July 6 by Andrew

July 6, Reykjavik

Today we drove the “Golden Circle” tour--a drive east toward the inland valleys and mountains from Reykjavik beginning with Pingvellir.  Pingvellir was the location of Iceland’s first government circa 900 or 1000.  Actually I don’t know how to type the first letter in the word “Pingvellir”.  It looks a bit like a capital “P”, but it isn’t.  Actually if you combine a lower case “p” and “b” you’d have it.  Also I learned that the “P” letter is pronounced like a “th”.  “-vellir” seems to be pronounced something like “vit,” crunched down to one syllable but I didn’t hear it enough to get a fix on it.

Mercifully for speakers of English the second stopping point on the Golden Circle is Geysir and is pronounced, and in fact features a…“geyser."  Gulfoss is an amazing waterfall and is stop #3.  We skipped #4, Skahalt, a church or religious site of some sort.  It was a long day in the car, and a bit crazy making and tiring, but we saw some amazing stuff and had a good time.

Pingvellir is located an hour’s drive up a windswept, misty mountain valley where the European and American tectonic plates are pulling away from each other at a rate of 2cm per year.   The site has many “rifts” or cracks in the rock covering the ground. 

We arrived at the visitor center and found little historical information within easy reach so we looked quickly at the geological rift and, also being overwhelmed by small black flies, cut our losses and left.  Cedar was pretty antsy so it didn’t seem that an historic site (with swarms of annoying flies) was going to be our thing.

Driving away we couldn’t find a picnic place in two stops (Cedar was convinced  the same group of flies liked us and were following us) so we drove the full 30km to Geysir.  As we rounded a bend in the road we saw a big geyser spurt in the distance looking exactly as one would picture it.  It was pretty amazing to see such a thing.  I realized the only other geyser I’ve ever seen is Old Faithful, 20 years ago or so, so this was pretty special.

We parked at the visitor center and picnicked on a bench—some kind of Kaviar (fish paste of some kind but since the label is in Icelandic I don’t really know what it contains), an Icelandic cream cheese spread, on sliced dark rye bread or rye crisp.  While we ate the geyser erupted a couple hundred yards away about every 5 minutes, sometimes tall, sometimes small.   A tour bus driver in his 70s talked with us for a few minutes—I think he liked seeing people there who weren’t on a tour bus, a family picnicking old style on one of the few benches around—and told us he used to be a lighthouse keeper on one of the Westman Islands!  Now he was driving a busload of French tourists around Iceland before they would go to the North Pole.

After lunch we crossed the highway to walk a brick path next to a stream that we were warned not to touch since its temperature ranged from 80 to 100 degrees C!  I didn’t believe the temperature could really be quite that hot—it’s volume was very small and the stream ran over several hundred yards of dirt so how could it retain that much heat?  I didn’t test it though, nor did I voice my skepticism to my four year old. 

Given this potentially dangerous feature it was very interesting to me (coming from the litigious, fear mongering, hyper protective USA) that the path abutted the stream for the entirety of its length (the path’s bricks actually formed the stream’s bank at one point).  The only barrier between the stream and path was the smallest of ropes running about a foot off the ground and small signs staked into the dirt every 30 feet or so to remind people of the temperature of the water.

Across the stream all along the path were dozens of steaming holes, each with its own character, personality, and voice.   They were mostly hidden from our view too (it would be cool if there were some platforms built around there so people could get up a bit to get a better view.)  In some one could easily see a constant, gushing of boiling hot water, others were just steam.  It sounded like an overheated Brooklyn apartment in January—radiators venting off steam, pots of water boiling in the kitchen, hot bathtub filling up. 

This was all the warm up act though--at the upper end of this steamscape lay the two main attractions: the geysers Geysir and Strokker.   For some decades since an earthquake Geysir rarely erupts.  Skukkol on the other hand, while smaller, erupts every 5 minutes or so.  A large, international crowd was gathered around a rope circling Strokker, and we joined in.

Everyone’s attention was fixed on a pool of water about 6-10 feet in diameter inside a much wider concentric basin.  The water in the central pool sat still for several seconds (maybe 20 or 30 max) and then its level would suddenly rise a foot or two, spill out to the surrounding basin, and then recede back into itself, waters rushing back in from the basin.  It seemed like a living thing.  We decided the geyser was “breathing,” so regular were these changes in water level.

After what seemed like a very long time, the first time anyway, suddenly one of these changes of water level quickly far out measured its predecessors.  The breath rose magically it seemed, into a sunlit, translucent turquoise dome of water.  It seemed to hold it shape for a second, perfectly round, glassily smooth, and symmetrical—impossibly six feet tall and eight or ten feet wide…and then KA-POW!!!  All of its energy discharged straight upwards into the sky in a violent hissing explosion of frothy boiling water and mist maybe 100 feet high.  It was tremendously exciting, a pretty incredible spectacle--and quite startling, even scary, the first time.  We were standing a mere 25 feet from the epicenter yet the water in that dome contained a lot of heat and a lot of mass—it had to be well over 1,000 gallons--and it exploded so violently so fast and at a scale so much larger than us.  It was a little too awesome for comfort.  But the force of the geyser directed all of its energy straight up into the sky in a column, and remarkably thanks also to the wind direction, we didn’t even get the least bit moistened or inconvenienced by spray.

After seeing this one we stayed for at least 10 more rounds.  There seemed to be a pattern of a large tall eruption, followed by a “baby” eruption which was almost just a large fizzling gusher.  I was video taping one of these baby ones and caught Max’s very disappointed reaction: “Awww, THAT was TERRIBLE!” But before long we were treated to a double eruption—one big one followed by another before the first had completely ended.  It was magnificent.  We gorged on geyser eruptions and once full, with no sign that they would ever stop, we pulled ourselves away and headed on to our next destination, Gulfoss.

Not before stopping in the gift shop at the visitor center though.  It was full of beautiful Icelandic wool goods—sweaters, ponchos, hats, mittens.  All of them looked amazing.  There were lots of other things too, from snow globes to stuffed animals, to woolen clothes by Pendleton.   I had given Max a 1000 Icelandic kroner bill the day before and he decided he wanted to spend it on a leather wallet here.  Cedar became very attached to a baby lamb—a 6 inch stuffed lamb with very soft wool—and seeing how attached she was, and  how Max was coming away with loot, I told her she could have it.  So now she has a baby lamb for the Polar Bear she brought from Brooklyn.

10km up the road from Geysir we found another visitor center with tour busses and crowds.  Getting out of the car Alissa took in the view over the treeless plains to some mountains lurking 20 miles distant and remarked, “that looks like those mountains are covered in ice!”  “That’s exactly what’s going on,” I said. “It’s a glacier.”  We all checked out the glacier.  Even parking lots in Iceland are awe inspiring.

Purposefully avoiding the visitor center, we found a path and walked down 100+ steps (Max counted 111 steps after I asked him if he thought there were more than the 82 steps at the 4^th Ave & 9^th St subway stop in Brooklyn), and followed another path to a huge waterfall.  The waterfall’s edge broke at a 45 degree angle to the river that fed it, flowed flat for a few hundred yards or so, then broke on the opposite 45 degree angle into a very deep,  very narrow rift that led off to the south at 90 degrees .  The odd path of the river and the angles of the break of the falls, combined with the large amount of water flow, made this another awesome spectacle.  Gulfoss alone would have been well worth a day’s drive.

 

It was also a parental blood-pressure-raiser.  There was no fence or barrier on the rocks at the end of the pedestrian path of the upper falls, and what there was on the other parts could easily have been avoided by any enterprising 4 year old or anyone else who was excited, disoriented, drunk, or otherwise out of their wits.  And Cedar was at this point in the day, very well wound up which is to say excited, unfocused, and needing to let off her own steam.  But even Cedar in this state was no match for Alissa and I—we were a bit stronger in our admonition to hold our hands at all times.  It was a bit of a nightmare being there, and beautiful and spectacular as it was our fierce animal instincts toward survival and protection of the young were much relieved as we headed back up the path toward the parking lots.

On the way home we passed an unusual playground we had noticed on the way to Geysir, and Alissa suggested stopping.  It was located in a campground but we weren’t charged to drive in and play there for over an hour.  It still wasn’t obvious how to get to the playground though.  We went as far as we could on the road, parked and then walked across 50 yards of grass to get to a less well kempt area where the playground was relegated more or less in a state of benign neglect. 

Really, we discovered though, this was a playground for teens and adults, more a ropes course kind of thing than a playground.  It was designed in a circle about 70’ in diameter so that one had to try to travel around the circle without ever touching the ground by balancing and navigating over and through logs, tires, ropes, and chains.  Most of it was way beyond our general strength, balance, and abilities but it was a lot of fun trying.  My big, proud accomplishment was to successfully walk the length of a 30’+ log, 12” in diameter, that was suspended on each end18” above the ground so it could spin along its axis.  The spinning and the swing of the log made it very difficult to be able to make more than a few steps.  Then Max speculated that maybe it would be easier if one went fast on it and he went halfway across.  I then made it the whole way, to my amazement, and was also amazed at how my son thought of something that hadn’t occurred to me, and that it effected such different results.

In the middle of the circle were some tire swings.  This is where Cedar spent a lot of her time. Everything was hand fashioned from logs, lashed together with ropes.  The place had so much character and was clearly the devising of someone who was quite inspired and who had time and materials, and who had access to tools and some heavy machinery.  We stopped for ice cream at the nearby gas station and then made the beautiful drive through mostly vacant valleys back to Reykjavik.