Friday 6^th January

Today was seeing the world or beginning to, outside Reykjavik…we sorted out our hire car and went onto white grounds! Snowflakes falling, we made our way along the southern part of Iceland…. only a small section of travelling today though.

As soon as we left the main highway, we were on the moon. No, not over the moon, but on the moon…it was all a lunar landscape – rocks, boulders, no grass no trees just snow and rocks, and more snow and rocks. Stark volcanic rock hills covered in snow…. quite picturesque…but it went on and on and on and on and on. Why would someone live here?And in the middle of this desolation was a blue oasis – a commercialised exploitation of natural landscape which held hundreds of people soaking their bodies in a pool of turquoise blue opaque water surrounded by black volcanic rock. And the tourists were paying around 80.00 each for the privilege! We looked, we took photos and we left – veni, vidi, vici! “I came I saw I conquered! “

Well, we could smell our next stop before we even got there! It was really really bad!

This was Krysuvik, a natural sulphuric geothermal area that we could smell a long time before we arrived – you know the smell –when someone’s sphincter has let a real nasty ‘silent, but deadly’ one sneak out … Oh believe me, it was worse than that! Not surprisingly, we did not see many tourists there as it was definitely not a place you could linger at for long. When you breathed in, it was awful! But the bubbling grey mud surrounded by yellow tinted rocks with the haze of sulphuric steam hanging over it did have a certain beauty to it – but then so does a skunk at the right distance.!! Time to move on!

More lunar landscape but now with intermittent views of the North Atlantic crashing against some vertical cliffs outraged that this small island somehow had the audacity to stand in its way. The towns were definitely more drab then in the capital, Reykjavik, as if they struggled just to survive in the conditions, let alone attempt to shine or sparkle. Some of them, if you blinked they were gone!

As the sun was lowering in the sky- ( I mean it had been there for about 3 hours really!)  Marc suggested the hot springs at Fludir . What a great idea I thought until I noticed as we drove the outside temperature was dropping to minus 2deg and the snow getting thicker on the ground. Obviously I thought  “I have rocks in my head,” and, “ he has talked me into another one of his silly adventures AGAIN”, as  I climbed out of the car fully enclosed with coat scrf boots and gloves while I was crunching snow beneath my boots in front of an unpretentious building – nothing like The Blue Lagoon at all!

Inside it was very casual and friendly – even friendlier in the women’s showers where there were just a row of naked women all showering before donning their bathing suits to go out to the lagoon – no screens, nothing private, you just bared it all. So, I did too!

But as I stepped out onto the icy cold stonework outside to go to this thermal heated  water, just further reinforced my belief Marc has some crazy ideas. It was freezing….my feet were icy as I trod the short distance to the pool. Only dressed in my swimmers after being completely clad from ehad to foot only 10 minutes before.

But I have to be honest and say this turned out this was one of his better crazy ideas. The warm thermal water was beautiful and relaxing. No crowds. No pressure to get out. With the steam rising around me, I soaked away the concrete of London most blissfully! It even had its own mini-geyser that ‘erupted’ every 5 minutes that would super-heat that corner of the pool.! At times, you had to move away as the water became so hot! And to top it off, all this surrounded by snow! Such a contradiction. Once we were cooked a nice hue of red , time to get out. Back into the communal dressing room, back into fully clad from head to toe…..but Our timing was excellent since a bus just pulled in but even so, I do not think the pool would have been as crowded as the Blue Lagoon was.

Definitely the  highlight of the day.