Island Tag 7: from Eurasia to America

We start at Kerid with an extinct volcano, sun, and fantastic colors. You can't get enough of the various shades of red and green and the birds fluttering and chirping in various sizes and shapes, photos by Susanne.

In Skalholt, there is not only a modern church, which is now the tenth one at this location, but you also learn that there have been active trade connections to Denmark and the Archbishop of Bremen in the past centuries. Not only Danish tobacco was imported, but even fruits from the Mediterranean and German porcelain.

We can't miss the largest waterfall in Iceland, Gullfoss. It plunges into the depths in two steps and then sharply turns into a canyon. The lower step is certainly deadly for kayakers. It's raining now, but the spray doesn't make much of a difference. Of course, there are many tourists here, mainly Americans. The African-American woman in fancy city boots stays at the top, while the Korean man in flip-flops and woolen socks skillfully navigates the slippery stones.

In the town of Geysir, there is a geyser that erupts on average every 6 minutes, creating a fountain that is 2-3 meters high in some cases and 5 meters high in others. This naturally qualifies it as a tourist attraction. Susanne manages to film it, but I don't want to stand in the rain for so long, so I settle for the smaller sulfur springs, mud pots, and hot springs.

We continue driving along this highly active geologic zone until we reach Thingvellir, a historically significant location. However, what's even more interesting is that this rift valley widens by about 2 cm each year, and here, combined with numerous earthquakes, the Eurasian and American continental plates are drifting apart. So today, we have driven from Eurasia to America in terms of plate tectonics.

As a tourist attraction, this rift zone is also marketed to divers: for €139, you can snorkel for about 100 meters in the Silfra fissure with a wetsuit, which is about 3°C cold and up to 120 meters deep - although depth doesn't matter much when snorkeling - and then walk back. Surprisingly, many people do this, but they usually look more freezing than happy on the way back. We prefer to invest our money in a dinner in a super delicious Vietnamese fast-food restaurant in Reykjavik.

Summer in the City: it's 7°C and raining lightly :)