Road Trip to the West Peninsula and the South Coast

Finally after many many days I am writing again in the blog. Much has happened and I have had little time to keep updated (even when I did have time I only wanted to rest).

Last week sometime I made it down to the Blue Lagoon. I have heard mixed reviews about the lagoon, but I loved it! I had to go by myself because all my friends were working, but it ended up being a really nice solo trip. The drive to the lagoon was very beautiful. You have to drive off the highway through black lava fields and mountains, and as the lagoon approaches on the horizon you can see a lot of steam rising from the water and the geothermal plant right beside. When you pull onto the street that takes you to the entrance, you can see traces of this beautiful sky-blue water that has pooled in the black rock. It creates a really nice contrast.


Before you walk into the main building, there is a trail you can walk on that takes you through the lava fields and around the lagoon. Unfortunately I forgot my memory card at the hostel so I could only take a few pictures on my internal memory.

Geothermal Plant

Lava Fields

This isnt the part of the Lagoon that you enter. This is cold water that isnt part of the spa

The spa is pretty fancy, but once you enter the lagoon it feels very natural (which it is but the water isn't naturally hot and is heated by the plant. There is also a bar in the lagoon and other man made tourist traps).

The Lagoon isn't deep, and you can easily float around for hours. I was by myself and I sat in the water for at least three hours. There is always a nice amount of steam rising from the pool that you can lose yourself in. Its really pretty because the bottom of the lagoon is either volcanic rock or white stone. There are parts where you can pull up black sand and the contrast with the milky blue is beautiful. You can only see about 6 inches or less into the water and its like swimming through warm, silky milk.

On the sides of the lagoon they have this silica paste that you spread on your face and its supposed to be really good for you. They also have steam baths built into the volcanic rock. Its a really beautiful place to go for a day of relaxation!

If you want to see how isolated it is in the lava fields and its size, type in these coordinates in Google maps

(63.880, -22.449). From the pictures the lagoon looks white.

A few days later a guy from Guelph came into the hostel. I didn't know him prior to this, but we ended up renting a car and drove up the the west for two days then down south to Vik for one day.

 

 

 

Ben with our car outside of our hostel

One of the amazing things about Iceland is it doesn't take you long to get into nature, and each direction you go there is a different kind of landscape. It didn't take us long to get out of Reykjavik and end up in beautiful landscapes.

After about 45 minutes, we arrived in the town of Borgarnes. It was this beautiful town you had to cross a long bridge to get to and its surrounded by mountains. We weren't going to stop, but we couldnt pass down the opportunity to photograph this cool sculpture!

After leaving this very small town of only 1,700, we continued our journey north towards the peninsula. We ended up chasing a storm cell for a while and finally found a spot to pull over and take a few pictures. I didnt find out until I went down south how to change the color contrast on my camera. I wish I had known how on this trip because it was very hard to photograph dead grass with grey skies.

Storm Cell

The roads in Iceland are so beautiful because there is nothing else around but nature, and they just seem to continue on forever. (There are better photos of the roads that will appear in the next blog about my trip to Vik)

After a while we made it up on top of a mountain. It was really cool because the entire trip we hugged the coast, but to get up to Stykkishoimur you need to pass through the mountains. I didnt get a good photograph, but either way it was still beautiful!

We then drove to Stykkishoimur, but we only stopped for an hour to check out the town

We then drove to Grundarfjordur to spend the night. We got all excited because we heard they have an amazing bar that sells beer for really cheap... you can imagine in such a small town bars that sell cheap beer dont last very long. The town was surrounded by these amazing mountains. There were probably only 700 people in this town, but it was still a nice place to stop for the night.

This is the bar that was raved about in Bens guide book. The guide book was only printed last year

So Im getting really bored of writing this. The rest of the journey is basically landscapes so Ill just add captions when necessary.

More Icelandic roads

Above a giant beach

Black volcanic beach

More of the beach

Turf houses in lava fields at the tip of the peninsula

Lava fields

Lava cones in lava fields...these things are huge!

Those are the cones in the distance on the right.

Lava cones

Really cool abandoned house...everything is left to rot

Beautiful fences

Hard to see, but thats a waterfall/ stream causing the cool pattern in the valley

Hot spring! This was so nice after we had to get our car out of the mud!! It was in the middle of nowhere and there was no one around. It was a true Icelandic experience!

It was a great trip, and the next day I went on another one down to Vik! It was great fun. The Vik blog will be out later because I am going to meet some friends for some drinks because tomorrow is my day off.
Yesterday was an interesting day. I went grocery shopping for the first time and bought something other then bagels, which was fantastic. It was nice to actually eat protein!

Jonsi, the lead singer of Sigur Ros (the band that inspired me to even come to Iceland) biked by me yesterday as well! The guys I was with didnt seem surprised because one knows him sort of and the other just doest really care (you must get used to seeing them around such a small town), but it was pretty cool for me.

Saturday Im supposed to go glacier hiking and ice piking in the south at some glacier. I will probably add my trip to the south tomorrow.

Here is a map of where I went in this blog:

I know its hard to see, but if you find Reykjavik (bottom left labeled with a star) and draw a line up the west coast straight to Stykkishoimur (north point of the peninsula) then around the peninsula and back down again. That was the one trip. The second trip took us from Reykjavik down the south west shore down to the most southern point of mainland Iceland, Vik.