Photo Friday: Road Trip Iceland, Golden Circle

Me, driving manual on the wrong side of the road.

“Half the fun of the travel is the aesthetic of lostness.” - Ray Bradbury

There is no doubt that the best way to see Iceland is in a car. Public transport in Iceland is limited, so to get around anywhere outside of the cities is a real challenge, and that makes driving the best way to see everything that Iceland has to offer.

Plus, who could possibly say no to a good road trip?

The only issue was that a car would cost me €33 a day, and for four days that would be a good €132 - not terribly expensive, but still steep for a solo traveller. So off to Couchsurfing it was to look for similarly crazy people who would be willing to come with me on the trip.

Amanda, Josh, Jonna and me.

It didn't take long for my Couchsurfing forum request to get a response. A couple of mails back and forth to synchronise things (read: making sure that we both understood we were equally crazy people) and the road trip was soon set up.

The first time I met these guys was at the car rental office, and the first couple of minutes while I was trying to get back in the habit of driving a manual car (on the wrong side of the road, no less) were pretty freaky. Apart from one day driving in Skye, the last time I'd been behind the wheel of a manual car was when I was taking driving lessons. Of course I didn't tell this to my passengers or we would all have been freaking out.

We grabbed a couple of maps from a tourist office and hit the road.



The Golden Circle is a connection of roads that begin with Ring Road 1 just outside of Reykjavík, running through Þingvellir National Park, Geysir and Gullfoss which are the three major attractions of the area just outside the capital city. It's an easy and unbelievably picturesque day trip.

The first stop in the Golden Circle was Þingvellir National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site for being the seat of the world's first ever parliament. Who would have thought that a country this far north and this isolated could also have created the world's first parliament in history?

I have to say that I was wondering why on earth people would travel this far out and away from the city just to hold parliament meetings.

Þingvellir is also pretty cool because it's here that the North American and European continental plates are rifting from each other at a rate of 1cm a year. Which means that just driving through the park, you're driving from one continental plate to the other!

The edge of the North American continental plate.

It's a pretty cool thing to be standing on the edge of a continental plate and be able to see it crumbling downwards. The rocks are massive, and apparently also make really good climbing material. Jonna and Josh couldn't stay away from monkeying about everywhere.

While Amanda sheepishly stands to one side.

Although it's a lot of fun climbing out and about and over all sorts of rocks and stones, it's probably a good idea also not to be losing your car keys in the process. And that brings me to this:

Check #1 on list of crazy Icelandic things NOT to do - don't lose your car keys in the middle of a national park.

The sense of panic that settled over us once it dawned on us that I had somehow managed to lose the goddamn car keys was not a pretty sight. We were crawling the sides of the road, looking into every ditch and basically panicking.

It took us a good whole hour of searching, giving up entirely, calling the car company and telling them that we'd managed to lose the keys - before Josh came running back up to tell us that he'd found them.

It wasn't much of a surprise then that Amanda became the designated Keeper of the Keys, since clearly I was too careless and clumsy for my own good.

I don't think I made a very good first impression on my new friends by losing the car keys in less than 5 hours.

Once we got back in the car, we took a few big breaths to calm ourselves down and proceeded on our way. I couldn't even begin to say how thankful I was that this bunch of perfect strangers I had just met were understanding enough to not be fuming mad with me!

Part 2 of the Golden Circle route takes you through the rest of Þingvellir on a scenic drive through the Natural Park, which in the late winter snow and sun looked too beautiful to be real.

Þingvellirvatn.

Driving through the park took us toward Geysir, which sounds an awful lot like - you guessed it - geyser. Geysers all over the world are named after this one here in Iceland! I'd never seen a real geyser before, so I was really excited, too.

As we approached the area, we started to smell the 'welcoming' scent of sulphur.

Steam rising from hot springs in the area surrounding Geysir.

Amanda and Jonna were trying to convince themselves that the smell of sulfur didn't bother them one bit.

We parked the car, and although it was a bright and sunny day, make no mistake - it was freezing. The thermometer in the car read -1 to 0 degrees celsius, so... Yeah, it was pretty cold.

We went into the Geysir souvenir shop nearby to warm up a little bit before heading back out into the open. I also snagged myself a pair of really nice Icelandic wool gloves that were pricey, but fantastic against the wind and cold! Score one for the inner shopaholic.

Although it was cold, it felt a lot warmer while we were standing in the geothermal area. I don't think we smelled very good, standing in the shadow of the steam of the sulphuric hot springs, but with the water at a constant temperature of 80-90 degrees the steam was warm and we were content to be standing there.



I was surprised to learn that Geysir wasn't actually the more popular of the geysers in the area, and this was because Geysir's eruptions are unpredictable. Strokkur, on the other hand, is another geyser not 30 metres away from Geysir, and that erupted fairly frequently - every 6 to 7 minutes.

So I stood among the rest of the curious tourist crowd, waiting for Strokkur to go off. And waiting. And waiting. And then the water burst out from the ground, and we got a shock and nearly fell backwards because we were not expecting that at all.

It was a pretty funny sight, the four of us bent over laughing because we were too shocked by the suddenness of the erupting geyser to even do anything!

Standing in the suphur-smelling steam.

I became determined to capture my perfect geyser shot.

Photographing geysers aren't the easiest thing. Their timing is predictable, but not quite enough - you can tell roughly when they're going to go off, but not so accurately that you have enough time to work with settings on your camera, focus and capture the shot.

It took me a pretty long time - I missed something like three or four eruptions because I wasn't prepared, and then muttering to myself and slightly frustrated, I looked through the viewfinder for something like 2 minutes just waiting for the geyser to go off. Thankfully it finally paid off, and I was pleased.

Strokkur at full height. Success!

Strokkur at standby.

Our next stop was Gullfoss, but before that we pulled over at the side of a road to check out this completely random and unexpected sight. My dear fellow travel junkies, I present a car in the middle of a river. What?!

We were trying to be sneaky about taking photos because the family was still in the car.

Okay fine it's a 4WD, but... It's still a car in the middle of the river. Only in Iceland, folks.

When we finally got to Gullfoss, the wind was insane. Insane. Like, we had to hold the car door open or the wind would shut it in our faces insane. There was another souvenir shop at Gullfoss - another chance to warm up a little before stepping out into the cold - and then we drove down a short road to see this.

Gullfoss, partially frozen in late winter.

It's a pity that photographs only capture one moment in time, because standing there in the freezing cold next to this roaring monstrosity of a waterfall filled me with awe. The wind was roaring, little bits of ice were pelleting into our faces and even icing up the lens of the cameras, and the sound of the waterfall and wind in our ears was mesmerising.

The photograph doesn't really show it, but Gullfoss is massive. Huge, like it fills up your entire field of sight and wraps you in the white rapids of the waterfall.

I call this pose the "hold on to your hats."

Posing for photographs!

After about 20 minutes looking out at the waterfall I'd had enough - the ice mist was still pelleting my face, and it hurt, and I was cold. I retreated with Amanda back into the relative safety of the car while Jonna and Joshua decided to kick it up a notch and climb past the safety rope onto the iced-up sides of Gullfoss.

Jonna, about as precariously close as close gets.

It was nearly dusk before we decided to leave the Golden Circle and head further east to explore more of Iceland, every moment only getting better. That night, we saw the Northern Lights and I think this crazy first day out in the Icelandic wild was what really sealed the friendship between the four of us.

Just as long as you don't lose your car keys along the way.