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To continue my recount of Iceland sights. We went to the Krafla, the site of sulfur and brimstone among frozen craters, literally.
The steam is perpetual, yet just a few feet away snow covers the land and the ropes that you see on the picture are frozen solid.
You can actually feel the heat and although the camera could not take a more detailed picture, the mud just beneath is boiling at such high temperature that a brick-sized ice piece will dissolve in less then a minute when thrown in.
As you can see on the below image, the bright yellow spot on the snow is not a by-product of some animal's metabolism, but pure sulfur. This area used to be mined for brimstone in the Middle ages, although it is abandoned now and serves as a tourist attraction.
As you can imagine, due to the sulfur the air is not the most pleasant and unfortunately the steam, despite being very impressive is not that good for the camera so I do not have a lot of images of this particular spot.
Next, we stopped off at the hotel so I could check in, the rest of the group only flew in for a day tour and were due back to Reykjavik later that evening.
This is my room.
All the furniture is handmade out of mahogany and the view from outside my window - judge for yourself:
The frozen expanse between the two craters is Lake Myvatn, on the shore of which the hotel stands. During winter the lake is frozen solid and we took a spin on the frozen surface in our minivan. This is more or less where we started with the spin and ended up a few km later after we started spinning. It was FUN!
We drove around a bit more - now that I remember, we went to the lava park after I checked in, but when I was dropped off at the hotel we took a spin at the lake again. And it was still fun although we were tired enough to feel a little dizzy, except for the Australian firefighter of course.
My hotel, a haven to a weary traveller after a long 4x4 ride!
My vacation package included dinner, which introduced me to the local rye bread. The bread is baked by burying the containers which contain the dough (usually the containers are in a large drum from the washing machine) and left in hot earth for 24 hours. The bread did not taste too badly, but I did find it a bit too sweet for eating with a main dish.
Another nice thing about the hotel - I could see the Northern Lights from my window, unfortunately, my camera just does not take anything worth posting at night. They were rather pretty.
This is the view from my hotel room in the morning - a person could get used to this kind of life:)
After breakfast, where I had kiwi fruit and traditional Icelandic herring, I booked a trip to go and try out this cool thing involving snowmobiles.
More pictures in the next post.
To continue my recount of Iceland sights. We went to the Krafla, the site of sulfur and brimstone among frozen craters, literally.
The steam is perpetual, yet just a few feet away snow covers the land and the ropes that you see on the picture are frozen solid.
You can actually feel the heat and although the camera could not take a more detailed picture, the mud just beneath is boiling at such high temperature that a brick-sized ice piece will dissolve in less then a minute when thrown in.
As you can see on the below image, the bright yellow spot on the snow is not a by-product of some animal's metabolism, but pure sulfur. This area used to be mined for brimstone in the Middle ages, although it is abandoned now and serves as a tourist attraction.
As you can imagine, due to the sulfur the air is not the most pleasant and unfortunately the steam, despite being very impressive is not that good for the camera so I do not have a lot of images of this particular spot.
Next, we stopped off at the hotel so I could check in, the rest of the group only flew in for a day tour and were due back to Reykjavik later that evening.
This is my room.
All the furniture is handmade out of mahogany and the view from outside my window - judge for yourself:
The frozen expanse between the two craters is Lake Myvatn, on the shore of which the hotel stands. During winter the lake is frozen solid and we took a spin on the frozen surface in our minivan. This is more or less where we started with the spin and ended up a few km later after we started spinning. It was FUN!
We drove around a bit more - now that I remember, we went to the lava park after I checked in, but when I was dropped off at the hotel we took a spin at the lake again. And it was still fun although we were tired enough to feel a little dizzy, except for the Australian firefighter of course.
My hotel, a haven to a weary traveller after a long 4x4 ride!
My vacation package included dinner, which introduced me to the local rye bread. The bread is baked by burying the containers which contain the dough (usually the containers are in a large drum from the washing machine) and left in hot earth for 24 hours. The bread did not taste too badly, but I did find it a bit too sweet for eating with a main dish.
Another nice thing about the hotel - I could see the Northern Lights from my window, unfortunately, my camera just does not take anything worth posting at night. They were rather pretty.
This is the view from my hotel room in the morning - a person could get used to this kind of life:)
After breakfast, where I had kiwi fruit and traditional Icelandic herring, I booked a trip to go and try out this cool thing involving snowmobiles.
More pictures in the next post.
