upwards...

And Skyward it goes!

The Hole will now refill.

     After watching the eruptions and a BBC film crew shooting a documentary, we headed out and drove to the Gullfoss waterfall. (Foss in Icelandic is waterfall. Gull is Gold. Hence it is translated to Gold Falls.) It is a phenomenal waterfall with two distinct drops and is a "not to be missed" site. Since it is cold, there is a lot of ice near the falls and we couldn’t get very close but it was still very impressive. 

There is a small walkway to the left. Gives you an idea of the size of these falls!

Ice on the sidewalls.

The Falls with a rainbow!

We read somewhere that 60% of power in Iceland is from geothermals, 35% is from hydro, and less than 5% is from fossil fuels. Unlimited hot water and low energy costs for heating is a benefit in Iceland. 

Steinar (right) with Troy (on our tour) with the bottle of Brennavin.

     We drove back to the Hotel and met our tour guide, Steinar, for our evening of Lobster and Aurora’s. We drove cross country in a 4WD Land Rover and ended up on one of many black sand beaches in Iceland. Bad thing was it was too dark to really see much. We sampled the traditional schnapps called Brennavin (also referred to as “Black Death”). It wasn’t too bad, strong but smooth. And it did warm the body! On our way to dinner we pulled to the side of the road and saw a preview of the aurora. It was just a green glow in the sky and not much to speak of as viewed from the car. 

Geoff ready to dig in.

     We next stopped at a small country restaurant and had a homestyle meal of Icelandic lobster. A big bowl of lobsters (the size of large Gulf coast prawns) mixed with potatoes and vegetables along with bread and sides. We really enjoyed the meal. We then drove further up into the mountains, away from city lights and crossed our fingers for a good aurora show. It had been either really quiet or too cloudy to see since November. Tonight it was clear and a small moon. As we stood on the snow nothing much was happening except our feet were getting cold. Then the show started!! 

The light began to glow in bright greens and yellows with some hints of red and blues. It stretched from the horizon to the middle of the sky. It moved and danced as if blown by unseen winds. It was mesmerizing! Our guide was excited and said that this was one of the best displays in a long time. We stood out on the plain for a couple of hours watching, the cold forgotten. We got a lot of pictures. You can see several of them on our web album: Aurora. When it was over (about two hours of show), we all were thankful that we had been so blessed with this show and we can now cross this one off of our bucket list.