Well we arrived in Iceland. After sweating in Paris only 4 hours earlier, we walked out of Reykjavik airport with not many clothes on and within 10 seconds of walking out the airport doors we were hit with a mild 30-40km wind. Strong...yes...but the kicker was the wind chill of around minus 15 degrees. Lloyd thought his fingers were going to fall off from frostbite. Lloyd's glasses were actually blown off. I had to chase down my areoplane pillow which went flying down the street. It was a rude awakening to this stunning but harsh country. After a quick nights rest we awoke early to venture on a road trip with our former Perth housemate, Adam (who had flown from Canada to spend the next week with us) We rented a car and set out on the famous Golden Circle trip. In the simplest sense there are three main sites which make up the Golden Circle; Geysir hot springs, Gullfoss waterfall and Thingvellir National Park. Our first stop today driving the anti-clockwise route from Reykjavik was the Kerid Crater (pictured above...and frozen over)
After driving only 10 minutes out of the city Reykjavik it began to snow! This was the first snow Adam and Lloyd had seen. Yes it was only a little, but coming from sunny Perth this was exciting.
Snow on Lloyd's jacket and him wearing new Doc Martens boots. (Just a quick story - the day before we left for Iceland Lloyd realised he probably wasn't prepared shoe-wise for ice. He decided Doc Martens would be needed. Only thing was it was a public holiday in France. After much internet searching, there was to our surprise a store open just down the road which was a certified Doc Martin seller. Win! Without these boots I'm not sure how long his feet would have survived in Iceland).
The view driving on the famous Route 1 Iceland road.
So many mountains!
And cute/weird little houses in the middle of nowhere... really. For some reason a lot of these houses were built in areas with signs saying to watch out for big rocks falling down the mountain. One thing we learnt on this trip from our first day - Iceland just doesn't make sense. Don't question it. Just accept it.
And we finally arrive at Kerid/Kerio/Kerith crater. This place is often overlooked by tourists doing the Golden Circle trip. It was around 1 hour out of Reykjavik and is only slightly sign posted on the road so it is easy to miss. Definitely worth checking out if you're doing the Golden circle trip.
Sophie and Adam fighting the wind. The only prize is not being at the bottom of a volcanic crater.
Walking into the crater.
And there it is. The volcanic crater lake created around 3000 years ago.This crater looks much bigger and impressive in person than it does in this photograph. However we were all a little disappointed by the grey ice colour of the lake. Unfortunately we visited this place during the "colder" months of Iceland, but if you were to come during the "warmer" months you would see the crater place look like this:
or
Sophie throwing rocks onto the ice. The destructive soul she is.
Someone had previously thrown a rock onto the ice to expose the blue lake below.
This bench had ice on it. Yes it was very cold today!
Lloyd and Adam looking...cold.
VIDEO! Once the video starts please choose the HD version instead of YouTube's low res version. Even go full screen to get the best experience!
Regardless of the cold turning the scenery, it is still beautiful and little did we know we would return to this same place some 10 days later on what would be one of the best nights in Iceland... More later though.
And we continue the road...
Ahhh petrol in Iceland. Coming from Perth, Australia, we were used to people moaning and groaning about high petrol prices but we realise now that we hadn't seen anything yet. We came to learn that petrol wasn't the only expensive thing in this country. Everything was expensive. The amazing scenery was free though. It all balances out right?
Next chapter - Geysir hot springs!
If you'd like to read more about the Kerid crater visit the Wikipedia page.
Kerid/Kerio crater can be found here:
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