On Tuesday morning we ate breakfast at our hotel in Egilsstadir, and by 9am we were back on the Ring Road, driving west towards Lake Myvatn area.
On Tuesday morning we ate breakfast at our hotel in Egilsstadir,
and by 9am we were back on the Ring Road, driving west towards Lake Myvatn area.
At first we were passing through low lying pastures...
...but as the road started to climb...
...the farms became visibly sparser and the landscape visually simpler.
Soon we reached a high plateau which was virtually vegetation free with only
patches of hardy arctic flora hanging on for dear life.
These were the barren highlands of Modrudalsfjallgardar
- a place of truly otherworldly mystique. For about 50 miles we
were driving through a veritable moonscape. Not a stalk of grass in sight.
Not even moss could make it here.
Only bare inorganic soil unaware of the benefits of composting.
After a while we crossed the glacial river Jokulsa which was a cue that
we should take a 20 mile detour off the Ring Road to get to
our next scheduled waterfall.
Jokulsa falls in two stages. When you take a trail from
the parking lot and stay on the right
as you trek through the rocky landscape you come
to Selfoss where the river makes the first drop in a series of distributed waterfalls.
Jokulsa then regroups and falls down en bloc off an even steeper ledge
in Dettifoss - the Europe's most powerful watrefall.
The waterfalls in Iceland come in two flavors. The ones on glacial
rivers are fairly dirty and brown/gray in color. Dettifoss, Gullfoss
and Skogafoss are of this type. The waterfalls on other rivers are
much cleaner and have the
usual blue/green colors - Barnafoss, Seljalandfoss and Godafoss are good examples.
If you take a little path down, you can actually approach the waterfall and
stare it in the eye figuratively speaking.
Face to face with the falling waters, you can then reflect on deep
mysteries of this Universe,
such as "Why does time flow only in one direction?" or "How much
is the flood insurance down there?"
After Dettifoss we returned to the Ring Road and
continued west towards the Lake Myvatn area.
At this photo we are about 10 km before the lake
and as you can judge by the steam in the distant background,
this is another
area of high thermal and volcanic activity. Some sparse vegetation had returned
to the landscape, but the weather was still highly uncooperative.
(as for the stone mound on the left - and we saw quite a number of them
over the past 20 miles - it must have been the result of some kind of pre-television
pastime of Icelandic youth:
"Hey everyone - let's go and build some stone heaps behind the town...
and live from Bjarnarflagsstod - it's Saturday Night!!!").
Lake Myvatn is dominated by the mountain Vindbelgjarfjall towering on the west shore...
...and is accompanied by myriad of little pools,
small side lakes and ponds.
Much of Lake Myvatn's unique environment was shaped by volcanic activity.
The most obvious culprit is the Hverfjall volcano...
...which stands only 150 m (490 ft) above its surroundings, so you can take
a short hike to the top.
Its explosive tuff crater looks like a giant stadium whose top is adorned by several
tourist made stone ornaments.
Much of thermal activity in this area is centered around the Krafla volcano...
...which also features a pensive crater lake.
With such pervasive volcanic presence, most of the landscaping in the Myvatn area
was obviously done by lava flows.
Some lava fields were relatively smooth
and resembled cracked concrete...
...while others were more dramatic
and shaped into small ridges and gullies.
In a region known as Dimmuborgir (Black Castles) you can take
a short trail and walk around some of the most bizarrely shaped
lava formations
and wonder if the locals gave them proper names.
A fine example of volcanic pottery. Or poetry.
The east side of the lake is teeming (and steaming) with thermal activity, much of
which is utilized for various beneficial purposes.
James Watt would have loved to retire here.
If you are interested in seeing all the requisite plumbing and piping, you can
visit a steam powered thermal plant in the vicinity of Krafla volcano.
It is best seen from the road above it.
For us the most interesting aspect of the thermal activity was a natural pool
just east of a little town of Reykjahlid on the eastern shore of the lake.
If you didn't mind the smell of hydrogen sulfide, you could take a refreshing bath here,
which was something we were not able to resist.
air temperature: 5C (41F)
water temperature: 38C (98F)
Virtually adjacent to the natural pool was another
thermal area where you could walk around...
... and marvel at various
steaming vents and mud pools.
Icelandic people have a great sense of humor. Some joker connected a small hot
spring in the middle of nowhere to a shower head, added a genuine toilet bowl
and voila - you get a lovely open air bathroom.
Quite a quaint sight from the road as you drive towards the Krafla volcano
(not recommended for water saving freaks or dedicated privacy advocates).
The last attraction awaited us near our hotel in Skutustadir - the pseudocraters.
These moonlike formations were created by steam explosions as the hot lava moved accross
wet terrain (a small pond or a swamp).
Since they are not connected to the magma in the center
of the Earth they are also sometimes called "rootless craters".
By evening the weather came to its senses a bit, so I took another photo of
the vegetation typical for the area east of Lake Myvatn which I was trying to capture
earlier in the day on our way from Dettifoss.
It was a step up from the moonlands that we saw earlier that day,
but still not as lush as the Southern coast.
Despite the inhospitable character of the tundra in the east and
the lava flows around the lake,
we did see sporadic
patches of fertile land
where some farming could be eked out.
One of the barns was partly converted to the famous Vogafjos cafe...
...which served the fresh milk straight from the cows
if you were so inklined. You could even do the milking yourself.
But we were more hungry than thirsty and so we ended up
at a pizza joint across the street.
