Akureyri Iceland

August 19, 2015 Akureyri,  Iceland

Bummer.  Last night I watched for Northern Lights until 11:45.  Found out from 12:30 to 1:30am that they were “spectacular “.

I had a tour that I arranged that started at 8am   I had found a company called Taxi 17 that someone on last year’s cruise had a great tour with. Last October I contacted them and posted on cruisecritic.com that I  had 6 places open. Within  24 hours, I  had my tour full.

This morning we met at 7:50am to find our van.   Audon was waiting and we were off.   First he gave us a tour of the town before heading over the hill to the next valley.   We went to Godafoss which means God’s waterfall.  We hiked around it taking lots of pictures.

Next we headed to Lake Myvaten.  This is huge and every place we stopped was different from the others. We saw hot springs,  lava fields, and lava formations. It was great. We saw multiple places where the North American plate and the European plate were near each other but slowly moving apart. The lake has a lot of flies.  Many people wore nets over their faces.  We were told that there are very few flies this year.  There were still a lot so I don’t want to see a normal year.

On the way back, the guide asked if we wanted to take the old road which he said was more scenic. We said OK.  He turned onto a dirt and gravel single lane road and we  climbed and climbed and then we stopped. We could see the entire fjord from there.

The tour was supposed to be 6 hours but actually later 7 1/2 hours.

In Iceland,  the houses are all heated  by steam from thermal springs.  We saw steam just venting ftom hillsides.  They call this the land of Fire and Ice. It is strange to see snow only a few feet away from a steam vent.