JULY 10, 2017
Finally! Iceland! I’ve been wanting to go to Iceland for awhile now and it has finally happened. In the midst of all my traveling this summer, I was able to carve out 6 days to go to Iceland with Tracy. She flew out of Ohio and I flew out Newark and we met up at Keflavík International Airport at 8:30am. We picked up our WiFi hotspot from Trawire at the 7-Eleven in the airport and exchanged some currency. We didn’t exchange a lot of money, but it turns out we didn’t any of it. You can swipe your card literally everywhere. Even the pay bathrooms in remote areas, you could use card. I ended up spending all my cash at the airport before my flight back to Newark.
We took a shuttle bus to the rental car company, Sixt,j to pick up our car for the week. Unfortunately, we got there and waited over 1.5 hours to pick up the car. There were a lot of customers and only two members of staff working at the time, but that gave Tracy and I time to catch up on everything. Getting into our car rental raised my excitement level times 10. THIS WAS IT. Our journey was beginning.
Just kidding. Before our journey could really start, we needed supplies, haha. Ten minutes later, we pulled into a Bonus grocery store and stocked up on bread, peanut butter, fruit, and road trip snacks. 30 minutes later and we were on the road on our way to explore the Golden Circle.
GOLDEN CIRCLE
The Golden Circle is a popular tourist route in Southern Iceland covering about 300 km (186 miles) and a great day trip from Reykjavik. There’s waterfalls, geysers, horses, etc. It was the perfect introduction as it had all things that were representative of Iceland.
Not too long on the road, and we were already pulling over to take pictures with some horses. In the beginning I called them “Icelandic horses”. Sounds legit, right? They were slightly smaller than the horses I’ve seen in the states and their manes looked like something out of shampoo commercial. It wasn’t until later I would learn that there are no animals native in Iceland, except for the arctic fox. All the horses and any other animals we saw were brought over from somewhere else. So, can I still call them “Icelandic horses”?
ÞINGVELLIR NATIONAL PARK
Our first real stop on the real trip was Þingvellir National Park. Iceland is made up of two tectonic plates. There’s a paved path between the North American plate and the Eurasian plate. We walked through Almannagjá gorge and at the end was a beautiful waterfall, Öxaráfoss.
BRUARFOSS WATERFALL
We attempted to hike to Bruarfoss waterfall. The usual path to it was closed because human waste and littering of toilet paper was found near the trail. The path now sits on private property, but that didn’t really stop us. We ended up hiking 2.5 hours and didn’t even reach the end. It was getting late (not that we could tell because it’s like daylight 24/7 in the summer), and we still had a few more places we wanted to see. What we did see was beautiful though. The water was the prettiest light blue and so clear. One of my favorite photos from the trip was taken on this hike.
GEYSIR NATIONAL PARK
We had dinner at a small food-to-go place in Haukadalur Valley and saw the Stokkur geyser erupt a couple times. It erupted every five to ten minutes. We were there around 9pm and there were very very few people around. I think we saw two or three other people watching the geyser, but it mostly felt like we had the place to ourselves.
KERIð Crater
Kerið is a volcanic crater. In simple speak, it was once a volcano and once the volcano used up all it’s magma, it was empty and it collapsed on itself, forming the crater. Then the large hole was filled with rainfall and became a lake. The minerals in the rock give the water a very blue color. It was pretty cool to see and not something you see very often.
At 10:45pm, we got back into the car for the last time that day and drove a little further to our airbnb in Selfoss. Within 24 hours, we had seen tectonic plates, waterfalls, horses, geysers, and a crater. The excitement of the day kept our bodies going and our adrenaline pumping. We were on a high. We finally felt tired at the end of the day and climbed into bed at 11:30pm, falling asleep the second our heads hit the pillow.
