Day 5 - Kerið and Hveragerði

Our first stop today was the small and inactive volcano Kerið which now has water in the bottom.  We were the first people in the car park but soon after we arrived a few more cars and a couple of buses turned up to join us.  We started walking anti-clockwise around the rim of the volcano and most people took the same direction for some reason.

When we got further around the crater you can see some people on the rim on the other side if you look closely.

At this side there was a path down inside the crater where you can get up to the waters edge.

Here's a photo that Ginny took on here phone of me setting up my camera for a shot across the water in the volcano.



Here we are stood very close to the water before climbing back up the slope and moving on to the next destination.

At Hveragerði there is another extinct volcano which is very big and there is a lot of geothermal activity and earthquakes in the area.  We first went to the information centre where there was a small exhibition which was mainly about the last earthquake in 2008. They were showing some security camera footage from inside the supermarket where an assistant had been stocking up the shelves of wine when the earthquake hit and emptied all of the stock onto the floor as he ran out of the door to safety. There was also a jagged line of glass flooring under which was crack in the earth which had opened during the earthquake.

We found instructions to drive through the town and up a track past the sports centre to the car park at the Hot River Cafe where we could start our walk up the volcano to the main area of geothermal activity.  In this photo we had just started our journey following the black ash path up the mountain.  Here and there were the clouds of steam rising from the hot springs which were feeding the small warm stream at the side of the track.

A little further up was a small pool of barely warm water which was very clear.

The path went up and up quite steeply in places and the information we had was that it was about 3km to our destination so we were getting quite high up.  In the distance we could see the god rays lighting up the river which was flowing down from Selfoss and the sea beyond.

Even higher up and the god rays were still there in the distance.  To the right of the picture is route 1 (or just 1) which is the road which circumnavigates the island.

We went over a ridge where we could look down into the next valley and another small stream running down.  The fisheye lens is flattening out this scene a lot because the slopes down to this stream were very, very steep including the edge we were walking along, a bit scary.

Around another ridge and we came upon this amazing waterfall down another different valley.

This is a wide angle shot of the same waterfall where you might get a better idea of how steep the slopes were down from where we were walking.  In the background were some more clouds of steam which were from hot springs feeding the into the river going down the falls.

We went over another ridge and down into a shallow valley where we crossed a small stream and along a path towards some much bigger clouds of steam rising up from the landscape.  The sign is making sure that we know that there are lots of hot areas here.

This is one of the cooler hot pools, although I didn't attempt to determine the temperature because it may have been hotter than it looked.

This pool was very hot with plenty of steam and the water bubbling away quite merrily.

I had to take lots of photos of this pool to try to get one where it was possible to see the bubbling water below the steam.

Some of the pools were bubbling steam so much that it wasn't possible to see the water although you could hear it bubbling away very vigourously.  In this shot we are looking back down the steam covered valley.  It did smell very strongly of sulphur, not too pleasant really but some bits of Iceland do smell quite a lot as we drive around.  The path did continue up the hill behind us but we decided that we'd come far enough as it must have taken about two hours to get up here and we hadn't had anything to eat since breakfast.

On the way back down I took a photo of the stream that we had crossed earlier and in the distance you can see the steam fields we had just visited.  It took us almost an hour to get back down as we didn't stop to take any more photos and then we drove to Selfoss to find some food.  I think Ginny must have been feeling home sick as we went to Subway.

It was starting to get dark after we had eaten and we were both a bit weary after the walk (or climb) so we headed back to the apartment for a rest.  The aurora forecast is predicted as Active in the early morning and the weather forecast is for partial cloud so we are aiming to get up and out by 5am to see if we can find anything.