The very next day after Snaefellsnes I went on the second of my booked tours, the Golden Circle and Green Energy tour. This was also the day of the Iceland – Austria match, a match I managed to see the tail end of at the big square in Reykjavik along with the locals who hadn’t swarmed to France. It was a special moment for sure, but I’m getting ahead of myself once again – this is starting to become a habit.
The Golden Circle is the most popular region/route near Reykjavik and it shows. Unlike Snaefellsnes there is no shortage or rest stops, restaurants and any other facility you might need. Despite it being so commercialized though this is not a place you want to miss. There are many tours and organizations that do the Golden Circle, with many that offer optional packages as well.
I decided to take the Green Energy one, since I was interested in what the Icelanders were doing with geothermal power. We were a small group, so we didn’t go around in a large tour bus. I much prefer the smaller tours, they are far more personable. On some tours you are really lucky in finding a fellow photographer with an eye for composition, and this was one of those tours. We ended up sticking together to take each other’s pictures.
The weather was phenomenal this day as well. I’d brought my coat, but after the second stop I left it on the bus. There was only one time I regretted doing that, and that was at the Golden Waterfalls. The spray of these falls as you approach is enormous, it’s like walking through rain.
Our first stop was at a geothermal power plant for that fresh scent of sulfur in the morning. This was one of a few such power plants that provide Reykjavik with electricity and warm water. The system is so efficient the water only loses two degrees from the plant to the city, even though the water takes hours to reach the city. There is a Big Mac scale (yes, that’s McDonalds Big Macs) that shows the price of heat and power for Iceland compared to other Nordic countries and Icelandic power is dirt cheap. That’s why they always keep the heat on and if it gets too warm they open a window. Some of the hot water is pumped underneath streets to warm them in winter times, and they even heat up the water of a small beach in Reykjavik.
Iceland has a lot of waterfalls. We went to a nice one and got dropped off at the top of a hill, from which you could take nice pictures of the falls. There was supposed to be a path down, so we could take close up pictures of the falls. Suffice it to say we didn’t find a path, but we did find a way down. Next time though, if something doesn’t look like a path, it is not a path and I should go back to find the actual path. Still, going down that hill was fun. Stupid, but fun. And there was a bit of a rainbow in the spray of the waterfall, so that was really nice (finally!).
Iceland is a volcanic country and is riddled with volcanoes and craters. We stopped at a small crater that had a nice lake within the caldera. You could walk around it and take a path down to the lake itself and there was time to do both, but just barely (if you’re like me and you take a lot of pictures). Very beautiful and from up there you also have a great view of the surrounding plains and the distant mountains.
Another way the volcanic nature shows is through geysers. The geyser after which all geysers are named is called Geysir, and it is part of the Golden Circle. Unfortunately this geyser is mostly dormant after an earthquake changed something deep below. It still goes off, but I think it was only a couple times in the past year. Another geyser close to Geysir, Strökkur, has benefited from the earthquake and is the one that goes off far more often now, about once (sometimes more) per seven minutes. That makes this geyser ideal for getting pictures from many different angles. And it goes off naturally too, unlike a geyser I visited in New Zealand where they put in a soap-like solution to make it go off when they want it to. On route to the big geyser you walk past bubbling little Geysir, which is quite a cute little thing.
The place that gives the tour its name is the Golden Waterfall. When the sun shines the light and the spray of the falls create rainbows. Look up pictures of the Golden Waterfall and you’ll see they all have them. Unfortunately the sun decided to hide behind a curtain of clouds when we were there, so no rainbows. I’d also left my coat in the bus, which in retrospect wasn’t the best thing to do since getting close to the falls meant going in the spray of the water – it was like it was raining, and not lightly either. So yeah, got a bit wet there, but it was worth it. And despite the sun hiding behind the clouds it was still pretty warm so it didn’t take long for my clothes to dry.
The way back to Reykjavik took us to Tingvellir, the site where the Vikings of old made their first parliament. Before the parliament the various groups made their own decisions, but as the population grew they realized they needed a neutral place to meet. They decided on the Tingvellir valley, which is also the place where the Eurasia plate and the American plate move away from each other. The valley itself lies on neither plate, but on the no-man’s land between the plates. It’s a beautiful place. We got dropped off at one parking lot so we could walk from one side of a chasm to the other. Halfway through you have a great view of four buildings and a church. Coincidentally a wedding was going on at the time. I could see why they chose that place for it, it’s breathtaking.
After Tingvelliir we drove back to Reykjavik, making one impromptu stop to take pictures of the fields of purple flowers that riddle the island. And then I was back on time to watch the end of Iceland-Austria with the locals at the town square. Go, Viking clap! (Shame they got eliminated by France later on).