Golden Circle

Just the other day I did the most touristy tour you can do in Iceland: The Golden Circle. This tour is made for people who are only here for a few days but want to get a good picture of what Iceland is all about. The tour does cover quite a lot. It passes the giant crater, Gullfoss (golden falls), the geysers and the old parliament. Its a long day, but its worth doing at least once. I was really lucky and we had a wonderful sunny day! That hasn't been happening here very often!


We started our tour off by passing a town full of greenhouses. I mentioned this before, but a lot of fruits and vegetables are grown in Greenhouses around Iceland that are powered by geothermal water (talk about environmentally friendly!) This is great because they can eat such fruits as bananas without having to import them all the way up north and they can make them with renewable energy.

After we stopped at these greenhouses, we continued into the country side for about an hour. We eventually ended up at this rock hill on the side of the road. As we approached, it dropped off into this giant crater that was full of really blue water. Supposedly there are even fish living in the water, even though there is no other large body of water for quite a few kilometers.

To give some perspective on the size

 We then made a little detour to this amazing waterfall. Everyone was gathered around the lookout, so a guy and I decided to hike down and check out the waterfall up close. It was small, but really pretty!

The locals built stairs for the salmon to jump up. The farmers that own the land charge for people to fish in this river, so they built the stairs so the fish can swim upstream and it increases the amount of area for fishing which increases the income

This is called "the Gate Into Hell". When there were many Catholics living in Iceland, a bishop was living near this volcano. When this volcano erupted (its much bigger then Eyafjallajokull, the volcano that erupted last year) it wouldn't stop pouring ash onto the area for many weeks. The bishop continuously mailed the Pope to ask what to do, and the Pope eventually gave up and told him "theres nothing we can do, its most likely the gateway to Hell"

After stopping at this waterfall we made out way to the Geysers. I never actually got a picture of a big eruption but I have a few pictures of smaller ones.

Hot!

There are little pools of this all around

Obviously this sun dial doesn't work when the days get longer very quickly. And especially when the sun doesn't go down!

After the Geysers we went to Gullfoss to check out the giant waterfall. It was really pretty. I don't think it was as impressive as the waterfalls in the south, but it was pretty impressive (there were lots of tourists though).

When we finished at Gullfoss we drove down to the old Parliament. Its funny because the parliament is just a flag on a hill in the fissure of the North American and Eurasian plates. It was cool walking between the plates because the ground is literally cracked in half and the surrounding area is filled with mountains and rivers that stream through the cracked rocks.

The old Parliament

The North American Plate

North American Plate

Lake in the fissure

They used to drown "witches" is this pond. Its called the Drowning Pond

The water in the cracks of the rocks

And that is the end of the tour! It was really fun to see everything even though it was very touristy!