Sunday, December 11, 2016

Magma, Movies and Mammoth Mammals

Real-life lava fields!  This was a dream come true for me.
The beauty, power, and danger of volcanoes and lava has always been a fascination of mine.  As much as they frighten, they also impress. We're standing on a tiny shell of rock and dirt that is sitting on a giant orb of hot magma. It's moving and shifting all the time, and sometimes breaks through the surface

You keep to the path, for your own good.
The extreme landscape of Iceland has been caused by the divide between the North American and Eurasian Plate.  We all remember the eruption of Eyjafjallajokull a few years ago, which is on the southern end of the island.  Well, on the north end of the island we were on the opposite end of the same fault line.  Located here was the Krafla Geothermal Power plant, and the nearby Krafla lava field.  While no longer spewing lava, you could still see steam rising from the fissures, and bubbling mud pits all around. We walked around for the better part of 2 hours, and we could have stayed for much longer and gone much further.  The field went on for about 15 km.

The rock was incredibly rough and light.

 Next we hit the road out of Mývatn and started on toward the coastal town of Húsavík.


Dettifoss was the next stop.  It is a popular stop, and we saw more people here than we had anywhere else since the beginning of the trip.  It's an epic waterfall, and is featured in the opening scene of the movie Prometheus.   It is an incredibly powerful waterfall - the crashing sound of the water was incredible.  

Dettifoss
The canyon it flows into wasn't actually created over time by this steady stream of water, but was caused by extreme glacial floods, which took place over the course of a few days. The power of water is easy to forget and hard to imagine sometimes. 


The canyon is called Jökulsárgljúfur, and the same flooding that caused the canyon, caused the Asbyrgi canyon further down river.  
The flood waters cut around this magnificent rock
It was kind of enormous.
Asbyrgi canyon is protected all the way around by these tall rock cliffs, and has created a green and protected space for lots of things to grow.  Flowers, trees, grasses, ducks and birds have settled in quite nicely in this little grove.  It is so different than most of this area.  There was a really great interpretive centre at the entrance to the park that explained the natural creation of this unique space.
T-shirt weather, for the first time since arriving in Iceland.
I was surprised at how much warmer it was here, simply by being protected a bit from the wind by the cliffs and the trees.  It was really nice to walk around and see such a lush and different side of the area.  So different from the lava fields just a few kilometers away.


Húsavík was up next.  Husavik used to be a whaling town, and they have a fantastic museum located in a former slaughterhouse.  The Húsavík Whale Museum is all about whales, the history of whaling, and the importance of conservation.  They had a full Blue Whale skeleton on display on the main floor, complete with original balene.  We didn't take any photos because we were too busy learning - but you can take  a look through their website to see what else they had going on.

We had dinner at a pub on the docks.  We sat on the patio wearing sunglasses and slathered in sunscreen, while also wearing coats and hats.  The sun was hot-hot-hot, but the breeze cold-cold-cold.  Sitting by the water had us thinking a lot about what we were going to be doing the next day.  I was so excited, I had a hard time falling asleep, and not just because of the sun streaming through our van's windows.


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