Black sand

Holidays!

Before leaving Iceland for good, we would like to take a couple of days to travel a bit in this beautiful country we didn't almost see. We got a car and we took the road to the south, in direction of Vik where Tince's got a friend we'd like to visit. The road from Reykjavik to Vik is beautiful. We left the lava fields of our peninsula for new landscapes of mountains, glaciers and waterfalls.

Vik is a cute town of southern Iceland, stucked between the mountains and the ocean. A small church overlooks at the town from a small hill, while down there waves cursh on the black sand. Just like sand, but black. With the storm and the rain around us, and the cliffs hidden in the fog, the scenery was surreal.

The storm went on during the whole day. We tried to figure out where to go and what to see in this weather. We drove a lot in the wind at first, making circles aound hills on gravel roads, before to find a spot where to stop. We were having a ride around another misty mountains, when we found a high cave where to have a dry lunch. And the view from the cave was incredible. Facing the ocean, we wouldn't see the waters, but a violent, raw and surreal stormy melt of black sand and gray rain.

Later we drove inland on a country road. At first the view was rather pastoral, the sheeps surrounding us in a green valley with a few lonely farms on the hills. But the farest we would drive from the sea, the farest we would go from this first scenery. The country gravel road changed into a scaring mountain trail. The grass left for sharp rocks. The highest we got in the mountain, the windiest it got. In the end the roads were like roller coaster - or like those roads in Tusheti, Georgia - going up and down between the rocks, with the fog blinding the gaps around and the wind making the car shake. A true Hell-like vision!

And so we came back to Vik for a rest, in the swimming-pool. The swimming-pool is small, but is the oldest in Iceland. From the pool and the hot-tub we have a pretty view on the mountains around. They have a sauna too. I must say this was the best sauna we had in Iceland, the closest to the real pirtiņa, unlike those steamy smelly ones they usually have in Iceland. In the evening we drove to the direction of Gullfoss where we spent the night.

For our last day in Iceland we did the so-called Golden Circle. We woke up by the waterfalls of Gullfoss. With it's 32 meters high and 70 meters wide this was a loud one! But it was nice to be there in the early morning, when no tourist or almost have arrived yet. Later we drove the 10 kms to Geysir, a geothermal area that gave its name to the word geyser. The geyser there is very active, with an ejaculation every 5 minutes, unfortunatly we didn't succeeded to take any good picture of that moment. The landscape was nice this place, with beautiful autumn colors, and even some trees! They also have a lot of warm houses in this region. With the naturally hot ground and water they can grow tomatoes, and even bananas!

We eneded our trip in a better weather, in the national park of Þingvellir. There, in the rift between two continents (eurasian and american plates), used to be hold the Althing, the first Icelandic parliement and the very first parliement in the world. That is also in this place the first viking settlers were giving justice among eachothers.