More South Iceland; a camera event

July12, 2016  South Iceland

Morning herring report: a new one today at breakfast, in Iceland, mind you: herring pieces in a dill watery cream sauce.  Meh.

I will post the story without most of the photos today.  In a paroxysm of astonishing stupidity, I dropped my camera into a pool of hot water at the spa this afternoon.  I won’t tell the story, but Joyce will, I’m sure, if asked.  So all the morning photos are on the chip but inaccessible.  I used my iPhone camera for the end of the day and will do so again for the last day of the trip tomorrow.

Our first visit of the day was to another spectacular waterfall, Gullfoss, with a wonderful walk along the ravine carved out by the huge amount of glacier melt water.  This photo is from the internet, but looks just like mine, as the day today was glorious!  Bright sunshine and temps in the 60s:

 We then went to the Strokkur, a very active geyser, which is located in a steaming hot spring field with many vents.  The geyser spews every 3-4 minutes.  Another photo from the internet:

  

We then went to the Fontana Geothermal Spa for lunch and an hour-long soak in the hot mineral waters.  It would have been wonderful had I not boiled my camera.  Internet photo:

 We then went to the UNESCO World Heritage Thingvellir National Park where our geographer, David Silverberg, gave us a great on-site discussion of the meeting of the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates, and we could see, right in front of us, the valley formed by the pulling away of the two plates.  We began our walk up one side of the valley wall:

 Here is a kind of rock formed by what David described as “ropy lava” which froze in pushed up waves:

  

The rocky outcroppings on the wall of the valley has marvelous mosses and flowers:

So we stood on the west side of the valley, on the American plate and looked across to the Eurasian plate while David lectured:

Finally, on to Reykjavik where we’ll see the city tomorrow and then home on Thursday.