Iceland South Shore

We again woke up at 8AM as usual. Emily was up easily, but I wasn’t again (see a pattern to this). We got ready and left by 9:00AM to head to the Silfra in Þingvellir (Thingvellir) National Park and our snorkeling adventure with Artic Adventures. We got there on time at about 9:40am and checked in. We got suited up in our dry suits and had to wait for a group of 6 to form. The flies were horrible but at least they didn’t bite! We were with two girls from California and a couple from Chili. Our guide was Gulia (pronounced Julia) from Italy, but she seemed to have worked all over the world. The experience was surreal! The dry suits worked like advertised and I was warm and dry the entire time and so was Em. Only thing that wasn’t warm was our face, as it was not covered by the hood or mask, and our hands which had gloves, but were not water proof. However, if you put your hands on your back while swimming it wasn’t bad. The dry suits made you super buoyant and you just floated along on your stomach taking in the views. You could see forever in the water which has fresh! We also saw a fish which was pretty rare. We gave our email to one of the California girls how said she would send out any footage she got on her go pro. I had put on thermals under my dry suit and was very comfortable even though the water was so cold. It would probably be done with just a warmer base layer and not actual thermals. Artic Adventure treated us to cookies and hot chocolate at the van as we changed back.

We left there closer to 1:00PM and headed for Geysir to start our tour of the ‘Golden Circle’. We got there and it started to rain a bit (and continued to for most of the rest of the day) so we grabbed lunch at the visitor center there. A decent fish and chips with some tasty, but watery tomato soup (we realized our core had in fact gotten cold during snorkeling and the soup helped). We then toured the geysers and hot springs including the super active Strokkur geyser, the semi dormant Geysir itself and numerous hot spots, hot springs and steam vents.

We then headed to Gullfoss, probably the most famous waterfall in Iceland. Such a big and beautiful double water fall! We hiked the trail to the edge of the big fall and through the mist area. The volume of water going over it was amazing! Em was still doing all of the driving and parked in a gravel area that was a bit muddy. To get out, she decided to pull through and around and kind of got our Kia Rio stuck. Luckily, she was able to back up a little and get a run toward the pavement and made it back!

We then headed to the Secrete Lagoon to relax in a hot spring. We arrived at about 5:00PM and got changed. The pool was fed by a few different hot springs as well as a little geyser. You could really notice a difference when you swam by one of the hot springs as you could feel it’s little river of heat in the pool! We bought a Gull beer to split while swimming and relaxing in the warm water. It was really enjoyable! We decided to do this instead of the famous Blue Lagoon since it was quite a bit cheaper than Blue Lagoon, more local and fed by an actual geyser!

We stayed until about 6:15PM then we headed back to Selfoss where we fueled up and grabbed dinner at Kaffi Krús. Solid food and a real busy place. We got back to our AirBnB at 8:30PMo r so. Showered and packed up for our flight to Norway the next day. Called it an earlier night than normal at 10:00PM.

B&E

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