The drive through the highlands of Iceland wasn’t by far as exciting or lonely as we’ve expected. The gravel road was rather bad and bumpy with more traffic than expected, the landscape was mostly dead black lava fields. The only reason to take the highland route instead of the ring road is the Hveravellir thermal area with the natural hot pool and maybe the lovely Gygarfoss. We’ve hoped to get close to the glaciers there and maybe even get to see some icebergs in a lagoon, but they stayed in the far distance.
The beautiful sunny day invited us to visit the mighty Gulfoss at the end of a long and tiring drive, the first highlight of the Golden Circle, which consists ot the Gulfoss, the Geyir and the Thingvellir Nationalpark. Well, the Gulfoss with it’s three steps is undeniable magnificent, but the people there… Even tough everyone says it’s currently empty due to Corona and the missing US visitors (usually about 25% of the tourists, further 5% Canadiens and again 5% Chineese) for me it felt crowded and especially the Italians not giving a shit for any distance despite the official 2m distance which the Island people take very seriously and more so ignoring any pleas to stay on the paths and not trample the whole environment.
If you’ve never been in New Zealand visit the Geysir, if you have it’s wasted time. Even if the hight is impressing it only blows for the fraction of a second, which is to short to admire and enjoy.
Monday was again testing, shopping and lazy day – so much for the plan. The blue sky seduced us to a visit in the Thingvellir Nationalpark for a stroll. Last time when we were here about 10 years ago towards end of September we were in need of our winter jackets, shawl, hat and gloves and still felt cold enough with the icy wind needling our faces to just run trough the park instead of exploring it, what a difference to walk around in full sunshine in a t-shirt now.
