When we planned this trip we had expected to be biking the majority of the time, and perhaps rent a car for the last two weeks. With our change of plans and spending much more time in a vehicle than we anticipated we ended up having a lot of extra free time on our hands. Iceland is not that big of a country after all, and even with all of our side routes and exploration we still found ourselves with a full week of extra time before we needed to be in Reykjavik for the Iceland Airwaves music festival, so we decided to spend it in a beautiful little campsite outside of Borgarnes that we first found when we were traveling on our bikes. The campground is closed so there was no fee, which helped us save since our budget tightened up a lot when we had to rent the car.
We left Selfoss around noon and drive 18k to Hveragerthi to hike along they Reykjadalur valley to the hot water river. It was about an hour long hike with some fairly steep sections, although the trail was wide and smooth the whole way. We passed a lot of steaming vents and boiling hot pools taht are well over 100 degrees celcius before we came to the river. There was a boardwalk along a stretch of the river to keep you out of the mud, and little rock dams have been build every 25-50 feet along the shallow river to make sections deep enough to submerge in if you lay down. The first spot we chose was warm, but not hot and was pleasant enough while we were in the water but made getting out into the cold air tough. We finally gathered up the courage to brave the cold air and moved a few hundred yards up stream and the water there was so hot that it was more comfortable to sit half-in and half-out. We soaked an hour or so then hiked back to the car as the sky was beginning to turn pink and purple with the sunset.
Our first night in Borgarnes we set up our tent right on the water and we were treated to another spectacular show by the northern lights. We stayed up late with our camera and got some great shots of the lights reflected on the water behind our tent. We could tell fall was rapidly coming to and end, as the temperatures had been dropping steadily for the last few days and the moisture on our tent from the rain in Selfoss froze almost immediately as we set it up.
We spent a lot of time that week relaxing in our tent, visiting the local swimming pool, cooking luxurious meals overlooking the water and watching the northern lights dance almost every night. It seems like the aurora is making up for a whole months worth of shows that we missed due to the clouds. We both bought some local supplies and started learning new crafts...Steve is learning to knit and I took up felting with wool rovings from the shaggy Icelandic sheep.
One day we drove to Hraunfossar waterfall, which is actually long section of cliff where countless springs of water emerge from the edge of the lava field Hallmundarhraun and flow into the river Hvita. Surface water and glacier melt water filter down into the lava field and come out along a 1km section above the river. In some spots many springs come out close together and run down the rocks creating a braided-waterfall effect. Its not very tall, but its visually very interesting. Just up the river we visited Barnafoss where the river carved out a lot of natural bridges, holes and arches. On the way back to Borgarnes we stopped at Stedji, a farm and brewery that has a tasting room. We got a 5 beer sampler and then three bottles to share. Its the first brewery we've found in Iceland that does more than just a standard pale, IPA, porter etc. Almost all their beers had some sort of special element like ginger, cinnamon, seaweed or our favorite...whale testicle smoked over sheep dung. WE didn't try any beers there that we didn't like. For dinner we went to the restaurant at the settlement center in Borgarnes and ordered a horse fillet, which tasted like a really tender steak and was served medium-rare in some sort of amazing sauce. Checked one more off our list of new things to eat.
We spent a lot of time that week relaxing in our tent, visiting the local swimming pool, cooking luxurious meals overlooking the water and watching the northern lights dance almost every night. It seems like the aurora is making up for a whole months worth of shows that we missed due to the clouds. We both bought some local supplies and started learning new crafts...Steve is learning to knit and I took up felting with wool rovings from the shaggy Icelandic sheep.
One day we drove to Hraunfossar waterfall, which is actually long section of cliff where countless springs of water emerge from the edge of the lava field Hallmundarhraun and flow into the river Hvita. Surface water and glacier melt water filter down into the lava field and come out along a 1km section above the river. In some spots many springs come out close together and run down the rocks creating a braided-waterfall effect. Its not very tall, but its visually very interesting. Just up the river we visited Barnafoss where the river carved out a lot of natural bridges, holes and arches. On the way back to Borgarnes we stopped at Stedji, a farm and brewery that has a tasting room. We got a 5 beer sampler and then three bottles to share. Its the first brewery we've found in Iceland that does more than just a standard pale, IPA, porter etc. Almost all their beers had some sort of special element like ginger, cinnamon, seaweed or our favorite...whale testicle smoked over sheep dung. WE didn't try any beers there that we didn't like. For dinner we went to the restaurant at the settlement center in Borgarnes and ordered a horse fillet, which tasted like a really tender steak and was served medium-rare in some sort of amazing sauce. Checked one more off our list of new things to eat.
The Settlement Center in Borgarnes is a museum with two exhibits, one about the first people to discover and settle in Iceland and one dedicated to the Saga of Egill who lived at the farm Borg, which is what the town is named for. It was nice to learn a bit more history about Iceland since we didn't know much about it at all. It was settled by Vikings, and the coolest thing is they don't just know who and when, they know exactly where people landed, lived, stored their boats...so much detail. In America we only know that history of a place starting with colonization or white expansion, but nothing about the original settlers or inhabitants. Egils saga was a bit more of a fairy-tale type story with a lot of embellishments (pretty sure his grandfather wasn't actually a werewolf...) but it was rooted in fact and the characters depicted were really the first settlers in that area.
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