If you haven’t read about my first two days in Iceland, check out my last two posts talking about Reykjavik and Geldingadalur Volcano! You can also check under the “iceland” tag.
Today, we’re jumping right into day 3 of my Iceland adventure! We woke up early to head out of Reykjavik, and headed straight towards Thingvellir National Park.
Thingvellir is an absolutely beautiful piece of land, filled with waterfalls, rolling landscape, and even a spot where you can the mid-Atlantic Rift. This is the only place in the world where you can see two separate tectonic plates interacting, which is insanely cool.
We chose to turn into the park earlier than the GPS said (though it is marked by a sign, it is the left turn before the official Thingvellir turn when heading there from Reykjavik) in order to take in the scenery. If you choose to do this, it will be about an hour drive around the park, but totally worth it. You’ll come up right next to a gorgeous lake where you can see trees and mountains surrounding. It’s enthralling, and we only saw one other car driving as we did this loop. Definitely worth it if you want a chance to appreciate the beauty away from the crowd.
We drove around this loop, ending up at the main entrance. There’s a hike you can do, but we chose against, instead just walking far enough to see the gorge entrance. If you have the time, or would rather hike than drive, definitely take this walk.
After Thingvellir, we headed straight to The Geysir. It wasn’t a far drive at all, though a little off of the Golden Circle route. This is a very popular stop for tourists, so it may take you a bit of time to get a picture without other people in it (or, do what I did and integrate the other tourists into your shots). There’s free parking at the Visitor Center, and the actual geysers are only a short walk down the road.
Geysir actually has several geysers, though the only one that is regularly active is the first one you’ll come up to on your walk. It goes off every 20-30 minutes, so if you miss it you won’t have to wait too long for it to go off again. I recommend standing upwind in order to get a good picture. The first time the geyser erupted, we were standing downwind and the fog and steam totally surrounded us– a cool experience, but not great when it comes to taking a picture of the erupting geyser.
You can walk to the original geyser (named Geysir), and while it can go off, it rarely does so. There are also a few other areas where you can see small bubbling or get a picture of all the geysers from a higher elevation. One of my favorites was a totally clear one where you could see into the channel of the geyser.
We got lunch at the Visitor Center (great sandwiches), which also had a gift shop if you’re looking to buy some keepsakes. After that, we got back on the road to Gullfoss Waterfall.
Gullfoss is a huge waterfall, and it only takes about 10 minutes to walk right up to it from the parking lot. Definitely bring a rain jacket, to this and any other water fall you might visit, as well as some sort of cover for your camera (I’m a big fan of tape and trashbags). While I’ve never been there, it reminds me a little bit of Niagara Falls. You have a few different options to view the waterfall from: right up close next to it, from above, and from afar. Definitely check out all these outlooks if you have the time, but if you only have time for one stop, definitely go to the up-close and personal outlook.
Our last stop for the day before heading to our hotel was Kerid Crater. It has a 400 kr per person fee (about $4 USD), but really beautiful and cool. You can walk around the top of the crater (about 30 minutes) as well as walk down into the crater. The vibrant colors really surprised me after the first few days of overcast weather, and it was a nice easy “hike” to stretch the legs after so much driving.
Of course, being me, something had to go wrong on my Icelandic photography trip, and Kerid Crater is where it chose to happen: my camera broke.
EAC Photos 