Welcome to day 5 of our Iceland trip. Long day with lots of things to see today so hold on to your seats!
We started today off with the best breakfast view I’ve ever had in my life when we stumbled upon a spectacular viewpoint that was about a 10min drive from our campsite and decided it would be a good spot to fix some breakfast. Fayfay made some avocado toast with eggs and sausage. Delicious!
After breakfast, we continued on westward. Passing through the beautiful city of Akureyri with heart shaped red lights for stop lights <3
Our first stop of the day was at the Goðafoss Waterfall. It was a beautiful waterfall but an incredibly busy one which kind of ruined it for us. We probably only spent 15 minutes snapping some pictures before moving on. I did overhear a family saying that it was the “most perfect” waterfall they had ever seen. Sadly, I have to disagree. It’s still pretty though!
Our next stop was Skútustaðagígar. I have no idea how to pronounce that but they’re a series of pseudocraters formed by lava flow, surrounded by Lake Mývatn wetlands. The entire area was very beautiful and we spent about an hour hiking around the pseudocraters. Fun fact: pseudocraters can be found in very few places in the world; Iceland, Hawaii, one in the Azore islands!
Per this article: https://www.amusingplanet.com/2014/04/the-pseudocraters-of-iceland.html, a pseudocrater looks like a true volcanic crater, but is not. These distinctive landforms are created when flowing hot lava crosses over a wet surface, such as a swamp, a lake, or a pond causing an explosion of steam through the lava. The explosive gases break through the lava surface in a manner similar to a phreatic eruption, and flying debris builds up crater-like feature which can appear very similar to real volcanic craters. Pseudocraters are also known as rootless cones, since they are characterized by the absence of any magma conduit which connects below the surface of the earth.
We went on to hike the Hverfjall crater but not before cooking our lunch right in the parking lot for some much-needed energy.
The hike from the parking lot to the top from the parking lot only took about 15 to 20 minutes. From there, you can hike around the entire ring which adds on another 2 miles or so to the hike. We opted not to do the hike because it was pretty warm out and we still had a lot of sightseeing to do.
Our next stop was another Game of Thrones location. Grjótagjá Cave was made famous in 2013 when it was visited by Jon Snow and Ygritte in Kissed by Fire, the fifth episode of Game of Thrones in Season 3. Surprisingly it wasn’t too busy at the time we arrived and we had the entire cave to ourselves for a good 10 minutes before we saw others coming down. I guess you used to be able to soak in the warm waters of the cave but they’ve recently become too hot to allow for that anymore.
After a quick drive, we arrived at Hverir, a geothermal spot noted for its bubbling pools of mud & steaming fumaroles emitting sulfuric gas. It felt like we were at Yellowstone but on Mars.
At this point, we had a couple of hours to kill before our reservation at the northern blue lagoons so we visited a few more attractions in the area. We drove past an impressive geothermal powerplant to see Krafla, a barren active volcanic caldera at 2,130 feet with an icy blue crater lake. Whatever you do when you visit, don’t pet the sheep! Just kidding, I don’t think that’s what the sign actually says.
Be sure to stop by the perpetual shower right off the road, throw on your bathing suit, and take a nice warm shower. You can shower as long as you want and not have to worry about wasting water or electricity!
We made a reservation at the Mývatn Nature Baths earlier in the day for the 7 pm time slot. Known as the blue lagoon of the north, the Mývatn Nature Baths is much less commercialized and touristic. Other benefits included a beautiful view, cheaper tickets (~$40 per person for Mývatn vs $70 for blue lagoon), and perfect weather which appears to be a much more common thing in the north than the south. No mud masks though 🙁
There was a noticeable sulfur smell when you first enter but after a bit your body acclimates and you no longer notice the smell. Overall we had an amazing experience and stayed until closing time which was 10 pm. They really rush you out about 15 minutes before closing time but I can understand the staff wanting to shut everything down and go home to their families.
After three hours of relaxing in the lagoon, we set off for our campsite about an hour away. We stayed at a campsite called Grímsstaðir. It was a farm in the middle of nowhere with a guesthouse available and a field for camping. When we first drove into the farm, we thought we were about to get murdered. The cost was 1400ISK per person and only bathrooms on-site, no showers. I set my alarm for 2 am and woke up hoping to see the northern lights. Protip: If you visit in early/mid-August, don’t bother doing this because the sky will still be too bright even at 2 in the morning.
As always, here are the directions to everything we did on this day:
p.s. Google maps only allows 10 stops at a time, so the very first stop is the viewpoint where we had breakfast and not the campsite.