We took a few photos and didn't stay for long and decided not to walk to the top as it was now quite late in the day for us to start our journey and we wanted to go back east 30km to Vik and see the puffins again.
Unfortuatly the wheather was much worse than yesterday but we were pleased to see there were just as many puffins about once we'd arrived. Even though the cliffs were much more slippery today, in my infinite wisdom I decided to scramble up and get some closer pictures of the puffins. Anna decided agaist it as the weather was so bad which was a shame as Im sure she'd have come up if it was dryer.
Here I am just before I go out of view from Anna. I did actually go quite a bit higher than this:
It was so amazing hanging out with the puffins up on the cliff. They were stupid things though, they trusted me and didn't seem to care no matter how close I got. I easily got within 5 meters. Infact the only thing stopping me getting closer was my nerve as it was so slippery up there. Here's a selection of the better pictures I took (out of the hundred or so!).
Unfortuanly the conditions were so bad and water\mud kept going on the lens so the pictures ar not as good as they could have been on a better day. But regardless the experience was unforgetable.
A couple of other tourists noticed me up the cliff and decided to join me. We didn't really speak much but we did smile a lot!
The mission down the cliff was much harder than going up. It was basically a controlled slide by grabbing onto the many plants to slow myself down as I decended.
I think Anna was starting to get worried. To me i'd only been up there for a few minutes but it transpired to be about an hour!
After the scramble and slide I was properly wet and muddy.
After getting changed and cleaning my camera we headed off west again past last nights hotal and the waterfall onward north west towards our final Edda hotal.
In this area you can find the Golden Circle which includes the orignal Geyser called 'Geysir' the waterfall Golifoss and the Thingviller national park. On the way we drove through lava fields covered in moss that we dubbed the 'brain fields'. We stopped off here to get some moss for Tanya. I have no idea why she wanted some moss but there was plently around so we were happy to oblige!
And we also passed lots of smaller waterfalls, this one I thought was paticulary interesting:
As we drove up to the Geysers we saw 'Strokker' errupt in the distance. Strokker is Geysir's little sister and is still active unlike 'Geysir' which has been blocked over the last hundred years by tourists throwing stones into it. Strokker will blow up every 5 - 10 minutes and is the most frequent errupting Geyser in the world. Now I have to admit I wasn't expecting too much from this visit but standing about 5 meters from the thing as it errupted upto 40ft was a real highlight of the holiday. We kept staying for 'just one more' eruption!
Heres Videos and Pictures of the Geysers.
Our first erruption up close:
Here is I in front of the original (which used to errupt to 90 foot!):
The scale of Geysir's. Starting with the biggest!
Next on the agenda was Golifoss which was only a few KM up the road from the geysers. Golifoss was a stunning waterfall, while overall not as impressive as Dettifoss but still VERY powerful and it crashed down into valley in an unusual kind of sideways fashion.
Some more crazys close to the edge:
I could tell Anna had seen one too many waterfalls and I didn't blame here because it was cold and miserable so we headed off to find our last Edda hotel and have dinner. For a change we thought we'd have pasta :o(
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