24.2.2016
The first weekend
The other week we took our roadtrip number two. We didn't really have a certain destination, just a general direction of south and couple of ready thought pit stops on the way. We left at noon and headed towards Keflavik. Soon after Hafnarfjördur we were hit by the vast nothingness. Absolutely nothing but snow and rocks as far you can see before the mountains break the horizon. No trees, no houses, no nothing. The scenery was quite stunning actually. Little before Keflavik we took a turn to the left towards our first pit stop Midlina. Midlina is a point where the North-American continent and the Eurasian continent collide. You can actually walk between the tectonic plates or walk over the joint on a bridge. The place was beautiful and we took a lot of pictures, just like proper tourists.
The day was really sunny and without sunglasses it would have been really hard on the eyes. The snow made everything so bright. We have noticed that locals don't appreciate our driving methods, we seem to drive way too slow for they liking. Every single car went by us. But hey, what can you do when you have to take pictures and be in awe at the same time. We drove quite some time through amazing views until we reached our second destination, Gunnuhver. Gunnuhver is a high temperature area and the center of the
Reykjanes Volcanic System which is situated on the tip of
Reykjanesskagi, the peninsula southwest of Reykjavik. It's basically a huge whole in the ground that spits out hot water and steam, loads of steam. It was really really windy that day (as usual) so the steam didn't rise upright, it just flew across the ground in a stream like formation. The air smelled like rotten eggs (sulfur) and you had to walk on the wooden pathways and bridges.
We saw a cute little lighthouse in the distance but you would have had to take a detour with the car to get there. It looked like it was really close, but since it's extremely hard to estimate distances in Iceland due to the lack of trees and other landmarks, we thought it won't be wise to start walking there, so we just went back to our little Jaris and drove off. On the way to Seltún, we stopped by this amazing rocky shore where the waves just broke underneath us and the air smelled and tasted like salt. The sound of the water hitting the cliff was just astounding. Some of us recorder it and took videos of the place and we all got a litlle sea water on our phones while taking pictures.
After our little encounter with the ocean we realised there was a huge strom heading towards us on the sea. We still had quite a long way to go and two more places to visit. The last one was a cave, called Raufarholshellir and we didn't want to end up there in the middle of a storm, so we decided to skip Seltún and drive on. On our way to the cave we stopped at two little towns to fill our car and ourselves with some fuel. The towns were both really small and had this eerie feeling. If you're finnish you will now what I mean when I say they had a "Kaurismäkeläinen fiilis". They had that. Big time. Everybody stared at us at the gas station and we really felt not local. The second town we visited had a huge pentagram christmas light thing hanging on a warehouse and a restaurant called The black goats restaurant. I'm not gonna even write everyhting we came up with with this scenario... But eventually we climbed the mountain with our tiny litlle red devil of a car and managed to find the cave's entrance wich was almost entirely covered with snow. I didn't go in, but the others went and took pictures. It was really hard to get in there and even harder to climb out. During summertime it will be a lot easier. The cave system is at least a kilometer long, but Marko, Henna and Tytti didn't go far since it was getting late and we didn't have proper gear. The next pictures are from our longer drive from Gunnuhver to the cave.
After Raufarholshellir all we needed to do is to drive back home behind a tourist bus. The sun was setting and the views were again amazing. You could see all the airplanes heading towards Keflavik and leaving white trails on the sky. We were rather tired, but again happy. Our roadtrip was succesfull and our phones were filled with beautiful pictures to post on facebook and other social medias.
The second weekend
So last weekend was quite different from the previous ones. Tytti's boyfriend was visiting here, so they were living on an other location and in the apartment there was only the three of us. And what we did then? Absolutely nothing. Nada. Ingenting. Ei mitään. And it was WONDERFUL. It's great to go and explore and you get this feeling that you must go, you need to go, you have to see everything BUT you have to relax also and take some time to unwind. I myself watched like 10 movies or something, Henna and Marko took couple of walks and also spend a lot of time on their laptops and Ipads. We cooked salmon in the oven and made mashed potatoes on sunday and ate almost all of it (and there was a tremendous amount of food i tell you). And then we continued our nothing doing. I highly recommend doing nothing for everybody. It's good for you, and healthy.
-Sirja
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. 
