Day 4 - Reykjavik, Landmannalaugar - 18 August 2011

Back on the bus tour for day 4, the destination today was Landmannalaugar, a valley in central Iceland, surrounded by rhyolite mountains. It was supposed to be pretty. We drove through Reyjavik, in their version of rush hour traffic, and got onto the main highway. The highway passes through some lovely scenery, with low mountains, rolling plains, occasional steam vents, and pipes carrying hot water to Reykjavik.

We got off the main road, and soon came to a beautiful little waterfall, called Hjálparfoss. Although it’s small compared to, say, Dettifoss, it’s in a beautiful valley, it has cool twisted basaltic columns along its cliffs, it has the usual beautiful clear water flowing through, and the waterfall itself has a nifty split arrangement, with a cliff jutting out in the middle, and the water flowing in kind of a reverse Y down the falls to the river. I wandered down to the water’s edge, checking out some of the plants growing close to, or in, the water. For some reason, I decided at this point to try out the underwater photography function on my camera for the first time ever, and the photo came out pretty well.

The next stop was a reconstructed longhouse at Þjórsárdalur. The Þjóðveldisbær longhouse is based on a longhouse at Stong, which was covered by ash in 1104 by an eruption at Hekla. There wasn’t enough time to go inside, though I did poke my head in to get a photo. However, I did have a casual wander around the outside. The construction was standard wood frame with turf covering (though the reconstruction involved cinder blocks), with a single entrance at one end, and a pair of outbuildings for food storage and a latrine.

We shortly got off the main road and got onto gravel. We passed through a lava plain, following, more or less, a river. We passed a canal carved out of rock, that served as outflow for a hydro generating station. We passed another nifty hydro station, and then got on to some quite rocky and uneven road. It’s a good thing I have a cast iron stomach. We bounced along a trail - can’t really call it a road - for twenty five minutes before coming to a stop. The scenery along the way was quite beautiful, a foggy mix of green, tan, and black in the light rain and low cloud.

The stop was fantastic. The bus (a twenty passenger vehicle) climbed to the top of a ridge. Upon getting out, we found ourselves looking over a volcanic crater lake, Hnausapollur. Hundreds of years ago, lava built up into a mountain, and entrapped steam built up pressure until it blew the top off, allowing water to collect in the hollow.

Back on the bus, we bounced along for a further half hour, past some beautiful green and black mountains, until we rounded a bend and came to a creek, which looked to be about two feet deep. After a bit of hesitation by the bus driver, we drove through, and then came to the campsite for Landmannalaugar. We were released with about five hours to look around in the rain.

Not having been given any suggestions about where to go, I decided to walk along a trail that parallelled a cliff face. That took me to a picturesque creek that ran through a gorge. Why not, I thought. I walked along the creek, and occasionally in it - it hardly mattered, since I was already quite wet from the rain - for a distance, and then climbed the hill. It looked like the trail was going to wander too far afield, so I crested the hill, and came into a rough and tumble area of lava. I followed a trail through the lava towards a rhyolite mountain in the distance. At the base of the mountain, there were a number of steam vents with some plants and flowers around them, quite nice. From there, I climbed the mountain - not very high, just along a trail, to a lookout point. I then returned to the campsite.

There was a thermal bath near the campsite that I had contemplated going in, but there wasn’t any place to just wade in, which is all I really wanted to do. I wandered back to the campsite, watched some semi-feral sheep for a few minutes, and then decided to hike across the flood plain to some rhyolite mountains a short distance away. The terrain was rocky and crisscrossed with fast flowing creeks, but I walked over to the face of the mountains, and took a few photos. It was really quite dramatic, with tan, black, brown, and a bit of red all mixed in. I walked back to the campsite in the rain - it seemed quite a bit farther, which is opposite to what I usually find - and found the bus, just in time to leave.

We took a different route going out, passing Iceland’s most famous volcano, Hekla. Unfortunately, although the rain had stopped, there was still a lot of cloud, and so we really didn’t get a good view.

Landmannalaugar was pretty much my favourite place in Iceland, and of all the places I went, it’s the place that’s most reasonable to do as a bus tour. Getting there in a car would be nearly impossible, and getting there in a 4x4 would be, at best, unpleasant. You can take a bus there, and hike out, a four day walk through what’s supposed to be some of the best scenery in Iceland, which is really saying something, I think. I would go back any time, and the four day hike sounds good, too.


Photos here: http://bit.ly/zj971l