Iceland - Day 2

Yep. That's right. Just some horses grazing by the road in the shadow of a glacier, not 200 yds from the most powerful waterfall in Europe, Gullfoss.Just your typical Icelandic prairie scene.

Today we were up early and on the road on a tour of the Golden Circle. It was an overcast and windy day that started at the Hydro Thermal Electric Plant. Do you want to know what would make me hate my job? If I worked in a place where it smelled like people were routinely making hard boiled eggs and letting them rot under my desk. On the bright side, I could fart all day long and no one would be the wiser. The sulfur smell is the price they pay for having so much hydro thermal energy. Cities run on it, farms run on it. They've got so much that many people lay water pipes in their yard and under their driveways so when it snows they just turn on the water and melt the snow from underneath. Not bad. Iceland is extremely green and to prove it, we also saw the first hydrogen gas station in world.

But in a day packed with highlights, this was minor. Our first real stop was at Pingvillir. Besides being able to actually see the Mid Atlantic ridge splitting here, this is also the site of the world's oldest continuous Parliament. Icelanders have been coming here since the 950s to make laws and behead criminals. The splits in the earth are quite dynamic. Large cliffs of rocks jut up out of the earth in long lines that go for miles. Today we literally drove from Europe to North America, then back to Europe. Pretty cool.

Next was Gullfoss; a powerful waterfall in the middle of a moss covered moon scape. Literally no trees from horizon to horizon. What seemed like rain was actually the mist coming from the waterfall and blowing all over the place, because it was, as I mentioned already, very windy (ok plus a little rainy). The waterfall itself cascades down two large steps that split the earth like it was part of the ridge, but it isn't. Above the waterfall the picture above was taken. We were lucky to see a corralling of about 30 horses coming in from a day out grazing. These four were ahead of the rest. In the background you can see some mountains and what looks like clouds except it was actually a glacier. The Icelandic cowboys brought a bunch of horses over from the fields in the background, and made Teri's day. These horses are quite beautiful with very furry manes and tails. They are a bit squatty, but they are as pure as the glacier melt streams. No other horses have infected their gene pool since they were brought over here by the vikings over 1000 years ago. Kind of like the Amish.

Our final stop was Geysir, site of two large geysirs, boiling hot pots, and mud pits. These litter the mountain sides, but this site actually sits atop the ridge line and therefore is extremely active. Once erupts every 5 or 6 minutes. Scalding water spews to the sky and retard tourists downwind from the explosion scurry to avoid certain catastrophe. I've never been to Yellowstone, so these were my first geysirs.

We made it back to Reykjavik late in the afternoon. On the way home we learned about the "hidden people". The people live unnoticed in the mountains and do not like to be bothered. If you leave them alone and don't tread where you shouldn't, they will protect you. If you happen to scorn them by trouncing one of their homes, they will see to it bad things happen. Like rocks falling down the mountain sides and crushing your house. Also, these guys are elves. And invisible. Yet 80% of the country believe in them. So much so that there have been highways diverted around large rocks as to not to disturb these hobbits. Weird.

So that was our day. Tomorrow we head out to a different town. One on the Sneafsellnes Peninsula. It's going to be fishing villages, mountain hikes, puffins and seals all day tomorrow. For now, we are going to eat dinner and crash. 7am came early this morning. Until tomorrow.