Iceland – day 2

An 8am start in order to sort out rental car and have breakfast. (The sausage, egg, beans and weird-cold-potato-cubes were tolerable, but Sam made an exciting discovery: muesli, yogurt and watermelon makes a refreshing breakfast.)

Theory: “golden hour” lasts all day here. At this time of year, even in the afternoon the sun is low in the sky, giving you that lovely near-dusk look.

Packed cameras, tripods, mp3 recorder, spare batteries, sweets, bottles of water, maps, plenty of extra layers. 12 hours and 500km later, we had seen…

  • The lake and nature park of Þingvellir (the whole country looks like a nature park to me)
  • The geyser at Geysir (the one which lends its name to all the worlds geysers)
  • The (huge) waterfall at Gullfoss (with amazing ice formations thanks to the spray)
  • Ate another amazing hotdog
  • Keriđ crater (water-filled dead volcano)
  • Seljalansfoss (tall skinny one)
  • Skogafoss (shorter, fatter one)
  • Vik (town on South coast with a beach of black volcanic sand)
  • Passes the greenhouse village all nicely lit up
  • Stopped at a geothermal power station to take long exposure pictures (and got asked “what are you doing here?” by a security guard)
  • Drove around for a while following the pillar of light which is the John Lennon memorial. Eventually found it (and got some mediocre photos of a spectacular sight)

Geysir Gullfoss Grass Vik Power station

Back to the hotel room and paid 500ISK (a little under £5) for 1 hour of wifi to upload photos and check email. Strange, when it’s free in every bar. The Airwaves music festival starts tomorrow. Very exciting.