Today saw us taking Highway 1 along the south coast of Iceland. Fog and low clouds covered much of the landscape, but thankfully they burned off as we headed east toward our first stop, the Lava Centre.
The Lava Centre opened about three years ago to educate the public on Iceland’s volcanic past and present. Interactive exhibits, creative use of multimedia, and real-time data made for a very informative visit. You could see the location and magnitude of the dozens(!) of earthquakes in Iceland in the past 48 hours, including graphs of how many millimeters the crust has risen or fallen in the past several years at various places around the island. One room contained a large hemisphere with a projected view of the area where Iceland now exists. Everyone stood around in a circle and collectively rotated a giant ring, which advanced the time from hundreds of millions of years ago to the present and showed plate tectonics in action.
Another room had a huge “mantle plume” extending from the floor to a map of Iceland on a high ceiling, illustrating how Iceland is at one of the many geological hot spots around the world (such as Yellowstone) where hot material from the Earth’s mantle wells up to the surface.
From there we proceeded across the area that was affected by the 2010 eruption of Eyjafjallajökull and arrived at the waterfall at Seljalandsfoss.
We then drove to the seaside village of Vik for lunch, and then to the black sand beach at Reynisfjara. More than just black (volcanic) sand, the beach was covered with small sea-smoothed black pebbles as far as the eye could see.
Topping off the experience was a massive cave with basaltic columns at the entrance. “Otherworldly” is the only way to describe it. I could immediately see why the Apollo astronauts studied geology here before their lunar exploration missions.
We stopped at the Skógarfoss waterfall on the way back to our hotel. When I saw the steps leading up the hillside to the top of the waterfall, I knew I had to try walking up there. It was fine until the last 100 feet, when the steps became wet ice. It was everything I could do to pull myself up the steps by hugging the handrail! And then it was fun going back down as we tried to pass the people who were trying to go up, with only one handrail for both groups to use. No broken bones…mission accomplished.
All in all, it was a beautiful day for a drive in the country. The quality of the light from the low sun (maximum altitude at this time of year is only 17°) was simply mesmerizing. And the landscape is unspoiled even along the country’s main highway. It was cold, just reaching freezing at the height of the day. We were glad we wore ski pants and several base layers.
