Golden Circle

4.2.2016

Last saturday we wanted to play tourist and took our car did a little road trip. The target was the Golden Circle, which is a very popular tourist route in southern Iceland, covering about 300 km looping form Reykjavik into central Iceland and back. There are three primary stops on the route. Þingvellir, which is the name of the national park, the waterfall Gullfoss (meaning "golden falls"), and the geothermally active valley of Haukadalur, which contains the geysers Geysir and Stokkur. Though Geysir has been inactive for a long time, Strokkur, on the other hand, continues to erupt at every 5–10 minutes interval. Other stops include Kerið volcano crater, Hveragerði greenhouse village, Skáholt church, and the Nesjavellir or Hellisheidarvirkjun geothermal power plant. 

We begun our trip around 11 am. The weather absolutely phenomenal. It had been so cloudy and grey for several days so the sunshine felt unnatural almost. And of course we all forgot our sunglasses back at the apartment, so our eyes were pretty tired at the end of the day. It's wonderful how just after a half an hour drive outside Reykjavik everything changes. There's less and less people and buildings and more and more amazing scenery. Mountains, snow, horses and of course huuuuuge cars passing us cause they thought we were driving too slow. And i mean huge cars. Twice the size of our little Yaris. Our first stop was the lake near Þingvellir. It was pretty windy and you froze your fingers rather easily trying to take some photos. In the open valleys wind blew snow on the road and sometimes it was hard to see where the road actually was. But after we got closer to Haukadalur, the wind slowed down. There was a lot of tourist looking at the geysers, but not too much. The ground around the route between the geysers was really slippery and you could hear regular sounds of someone tripping over. But Stokkur gave us it's best and it was really beautiful. We stopped by the tourist shop but as we thought everything was really expensive and filled with people. 

The next stop on our list was Gullfoss. There was over 150 steps on the stairs leading down to the waterfall and of course back to our car as well. But the view was worth every single one of them. You could hear the waterfall before you saw it. Gullfoss is massive both in sound and in size. The water looked like liquid ice (hehe i know ice is the solid form of water but you know what i mean), so cold that you would instantly die of hypothermia if you fell to the river. The wind was harsh and soon i couldn't feel my thighs or my cheeks anymore. We also visited the restaurant and had some coffee and cake. It was the best carrot cake I have ever had. Seriously, not kidding. 

The sun was slowly setting when we drove off from Gullfoss and the sky was so beautiful. Our third and final official stop was the Kerið volcano crater. The sun had almost set and it colored everything pink. The crater it self is really just a big hole in the ground with a lake at the bottom. But it was still a nice pit stop. On the way home we did some geocaching with Henna, the cache was rather easy to find when there were three of us looking. It was behind a loose stone under a bench. The scenery was beautiful all the way back home. Just before Reykjavik the road took us up on a mountain side, and we were a little worried will our car make it to the top. But slowly and eventually we got there and were able to look the town light flickering below us. The trip was really worth it and if you're here just for a short time book yourself a tour (70€) or rent a car for a day (starting from 30€). You will miss a lot if you don't go round the Golden Circle.

The photos in this post are taken by all of us.

-Sirja