By Tony
Today was destined to be a day of two halves, first a nice, albeit slightly strenuous walk to a couple of waterfalls, followed by a relaxing time in some hot spring baths.
The waterfalls, Selfoss, and it’s big brother, Dettifoss, were around an hour and half drive, and, unfortunately I had made a mistake in checking the road closures so we added an additional 20 minutes on to this as a result.
The car park, when we arrived, was a good size and Li was happy as there were toilets – little wins! We kitted up, including our first use of our new crampons and headed off. The crampons were excellent, although William’s were too big as expected so I had to fix with velco straps that I took with us specifically for this job. It worked! Stability perfect on the compact ice and snow, well worth the purchase from Amazon.
Selfoss, the smaller of the waterfalls was about 30 mins walk but certainly worth it, amazing splendour, and some great photos hopefully.
Next on the list was Dettifoss, reportedly the most powerful waterfall in Europe, but then a place in Germany also claims the same! Still, after the additional 40 minutes walking, we saw, it’s big either way
However, as we couldn’t get to the original, East side (of the river) as planned due to the road closures, we could only see about half the width. As a result, although bigger, it wasn’t anywhere near as impressive as far as we were concerned, but still photo worthy of course.
We went to a small waterfall. Then to the most powerful waterfall in Europe it was amazing!
After the waterfalls, we saw these coral like things, but they were grass with ice and snow on them.
There were iron bars to make sure that we do not fall into the river below. The iron bars had ice on and what I did was I picked the ice off and I got a ice tube and there were square holes in the railing on the floor and I dropped the ice tubes on the floor and squished them into the holes and I came out with a square ice cube!
We also needed crampons, they were bright orange but mummy’s and daddy’s were black and they had enormous spikes, but we just had little ones.
By William
Leaving the waterfalls, after a quick sandwich that Li had packed, we travelled the 90 minutes to the saltwater thermal baths in Húsavík.
GeoSea Thermal Baths were very different from The Blue Lagoon. GeoSea is right on the coast, and the baths are created by natural hot sea water rising from the bore holes drilled whilst the locals were trying to obtain hot water to heat their houses. It turned out to be too corrosive to the metal pipe work, and hence the baths were made instead by an enterprising local.
Designed as a number of infinity pools, each a different temperature the place was very relaxing and the water crystal clear unlike The Blue Lagoon’s milky water. The selection of different pools, and the view really made this a fabulous place to relax; which we did for a view hours and Li would have happily stayed another few if we didn’t have a long drive back!
A top day, but now we have to pack, say goodbye to our shed in the field as we’re on the move tomorrow.