Day 10
Travel time: 0
Distance: n/a
Destination: Selfoss and Golden Circle
Today is a day of activities. I’ve booked a guided tour so that we can knock out a few of the attractions in the area known in the brochures as the Golden Circle and – crucially, from my point of view – so that somebody else can take over the driving. The weather, by now, has turned well and truly dreich, with heavy clouds hanging over the hills and a film of almost imperceptible rain covering the windscreen as we set off. The sun occasionally threatens to break through, but despite the occasional bright patch the mist is as unyielding as cold porridge.
We start at the Kerid Crater, a crater that appeared sometime between 6,500 and 3,000 years ago when a volcano collapsed and inverted, leaving a deep pit with a lake at the bottom. The crater was formed so recently, in geological terms, that the iron in the rocks is still oxidizing, and the reddish tinge contrasts strikingly with the clear blue water. I’m almost disappointed not to see the water drain away to reveal a cackling Bond villain stepping out of a pod.
Our next stop is the place marked on the map as Geysir, the site of the famous Great Geyser, which until recently erupted every 10 minutes. Sadly, our guide informs us, the Great Geyser has trouble getting it up these days and has gone flat – but as luck would have it, a younger, more reliable geyser has sprung up nearby to take on the mantle. Icelandic geological phenomena have therefore succeeded where American presidential elections have failed. When we arrive a huddle of tourists surround the geyser, but a few minutes later it splutters a little, which is enough to satisfy half the spectators and clear enough space for us to claim a front-row spot. We watch three eruptions, each one higher than the last and leaving a stronger whiff of sulphur, and then scuttle away to the warmth of the car.
We stop for lunch at Efstidalur farm, famous for its ice-cream, where two burgers and a grilled trout come in for the price of a three-course dinner back home – though I have to say the trout is excellent, salty and crisp and delicately flavoured. Then it’s on to the Secret Lagoon, another hot spring-based attraction, which is essentially a giant steaming hot tub. You could swim in it if you wanted, but it feels like a breach of etiquette. The warm water, the steam rising off the surface and the sand on the bottom massaging your toes with every step send you into such a deeply relaxed state that not even the other nauseating source of hot air – middle-aged American tourists evangelising about the skin-cleansing properties of the water – can spoil the mood.
The best chapter of our tour is indisputably the last: a trip down the lava tunnels at Raufarhólshellir, a wide open cavern lined with red iron rocks, like an enormous blood vessel. When the guide turns out the lights midway through the tour, he explains, as we try to see our fingers in front of our eyes that it is so dark in the tunnels that if you spent a week in them you would be at risk of being blinded by the daylight when you emerged. Unbelievably, as recently as 2016 people were stumbling around in these caves, unguided, with no protective equipment. If you fell and dropped your torch there was no light to guide you or echo to carry your cries for help. So the caves were roped off and guided visits with helmets became mandatory.
Perhaps mindful of the stuffy reputation of cave tours, as lampooned decades ago in Father Ted, the Icelandic ones skip the laborious descriptions of the difference between stalactites and stalagmites in favour of something more like an informative stand-up routine. Our guide, Ben, asks how Icelanders usually discover the lava caves, invites a few tentative guesses, then shakes his head and says: “By falling into them”. He points to the white bacteria growing on the rocks in the upper levels and asks if we can guess what it’s called. “Think about the location,” he says, stringing us along for a good couple of minutes before revealing the answer: “Cave bacteria.” (This is akin to the disappointment I remember feeling when I first lived in Scotland and studying maps of the Highlands for the first time. I imagined that the names of the hills were infused with references to Celtic folklore and mythical heroes; then I learned a few words of Gaelic and discovered that Ben More means “big mountain”.)
Ben goes on to tell us about the movie nights in the tunnels, specifically a screening of The Descent, in which a group of cave explorers are picked off by stealthy and bloodthirsty cave dwellers. The next day, he led a group on the premium rate four-hour adventure tour deep into the tunnels. “You can imagine what it must be like if you’ve paid €150 for this amazing experience to go down a lava tunnel and your guide is freaking out,” he recalls. “It was a fun time for everyone.”
He also explains, in passing, how Iceland’s geology allows people here to defy the conventions and limitations that apply in the rest of the world. I mentioned earlier that Iceland has things in abundance that are rare elsewhere; one thing it abounds in is energy, specifically heating. The proximity of natural heat to the surface makes exploiting the island’s natural resources simple and almost pollution-free (though humans will always find a way: Iceland has developed a lucrative aluminium smelting industry, for example). In Icelandic houses – or the three I’ve stayed in, at any rate – the heating is always on, even in July. Ben explained that hot tubs are popular because they cost almost nothing to run: it’s cheaper for Icelanders to drain their hot tubs, refill them and heat them up again than clean them with chemicals and filters. So the country has an independent fuel supply, hot tubs constantly run fresh and Icelanders can heat their homes for almost no cost. It also explains how they can afford the high food prices that make visitors go green around the gills. I’m starting to think they may have stumbled on the secret of sustainable happiness.
