Monday, with Geysers, Guldfoss, and Perlan

Monday was the Golden Circle tour, including Thingvellir National Park, the geyser named Strokkur (Geysir has become inactive), and Guldfoss, "Golden Falls."

The initial "th" in Thingvellir is actually the letter thorn, which is not on my keyboard.


Paula and Siggi		 

Landscape, with steam vent

Our guide was Siggi--Icelanders always go by first names.

There are numerous steam vents, along with bubbling mud pools. Iceland is extremely geothermally active. They get superheated water out of the ground, pipe it to all the houses for heating, and use it to generate electrical power. They also have abundant supplies of clean cold fresh water.


Steam vent		 

The same steam vent

Strokkur geyser erupts about every five minutes, spouting boiling water about 100 meter into the air.


Strokkur geyser

It's autumn, and the fall colors are beginning to show--mostly on shrubs.


Thingvallavatn (Thingvalla lake)		 

Fall colors

Iceland has its own breed of horses. Siggi says they are all domesticated, none of them wild. They are small (but don't call them ponies!).


Icelandic horses		 

Between two cliffs

Guldfoss (Golden falls) is, in my opinion, every bit as impressive as Niagra Falls. The flow rate is only 140 cubic meters per second, as compared to Niagra's 240, but that isn't everything. If you look at the photo with Paula in it, you'll see that the outflow goes between two cliffs. What you can't see, if you look down into it, is any water. There is a channel between the cliffs, maybe 1/3 as wide, and all the water is down there somewhere, invisible from any safe vantage point.

One story is that a very rich man, when he was about to die, didn't want anyone else to get his gold, so he threw it into the waterfall--hence the name. Or maybe the falls just look golden in some light. Or some other theory.


Me at Guldfoss		 

Paula at Guldfoss

Guldfoss

There is a museum, Perlan, that Paula really wanted to visit, so she asked Siggi to drop us off there instead of at our hotel. Lots of information about volcanoes, of course, but we ended the evening in their planetarium show about northern lights.


Perlan		 

Paula and the dome at Perlan

I barely stayed awake, and went to bed as soon as we got back to Eyja Guldsmeden, our hotel. That's one of the reasons I'm writing this in Berlin.

Final note: When I preview this page, it says the videos are unavailable. I'll worry about that later.

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