Thursday morning saw your intrepid travellers staggering out of bed a bit later than usual, the effect of our exciting (i.e. nail biting) sojourn down mountain track F35 the previous evening, resulting in a late arrival at the Hotel Gullfoss. (Note to our friends at Ford...your headlights stink).
We suspect we may have been the only guests at the hotel, but enjoyed a pleasant breakfast before heading out for the day. The weather...well, it's Iceland in late fall...gray and rainy. Naturally that didn't deter us in the least as we motored up the road to the waterfall at Gullfoss. Another waterfall you say? Well yes, but they are all very impressive and one never really get tired of watching these gargantuan volumes of water cascade over the falls. The power behind them is incredible.
Suitably awed at watching all that water head down, we were then off to Geysir to watch water go up in dramatic fashion. There are 2 geysers; the oldest, Great Geysir, is a bit tired now so it mainly just steams away, but a short distancce away its sibling Strokkur regularly churns up great amounts of water and steam every few minutes. Very entertaining, particularly when it thoroughly hosed a group of less-than-brilliant tourists who hadn't figured out they were downwind of the action. This was the first time we had seen any significant number of other tourists, not that we are saying that was good thing!
Next it was west to Pingvellir National Park, the site of the 1st Icelandic parliament in 930, and a UNESCO world heritage site. What was particularly interesting is that it is located in a rift valley where the North American and EurAsian tectonic plates are separating (2 cm. / year), creating giant rifts where the earth is moving sideways. This is also why there is so much volcanic and geothermal activity in Iceland. The rain stopped part way through our hike through the site, raising hopes for a fair day on Friday.
Our destination for the evening was the Snaefellsnes peninsula on the west side of Iceland. During the trip we heard from Addy the Nordic Tour Organizing Goddess, confirming that she could join us for dinner on Saturday...our way of saying thank you for putting up with all our changes and challenges in our tour.
A beautiful (sunny!) drive through hills and fjords brought us to Hotel Framnes in Grundarfjorour at about 6:30. We checked in then promptly headed out to see the town, locating the very pleasant Kaffi 59 cafe for the evening beer tasting, delicious seafood soup and a great pizza, while watching the Icelandic women's soccer team beat the stuffing out of New Zealand on TV.
Much exploring through Snaefellsnes to come on Friday.
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