Freya, our trusty bus driver had left with our about-thirty-passenger bus the evening before to drive the many kilometers back to Reykjavik to be there in time to pick us up. In the morning a giant (50+ passenger) bus took us to the Akureyri airport. A turboprop plane took us to Reykjavik, about a 45 minute flight.
The napkins on the plane made me laugh. Iceland Air’s (Flugfélag Ísland) sense of humor matches mine well.
Freya picked us up and took us out of Reykjavik and into “The Golden Circle” of Icelandic tourism, first stop: Thingvellir National Park. The junction of two tectonic plates is more clearly visible here than anywhere else in the world, according to Iceland’s National Park service. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site, so maybe they’re right. There are a lot of big cracks from the two plates (the North American plate and the Eurasian plate) moving apart from each other at the rate of a couple centimeters each year. In a few places it’s pretty easy to visually “match” parts of hills and mountains that have separated from each other.
But it’s not just the geology that makes Thingvellir a World Heritage site. It is also where Iceland’s Allthingi (parliament) was formed in 930 and met every summer until the 13th century, so it has been an important gathering place for centuries.
We walked down one of the “crack” valleys, then re-boarded our bus at the bottom.
Our next stop was Geysír, the site of the geyser from which the English word “geyser” is derived. Unfortunately Geysír was ‘abused’ by people who triggered eruptions on demand for several years and it no longer erupts now. However there is a smaller geyser only a few steps away called Strokkur which erupted every 3-7 minutes while we were there.
We stopped at Gullfoss, an amazing waterfall.
In the early 1900’s some entrepreneurs sought to capture the immense power of the water here for hydroelectric generation. A local farmer’s daughter, Sigri∂ur Tómasdóttir, is credited with becoming Iceland’s first environmentalist after many years of lobbying against replacing the falls with pipes and turbines.
Then we had a surprise stop at our guide’s family’s summer cabin. The bus went as far down the little gravel lane as seemed safe, then we walked the rest of the way.
Margrét’s sister had driven out from Reykjavik to make us a pile of Icelandic pancakes, very thin and light, some sprinkled with sugar and rolled, others wrapped around whipped cream and jam. It was a delicious treat, and her sister with her baby son were adorable.
Finally we arrived at the hotel in Selfoss where we had an upscale buffet dinner.
We strolled along the river just behind the hotel for a while after dinner. We did not take any selfies in Selfoss!