Finishing up in Hot Water again

Back in Reykjavik after about 6.5 hours of driving today means we have completed our circumnavigation of Iceland.

When planning the trip, I booked the flights in and out before working out exactly what we would be able to cover in 5 days.

All the resources I looked at said that 10 days was ideal to do the full circle route - some said it could be done in 7 at a pinch. Any search of ‘5 days in Iceland’ yielded the comment “Can’t tour the whole island - just stick to the south and southeast - aka ‘the Golden Circle’. Try as I might, I couldn’t find any itinerary that would allow the whole island to be covered in a 5 day period. Rather than seeing this as a red flag I saw it more as a challenge and put together such an itinerary. It was busy with long days but . . . It was achieved.

Today the alarm went off at 5.50am, checked out at 7 and by 9am we had done our first 3 points of interest.
It was just a few minutes drive to the nearby Hverfjall Volcano where we parked and started the very steep 15 minute climb up the side of the volcano to its rim. Despite the expectation of one more day of good weather before cold and rain returned, we found the first of these on the climb up and the second of these starting shortly later.
After catching our breath at the top and snapping some shots we were quickly back down for another short drive to the associated Dimmuborgir Lava field.

Next up was about a 40 minute drive to our last ‘foss’ of the trip - the Godafoss waterfall - so named because in the year 1000A.D. the chieftain of Iceland was entrusted with the decision as to whether Icelanders should adopt the Christian faith. When eventually he made his decision in favour of this he went home, collected all his pagan gods and threw them into this waterfall.
Godafoss has derived its name from this event.

Following Godafoss, it was now a long drive back to Reykyavik, punctuated by a little diversion to the Kolugljufur Canyon (although in my opinion it could also be classified as a ‘Foss’). This remote, poorly signposted spot was quite spectacular. By now the wind was up, the rain was falling in earnest and it was a good time to spend a few hours inside the car travelling back to Reykyavik.
Although our booking for the relatively new Sky Lagoon thermal pool was’t until later in the evening, we decided to drive straight there and see if they could bring our booking forward. This they kindly did so at 4pm we found ourselves luxuriating in the beautiful hot springs with an infinity edge onto Reykjavik harbour. Eventually we dragged ourselves away, drove 15 minutes back to the heart of the city, found our apartment and settled in for the evening.
We had some ingredients for dinner but no ‘real’ meat. Unfortunately we missed the closing of the local supermarket by just a few minutes and neither of us had the energy to go searching further afield, so Loss got some things out of her ‘Mary Poppins Carpet Bag’ and rustled up something which could be best described as a tuna risotto. Although not fine dining, it was edible, but Loss assures everyone she won’t repeat the recipe on any future visitors.
Next will be some rearranging of bags for our early flight to Tel Aviv via Helsinki tomorrow morning, then hopefully an early night.
Tomorrow will be an entire day of travel and we arrive at Ben Gurion airport around Midnight on Shabbat (worst possible time as far as transport etc is concerned but that’s just how the flights worked out) - so there may not be a blog until after we are settled in Jerusalem the following day.

Iceland has exceeded expectations, and Jerusalem never disappoints.Read more