Seltjarnarnes

Today, we stood between two tectonic plates and witnessed one of the great natural wonders of the world!!
Here we are in Iceland, having crossed the Oresund Bridge with the dawn to catch an early flight to Reykjavik, the smallest capital city in the world. Iceland is a curious place with a moonscape outlook, filled with black volcanic rock contrasting with the bright blues and white of the hot springs and the deep blue of the surrounding ocean. We have truly seen lands of contrasts in the last few weeks!
We pick up our little car and head directly to The Blue Pools (I won't attempt to write anything in Icelandic … I would just embarrass myself!) It takes my breath away!!! Here, geothermal seawater announces itself in glittering colours of ice blue and white, providing mineral pools for bathing and rejuvenating. The bathing area is crowded and booked solid (in all our detailed research, we neglected to discover that one must make a booking for a bathing!) and, although disappointed, we are still delighted to see this beautiful place. My words are inadequate … it's breathtaking and magnificent and really, really pretty.
Due to various road works, we end up taking the "scenic route" to Reykjavik and stumble across some fabulous little gems we didn't know were there. I love it when that happens! We found a surf cauldron! Known as Brimketill, a little pool which looks like a hot tub, formed by the constant beating of the waves against the lava rock coast. Legend has it that a woman was bathing by the sea but did not return home before sunrise. As punishment, a mean old sea troll turned her into a pillar of rock standing forever by the sea cauldron. We didn't see the troll.
Our next happy accident was finding a hot spring not far off road. We saw plumes of steam rising and followed our noses - literally because the sulphurous scent smelled like the firey pits of Mordor!! Boiling water spurted sporadically from the ground, highlighting the reds and gold of the surrounding earth and stunning pools of blue in the background. What a great find!
I was most excited to find our next little gem … the coming together of the world's largest continental tectonic plates, the Eurasian Plate and the North American Plate. Exciting for a nerd like me … Samara, not so much. It's great that she endulges me though 😉 I tell a lie … the plates aren't actually coming together here. In fact, this is where they are moving apart, causing the Atlantic Ocean to widen and the Himalayan mountains to grow every year. Where we stand is a broad stretch of dark volcanic sand, sheer in some places and gently sloping in others. A bridge connects the two plates. My high school geology teacher, Mr Murphy, would be proud of my geekiness!Weiterlesen