waterfall video - Walking up to Selfoss

R U Kidding?

Bjork's house

Sigur Ros studio (we went inside!)

5 waterfalls

Black Sand Beach

"Door to Iceland"

Hiked a Glacier

Another Waterfall.

Explanation to come soon. Another 203 pics and plenty of video to come!

Quest for Waterfalls - Part 2 - Gjain

From Haifoss we head back out and back through the country side. Frosti mentions that as long as we trust him he's just going to make up his own Golden Circle Tour. We dub it Frosti's Golden Circle.

The Golden Circle is a road tour you can take around the perimeter of Iceland. It takes a long time but you don't see any of the interior majesty.

More twists and turns and various mountain shapes and hints of autumn colors the whole way through. We're heading to a spot one of Frosti's friends calls "God's Stamp on the World."

We easily spent the most time here than any other spot on this tour. Once again we pull up to a dead end in the road and hear that similar waterfall sound but not as powerful. What was powerful about it was the sheer beauty of it all. Coming up over the ridge we see a canyon full of greens and red and yellow split in two the small river formed by two more waterfalls. Caves of basalt. This all opens to a huge sky hovering above the middle of nowhere Iceland landscape.

A narrow path winds its way down into the middle of it all where we cross 2x4 planks all the way to the edge of one of the waterfalls. It towers above us releasing millions of gallons per second and turning into a gentle stream clearer than your tap water.

We walk everywhere we can (including into some of the water shallow enough to not get too wet cos its REALLY cold) to make sure we don't miss anything.

I still can't believe we were there. Its absolutely gorgeous!

Quest for Waterfalls - Part 1 - Haifoss

For the record foss means waterfall when in conjuction with a name or description. This should help with the following.

After we turned around from the snow road block we headed to the a small motel just at the base of the mountain to see if they had any info on making it to Hekla. We find out that a group had spent the night at this motel because they tried to drive up and ended up having to shovel their way out.

Being in VW van, we naturally decided to change plans. We put ourselves in the hands of Frosti that the day would go bust. Turns out it was a really great decision. He wouldn't tell us where we were going, only that it would be totally worth it.

As we drive through the countryside it seriously looks like we're lost. Twists and turns. A bit of off roading when we come across frozen water puddles in the middle of the road and we come to a dead end. Time to get out of the car and see what's in store.

Immediately I hear something loud and forceful. Strike up the video camera and follow Frosti over some lava rocks and to the edge of a cliff. Through the clouds (yes we were up that high) are two waterfall flowing into a gorgeous canyon millions of years old. My hearts racing at the beauty of it all. He mentions that its typically not so cloudy but we don't care! The clouds added to the mysticism of it all. The most amazing thing is that the water seems to come out of nowhere. There isn't a lake or a river anywhere to be seen. This water comes out of the mountain and carves its way through the canyon and back in.

It turns out that this is how Iceland gets its water. There is so much water flowing through the entire country with a natural filtration through the lava that it comes out cleaner than treated water. It takes 30-70 years to get to where they pump it to the homes.

We spend about 15-20 minutes watching and listening and snapping photos before we bid farewell to Haifoss.

This one doesn't have sound but you can watch

the reflection of the water.

I think its gorgeous.

The road to Mt. Hekla

What a long day that was SO worth it!

Cast:

Me

Roy

Frosti - our tour guide

Frosti stopped by the apartment late Monday afternoon (luckily we had just gotten home a bit before from our walk to the park) to discuss Tuesday's plans because we were going to be out in the middle of nowhere for 8-10 hours.

He had been wanting to stop by the headquarters of the main geothermal power plant because of some art installations that had been put into place and then by the power plant itself so we could get a quick tour to hear how it all goes down.

Of course we were up for it. With all of the culture we have already experienced, why not keep the party going with the unexpected. And it was. For being such a major force in the future of energy production, the people working for Orkuveita Reykjavik (they own 93% of Iceland's geothermal power and water supply) are extremely welcoming and are more than happy to guide the curious around and teach them about what they do for the community.

While waiting for our guide Frosty pointed out a "string" hanging from the top of the 10 story building swaying back and forth. Peering over the edge of the lobby was a metal cone connected to the "string." It constantly swayed because of the earth's magnetic force and had 26 wooden posts around the circle that it knocked down throughout the day. As the earth rotates so does the circle and it actually takes about 26 hours for the earth to have a full rotation. At the end of the day, there are copper holes below the fallen wood that blow a puff of air and set the wood back up for the start of a new day. Picture will be on the next post.

He then took us in for a sneak preview of an exhibit they are putting together in the in-house gallery called 100degrees. Its an installation that will feature prominent Icelandic artist's paintings, sculpture and water works to illustrate the power of water. Its an infant stage but he explained where things would be and what it would represent. Ask me later and I'll explain. Its hard to type without it not making sense.

Took the lift into the basement where we got to experience a sound installation. Walking through the break room (the whole basement with pool tables, chess boards, computers and a cafe) we walked into a dark room that automatically had a light come on when we walked in. A single light pointed at the base of another cable hanging from the middle of the ceiling, at the end of it was a subwoofer speaker. On the left and right were benches recessed into the darkness. A pool of water just below the speaker. Sitting there quietly the light triggers the cable to send a pulse through to the speaker that gradually gets faster, vibrating the water that reflects onto the wall filling the room with a heavy bass drone and vibrating your whole body. Simple yet intense. Set on repeat every minute for 5 minutes. Next post has video.

From there we left Reykjavik to tour the power plant itself. I won't go into much detail because its a bit hard to explain without the biggest touch screen monitor I'll probably ever see. I'm talking 8 feet tall by 12 feet wide. All I'll say is that its amazing how they have created an amazingly efficient, renewable and inexpensive energy/water source. And the fact that they aren't the only country that can be doing this. They just aren't as greedy and SOME parts of the rest of the world can be.

On to Mt. Hekla. Frosti had told us the day before that there was a big possibility we would encounter some snow and that it was a bit rare this early in the fall/winter season. Once you leave Reykjavik, its a whole new world you could never prepare yourself for. I know I touched on it a bit with The Blue Lagoon blog but this is a whole other monster. From rolling hills into mountains formed by volcano ash, lava flow and millions of years of seismic activity, Iceland grows by 2cm every year because the Euro-Asian plate and North American plate that run split the country in two sliding apart. We would have taken pictures of that but ran out of battery. Over 200 pics and video were taken.

I've told some of you that the interior of Iceland is really drivable... and for non-locals or tour guides, I definitely don't suggest it because there aren't really "roads" to travel by. They are lava pebble country roads that seemingly lead to nowhere. This whole time I never looked at my watch because we're in friggin' Iceland and I have nowhere to be but in that van and whenever we get back is when we get back.

The landscape slowly started to change as we gradually ascended up these mountains from grays and browns with hints of green moss and red somethings to black... everywhere. Mountains of black that eventually had specs of white. These mountains are so hard to describe and only the photos can express without being here what it feels like. At one point Frosti started feeling sketchy because within a week that he had been out there, some intense snow had fallen and because Iceland is one of the windiest places on the planet, there was no telling what we'd encounter on the road and we weren't in a super jeep to be able to handle snow that was too deep. After a few hairy turns and somewhat deep snow on the road it cleared up again until we literally came to a landslide of snow that had settled on the road making it impossiblt to cross without a super jeep. These are SUVs that have been outfitted with massive tires that can be flattened in order to crawl over volcanic rocks and snow. Not the stupid massive tires that dumbass rednecks and douchebags put on their trucks for overcompensation.

It was the end of the road for us to Mt. Hekla. We snapped a few pictures and some video and had to turn around.

Too be continued...

Quest for Foss