Day 2 The Golden Circle drive and Northern Lights hunting
After a lovely continental breakfast in the hotel we set off clockwise round the Golden Circle. The roads were good and once out of Reykjavik the traffic disappeared. We stopped at a couple of viewing points in the Thingvellir National park to take some photos and admire the beautiful scenery. Whilst there was little traffic about we didn’t feel on our own at these first 2 stops, plenty of people about. We made our way to the visitor centre to get some information and advice. We ended up backtracking a little to a car park which would give us a short walk to a viewing platform over the Teutonic plates of Europe and North America. The plates are continually drifting apart and are moving at a rate of about 2cm per year.
From here we drove on to Geysir where the Geysir Geothermal field is located. There are several sprouting hot springs here across the road from a visitors centre, restaurant, shop and hotel. It was very busy as lots of tour buses plus independent tourists. We stopped first of all for a coffee and cake, the most delicious chocolate almond cake I’ve ever tasted. Considering the price of things in Iceland, for 2 coffees and a piece of cake it wasn’t too bad at £15! After refreshments it was across the road to the Geysirs, what a fabulous sight, we saw one of them erupt several times, roughly every 10mins. Very powerful and majestic.
By this time it was getting late in the day and with a 2 hour drive back to the hotel, we decided to carry on round the golden circle without stopping and finish it the next day as we were going on a coach trip that evening to hunt the Northern Lights.
We got back to the hotel had a quick comfort break and then walked out to Helmmur Mathöll, not far from the hotel. This place is the old bus station building which has been renovated into an eatery place which houses different bars and restaurants. We found 2 seats at a bar and enjoyed our food and drink.
We didn’t expect the trip to be on that evening as it was cloudy and not very good for viewing the lights however the coaches turned up for our trip at 9.30pm and we set off. Our guide Claudia spoke good English and advised us that we would drive 45mins over the mountains to a place where it was showing we should get a break in the clouds and hopefully a sighting. After a trip through thick fog over the mountain pass we arrived with another coach in a pitch black car park where a camper van and motor home had set up camp for the night. One moved off immediately the other stayed, I am sure they must have wondered what 100+ people were doing late at night in a car park 😂 it goes without saying it was a hunt, we didn’t get the light show I wanted to see, it was a disappointment so we will have to go back to Iceland another time to hopefully see them. After a medical emergency on the 2nd coach we set off back to Reykjavik arriving back in our hotel just before 2am
