Iceland is an expensive country. 100 ISK is roughly equivalent to a dollar, but lodging was roughly 2000 ISK for a single bed in a hostel, pre-made sandwiches at a gas station are around 1000 ISK, and the cheapest beer we could find was 800 ISK for 0.5L. Gas is 200 ISK per liter, or about $8 a gallon. This gets expensive when driving 200 kilometers a day. Fortunately, there’s plenty of free stuff to do when you get where you’re going.
Riding Icelandic horses is not one of those free things, but it’s absolutely a vital activity if you come here. These shaggy little ponies are such a huge part of the culture here, and getting to ride them is really a lot of fun, even for non-horse people like Justin (or at least he pretended to have fun, maybe just to humor me).
Our noble mounts. We can’t remember their names at all. Icelandic names are hard.
I am in heaven right now if you can’t tell
Riding on the beach. They seem really tiny but they’re sturdy little things!
Iceland is absolutely lousy with cool rock formations, owing to the fact that the island is basically a bunch of volcanoes which hung out together and had eruption parties. The island is still young, geologically speaking, so that makes for a glut of dramatic landscapes. Hikes are rewarded with views that go on for what seems like forever, across an ever-changing panorama.
Enjoying a waterfall and a “fake beer” as we’ve been calling them (they’re only 2% alchohol and are available everywhere for really cheap, unlike real beer)
In addtion, Iceland has several hot springs that are freely open to the publc. We visited Seljavallalaug, a man-made pool fed by a hot spring nestled in the mountains, which was down a bumpy gravel road. Our car did not appreciate the trip, and once we got out of the car, the wind almost swept us off our feet. The spring was lukewarm, but it was fed by some really nice hot water coming down from the mountain, which made the water bearable if you stood in the right spot.
Seljavallalaug tepid springs
On our last day here we finished up the Golden Circle drive by seeing Geysir, the “original” geysers and namesake of all other geysers in the world.
One of the smaller guysers named Strummur erupting. The largest one, the original Geysir, has been mostly dormant for the past century.
A smaller pool of water in the area
On our drive back to the airport, we saw a sign with a cave on it. This looked promising to us, since we love caves and hadn’t seen any yet, so we pulled off on the random dirt road winding off into the desert, in search of caves. What we found was not at all what we expected…it was a small sheetmetal house built into the side of a cliff. Apparently a family lived here, out in the middle of nowhere, around 1910. This year a different family mucked all the sheep poop out of the cave and rebuilt the house just as it had stood 100 years before. The man who had rebuilt it offered tours of the interior, and explained to us all about the family’s history. It was a really fascinating little slice of Icelandic history.
The rebuilt home from the outside. This cave is surrounded by miles and miles of empty high country, and seems like a pretty inhospitable place to settle down. These people must have been seriously tough.
Inside the house/cave
Speaking of history, Iceland is the seat of the world’s oldest parliamentary government. Þingvellir (pronounced Thingvellir) was where that goverment was established around 930, and where it continued to convene until 1798. It’s a really geographically striking area, where continental drift has caused a huge rift in the earth right beside the plains where the assembly convened.
The original goverment seat is that round raised disk of land you can barely see to the left of the chuch
Law Rock, where legal proceedings (and executions) were held
The river flowing over the cliff into the rift valley next to Law Rock
Cheesin’ it on our last evening in this amazing country
As part of our last meal in Iceland, we tried Hakarl, which is fermented and putrified Greenland shark meat - a traditional Icelandic treat. It was surprisingly good, you can see our reactions to this culinary delight here
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