Great Geysers and Gullfoss, Batman!

Started the day by picking up our rental car, which is a Kia and super fun to drive!

The gps has been interesting…the voice is British, so the pronunciations of the streets are extra hilarious, and she’s extremely bossy and annoying. If we go against where she tells us to, she gives us the silent treatment for a good 10min before she’ll finally talk to us again. Although, she’ll also angrily beep at us if we go so much as 1km over the speed limit. I suppose we should be appreciative of that, since the fine for speeding here is 1,000€!!

Our first stop was making friends with some of the Icelandic ponies….sooo cute!!

We’re still in the phase where every piece of scenery is so majestic that we have to pull over and take multiple pictures, as if each lake and mountain are the last we’ll see on this trip…and then we laugh at how ridiculous that is, get back in the car….and then do it again 2min later. We’re sure by the end of this trip we’ll be like “oh god, not another mountain/lake!”.

Finally we made our way to explore   Þingvellir National Park (yes…it IS as hard to pronounce as it looks!). We started with the Geysers (apparently pronounced “Jeezers” by our gps….). I didn’t find them particularly exciting, but Mo said she thought they were pretty interesting. Basically a giant burst of boiling water thrusts itself up out of the ground every 5-10min. The signs all around gave a list of the dangers of touching the scalding water in point form, and the last point was “the nearest hospital is 65km away”, probably a good motivation to resist the urge to stick your hand in any of the water, but I suppose there’s always one daredevil (I kinda wish we’d seen someone try….is that wrong? lol)

We did both however enjoy the random sign on the bathroom door there:

I’m not sure how many people had to get it wrong that it required these signs to be on every single stall, but I’m sorta grateful that it was, since it was a hilarious photo op! Maybe they thought the toilet was powered by the Geysers, and expecting to be lifted off the seat by a great velocity of boiling water? We’ll never know….

Next up was Gullfoss the great waterfall! Super pretty!

We actually went twice….the first time was around 2pm and it was packed with tourists, and too bright to take good photos of ourselves that didn’t include squinting, so we went back at 9pm and pretty much had the place to ourselves! The nice thing about this 24hr sunlight is that it’s perfect for us night owls! We can get a lot more done when we’re not stuck behind huge busloads of tourists, and it’s not as hot….although the flies/mosquitos are pretty awful. I got bit on the cheek by a black fly of some kind, and I have a huge bump….feels like I have a Siamese twin trying to escape from my face!

Oh! And of course we found another troll to pose with…although this one looks more Jesus-like than Troll-like:

Our last stop was our snorkelling trip, which we were extremely excited for! Unfortunately, our booking lady didn’t know the pickup spot had changed, and had told us to meet the driver at the “service centre”, which caused great confusion as people were directing us to the “visitor centre”, and by the time we finally got to the service centre, we learned they no longer do pickups there and had to make our way to a totally different spot, which made us 45min late and we’d missed our tour. The upside is that our tour guy Ron was incredibly nice (and also really good-looking!) and gave us a private tour. Luckily there’s no photos of us in our drysuits, because they are possibly the least flattering thing ever worn….first you have your long underwear (hideous in its own right), then they bundle you into a snowsuit, and if that wasn’t enough, they stuff you into a super tight neoprene suit over that, and to pull it on, they had to literally yank it and lift me off the ground (picture the movement of someone giving someone else a very aggressive wedgie, and you’ll get the idea). I couldn’t move my arms at all, they just stayed sticking straight out, and if we’d been pushed over, we wouldn’t have been able to get up. Then we had to waddle about 150 meters to the starting point, which was hilariously awkward….but the snorkel itself, once we got in the water was unbelievable! Everything was crystal clear, and gorgeous! We tried to take photos with underwater cameras, but the gloves we had on weren’t conducive to operating them. Ron took a few of/for us, and I’m sure they’ll be a horrible surprise when we get them developed! Anyway, the write up online said “this narrow channel of blue water meandering through a giant lava field does not look like much on the surface. But below, supernatural shades of blue, perfect visibility and incredible rock formations make up a magical sub-aquatic paradise”, certainly was accurate. Apparently the tectonic plates between America and Eurasia are separating at an alarming rate, and we got to go underwater and explore the giant fissure. It was definitely a really cool experience!

Now we’re tucked in at our cute little guesthouse in Flúðir, which is on a working horse farm. Off to bed, but excited for tomorrow’s adventures!

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