Princess' description
Spend a day surrounded by glorious mother nature on an unforgettable excursion that
begins with a scenic drive to Thingveillir National Park. This UNESCO
World Heritage site offers incredible views of the Reykjanes Ridge, an aboveground
portion of the mid-Atlantic Ridge, which separates the Eurasian and North American
plates. Then, get ready to climb up 2200 feet over the mountain pass of
Kaldidalur and have your cameras ready to photograph the stunning snow-capped Ok
Mountain. Continuing on, you'll make your way to Langjokull, Europe's
seconf largest glacier. Here, you'll transfer to a heated snow truck for
an hour long tour across the icy wilderness. After lunch in a nearby
mountain hut. You'll reboard your coach and venture down into
Borgarfjordur valley, home of the stunning Hraunfossar and Barnafoss waterfalls.
Your day's final destination before returning to Reykjavik is a stop at Deildartunguhver,
Europes's most powerful hot spring. |
 I forgot to turn on my E-trex as we left the ship but we came
back through the city the same way that we went so it didn't matter. I
did remember it before we turned off for the park. We had Neil, the
Irish guide that we had in 2011 so we knew we would get plenty of good
information.
We were the first coach to arrive at Thingveillir so it
was good for photography of the plate boundaries. We then headed off up
into the mountains on a gravel road and soon arrived in the interior. This
is a strange alien landscape with little vegetation but there were sheep up here
too (they are free to roam the mountains in the summer). What vegetation there was,
(no trees or shrubs) were the first colonisers such as moss campion and another
white flower I didn't recognise. The driver suggested we should stop and
get out to experience the stillnes of it all.
We continued on and
arrived at the center at the foot of the glacier. There were three
companies doing snowtruck adventures, plus snowmobiles and dog sledding.
We even saw two people hiking on the glacier.
This was our first time on a glacier and was not what we expected. We
expected to see the aqua blue ice and crevasses, but the ice was covered in snow.
When we had driven for just over half an hour he turned the truck round and stopped and
we all got out. This is where we found that the snow had a crusty layer on
top which easily gave way and then your foot went right in for several inches.
Carol found out by prodding with her stick that the blue ice wasn't that far
down. After about 10 minutes we got back on board and were quickly back at
the centre. The whole excursion was about an hour.
We reboarded
the coach and set off for lunch which was in a bistro restaurant and not a mountain hut
as the description had said. The waterfall was not as big or spectacular as
the one on the golden circle, but I thought it was much prettier and easier to get
good photographs. The final stop was at the hotsprings where they also
have greenhouses heated from the springs. On the way back we went through
a long tunnel which had been built to cut 45 kilometres off the journey on the ring
road. As we made our way back to the ship we passed by the house where Regan
and Gorbachoff signed Glasnost.
All in all I think this was the best of the four excursions we did in Iceland
this year, and in my view was better than the Golden Circle. You do get to see a proper
spouting geyser on the Golden Circle but there are a lot more people. This tour was
longer, so was tiring to some, but we saw much more varied scenery albeit no sulphur
pools or bubling mud, but the hot springs smelt of sulphur. We really
enjoyed it. The picture at the hot springs shows our coach driver on the
left and our guide on the right.
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