13.06 - Day 150 - Keflavik to Stokkseyri
Thursday 13th June - Keflavik Airport - Stokkseyri (Day 150)
Everyone probably got just 3 hours of sleep on our 6 hour overnight flight from Baltimore into/ Keflavik arriving at 6am. We have to step onto the tarmac from the plane for a shuttle bus and we’re hit with a blustering chill immediately.
Immigration and bag collection is easy then it’s another shuttle bus, 10 minutes to our hire car place. In the light drizzle and overcast conditions I’m wondering if the Iceland hype is just a very good marketing department when all the land looks grey and barren.
We’re on our way in a little Suzuki 4x4 which has obviously done a few laps of Iceland with the odometer just tipped over 200,000 kms. When people talk of Iceland they first say how beautiful it is, then how expensive it is. Wary of the latter, we'd actually brought some food from the US and our first stop was a grocery store called Kronan to buy breakfast and lunch snacks.
Even in that first 45 minute drive the kids have fallen asleep in the back and they’re slumbering again as we set off for a ¾ loop of the Golden Circle, a highlights package of Iceland.
It’s 45 minutes to Thingvellir National Park, where, once we get a disgruntled Seb out of the car we spend an hour walking ambling around along a fissure at the edge of the North Atlantic tectonic plate, to our first (of many) waterfall, weaving between little lagoons and past a small church.
The drizzle that had eased off has reappeared as we drive on another 50 minutes - kids asleep - to The Geysir, as in the one that all others are named after. It goes off decades apart, but thankfully the more visitor friendly Strokkor erupts every 5-10 minutes, sprawling boiling water and steam up to 30 metres high. This is something the kids can get excited about, so too the other gurgling pools emitting steam, in this geothermal spot. The sights and sounds also come with smells, reminiscent of trips to Rotorua in New Zealand, eggy sulphur wafting through the air.
One of the larger waterfalls, Gulfoss, is just 10 minutes further up the road. Our jumpers, which have barely had an outing in our first 5 months on the road, are well and truly on, so to our raincoats, which at Gulfoss is more to protect from the mist rising up out of the narrow gorge into which the river plunges while we stand on high looking down.
The kids are not ready to relive the boat ride at Niagara, retreating to the shop at the carpark whilst I get a little closer for a view down the gorge which is thunderously noisy and impressive.
Our final stop on the driving loop is the (not so) Secret Lagoon, 30 minutes away on roads which are prettily edged with yellow flowered dandelions and cone shaped blue / purple flowers (Nootka Lupine - google tells me). 3,600 ISK per adult ($40), free for Sienna and Seb, this large rectangular outdoor pool is filled by a few geothermal springs which bumble appealing next to the pool.
Etiquette is a naked shower, then putting swimmers on before easing into the 38-40 degree lagoon with a bed of black sand. Everyone is happy to soak in the warmth for a good while after a long day-night-day.
It’s a final 50 minute drive to our accommodation - Fisherinn in the village of Stokkseyri - with a pit stop in Selfoss on the way for dinner bits. A large red building on the seafront, this former fish processing plant has a few large common rooms, pool table and table tennis table.
After dinner it's heading after 8pm and it’s as bright as it has been all day. Sunset is not until 23:45 and although very tired, the light coming in still, mixed with a 4 hour jet lag makes it hard to get to sleep - not everywhere having blackout curtains as might have expected.
A very long first day, the kids held up well (once they were out of the car) and we’ve had a strong introduction to the land of fire and ice.