On the way to the Lake we stopped of at the Godafoss waterfall.
As you can see in the pictures and videos below it doesn’t have the raw power of Dettifoss but was still very impressive and perhaps even prettier. It is defiantly more accessible as it’s on Route 1, so Godafoss gets my vote!
Thats me on the top right of this next picture:
Once we had arrived at Lake Myvatn we immeidatley stopped off at the Laxa River located at the southwest corner of the lake for a quick stroll to observe the “current ducks”. Here’s a video of them swimming against the strong currents and diving down for food.
They must have strong little legs:
There seemed to be a disproportionate amount of ducklings compared to ducks. It’s just an observation as I have no idea why this is!
From here we took the northern route round the lake and stopped off at Vindbelgjarfjall. We read in the guidebooks that you could walk up this mound to get the best views over the lake. So we parked started the short 2 - 3km walk up to it.
(Vindbelgjarfjall in the background)
Along the way we walked past several lava craters and one which looked a bit like cave that Anna investigated:
And another one which I couldn't resist climbing into!:
When the wind died down it was so quiet you could hear lots of bird calls echoing in the distance.
As we neared Vindbelgjarfjall we couldn’t see an obvious way up to the top, as we had a lot to fit in the day we decided to leave it for when we come back to Iceland in the future.
I got this picture of a bird on the walk back:
Further round the route round we passed the village of Reykjahlid. The whole area around the lake is covered by lava from eruptions in the 1700's and during one of these eruptions the original village was mostly destroyed except for the church which some say was miraculously spared. The church was rebuit on the same sight and you can see how close the lava was when you walk round it.
Once back to the car the next stop was the boiling mud pits of Hverarond further round the north side of the lake and the other side of a range of mountains that sit directly on the mid-atlantic ridge.
A Picture taken from the north side of the Lake:
As we drove through the Atlantic ridge area we stopped to take some photos. You can see another power station in the next picture plus the typical blue waters which are a by product of them. There is infact another Blue Lagoon just up the hill on the left. But apparently it isn't as good as the original. We promptly moved on when we were swamped with a couch load of tourists.
Once through the Atlantic ridge area we could see the very hot mud vents steaming ahead:
We carefully read the signs (because we are like that) and headed in. However there is some key information missing from this sign:
It smells disgusting!!! As demotrated by Anna: (Disgusting just doesn't do this smell justice. This is the worst smell EVER. Even breathing through your mouth doesnt work. You can just taste it then and I was nearly sick about 5 times:-A)
I love the way that Anna puts on a brave face and smiles in this video as she thinks im actually taking a picture, but you will notice she can only hold it for so long!:
So here we are doing our brave faces for the camera. "Smile"!:
Here's a video of the mud boiling away:
And heres a video of Anna running for the car before she throws up!
And this was our escape vehicle:
The strangest thing about the hot mud place is that nobody else seemed to be bothered by the smell. That just doesn't make sense to us considering we agreed its the smelliest place we have both ever experienced.
Next on the list was Hverfall. Hverfall is 463m tall and has a massive 1o4om wide Pseudo Crater \ Volcano formed by explosive force. Here's Anna pointing at it.
We had to negotiate another dust road which brought back hellish memories of yesterday, but we could see the end of this one so it was ok.
Here we are halfway up the crater. Can you see our car?
It was breathtaking at the top. By now as you can see the day was beautiful and the view was simply stunning (click to enlarge).
We could see this huge crack in the ground nearby, look at the size of it compared to the bus!:
Within the crater itself people had written messages out of rocks and stones (click to enlarge):
Looks like we'd been here before! (look in the middle of the next pic Look for L+A - A)):
Here is a panoramic picture of the Lake taken from the top of Hverfall (click to enlarge then you should be able to zoom in)
And here is a video from the top:
After deciding against walking all the way around Hverfall (it was very windy up there and Anna's legs were all ready like jelly - I'm not too good with eights - A) we decended, then drove further round the south edge of the lake on Route 1 to Dinnuborgir. From here we took a pretty 4km circular route through lava formed sculptures and finally past a place where a church like cave had been formed naturally. Anna thought it looked more like a mouth - you can see eye like shapes above the opening:
Near the car park we found this device which can be used to identify where and how high the volcanos and mountains in the area are if you looked accross it and lined the pin up. It's currently set to identify Anna!
We headed on further round the lake and were now nearly back where we started. We were also very hungry so I cooked us some dinner.
While Anna read the guide books:
Anna was a very good map reader and reasearcher. While I was proving myself to be excellent driver and quite a good outdoor cooker!
We had had a fantastic day (possIbly the best so far) but it was now 9pm and it's a good 1.5 hour drive back to our hotel - so we set off.
Here's one last picture from today which we took on the way back:
Weather Verdict: Georgeous
Distance Travelled:
