still there are pictures to post..

Þingvellir. eurasian tectonic plate and american tectonic plate tearing apart. further reading


cracks near a street, taken from out of the bus

advise ;)

just CLICK on the pictures to get a bigger version and therefore a better impression

some more

hraunafoss. i suppose this photo was taken by lisa. watch the changing colours of the rocks


hraunafoss, water coming out of below the lava field


greenhouse in hveragerði. iceland uses its geothermal energy in order to grow plants in them like tomatoes or cucumbers.


waterfall near hveragerði

..

steam coming out of the earth, near hveragerði

garður

typical horses in iceland. quite small.


this was in the middle of the village garður. as the wind was very strong, it must have flown there ;)


sth. on a rock nearby the sea


there are many birds around. espacially at the west end tip of the peninsula reykjanes where we went on one of our last days


housing on garður. reminds me of us houses (click to watch a bigger version)


lighthouse on the western tip of reykjanes which is one of the westernmost points in iceland

some more of the sunday trip

at half past three, we'll start to berlin. some more pictures.. our trip, of which in the post before the previous post were some pictures, took us via two waterfalls to the incredible beach of vik. anne said it is the most beautiful beach she knows, for me it is the second most beautiful after tayrona beach / colombia (see my other blog for pictures of it).


the beach is totally black. black rocks, black sand - and the rocks look like aliens, from big to small structures (the one above is about two metres high)


lisa in kind of a cave


me and the waves


we slept at this beach. at night, we could see aurea borealis ("nordlichter"), which was the first time we saw them (the pic of reykjavik was taken later). although it was pretty cold in the car (and it is not allowed to stay there overnigh), we slept relatively well.

as i was too lazy to get out of the car, the picture is a bit shaky, because the wind swung our car a bit.


a pictures which lisa took the next morning, when we drove back in the sun. i'd consider this one truly as one of the best the past two weeks.


sunrise at the beach


sunday, before we went to the beach - skógafoss.

fuuuun

we found a paper box. lisa acting. actually, she was turning around because the people she followed were turning around.. and, watch the ducks :)

sunday trip

lisa in front of the.. forgot-its-name-waterfall.


there are horses. click to view the larger image.




to the south, via selfoss to vík. not much to say, extraordinary landscapes, waterfalls, mountains.. and weather. as mentioned before: on the same day we got rain, we got sun, cloudy weather, stormy weather, hail, snow.. and again: sun.

temperatures the past about ten days ranged from -3° to 7°C as far as i remember. not that cold, but also not anything like warm, but you get used to it pretty fast (especially we got used to it, on our arrival it was very stormy and snow falling horizontal)

football

near the shore. i suppose that because of the wind it isn't possible to play football as we know it in europe. perhaps they use stones or sth like that.

aurea borealis

(nordlicht in german) last night in reykjavik. actually, one couldn't see it as bright and colourful as the camera shot it in this 30 seconds-exposure

pictures? a few more of the weekend..

again, from the peninsula snaefallsnes (in the western part of iceland, north of reykjavik)


Größere Kartenansicht


somewhere between the southern and northern coast of snaefallsnes, a bit higher


mountain near the northern coast of snaefallsnes


a very impressive mountain on the northern coast of snaefallsnes, could be arond grundarfjördur


structure of a rock at the "debris"-beach


a fish. obviously.


a beach with debris of a sunken ship on it. nearly twenty people died there in a storm around the 1950s (as far as i remember). it is forbidden to move the parts of the ship. creates a very strange atmosphere, especially with the dark and stormy wheather we had


rocks near the aforementioned beach. lisa on the right, the other guys walking somewhere down the path (click for a larger view)


lava fields and a sole rock, looks quite exceptional

more pictures from our weekend-trip

gas station.. nowhere. nothing else around except two crossing roads.


grass near the road. like greasy hair


our "holiday home" where we stayed one night for free (thanks to anne). including a "hot pot" meaning a small outside pool. there were some other houses around, could've been around 20. we reached it by driving a gravel road for 10 or 20 kilometers - again, no other villages or cities around these few houses, which is typical for iceland. lost in the nature..


looks totally posed, but it isn't :)

hot springs near reykholt. gurgling out of the soil, steam everywhere, really fascinating


lava field, grass is covering the harsh rocks


a waterfall near the church i mentioned two postings ago.. the place is called "hellar". note how small the house is compared to the mountain!


mountain


volcano?

..

today was our laid-back day, swimming pool and reykjavik city... after we discovered that the day trip ticket we used for our trips wasn't anything like valid - but the bus drivers didn't care as well. tomorrow we plan to rent a car again. isn't that expensive, 50 euros a day divided by three or four.

back to friday. like aforementioned, we were five people - anne and lisa, richard and alex from nuremberg and me. the first place we visited was Þingvellir, unesco world heritage site, which is an historical place (for more than thousand years it was kind of an icelandic political centre) as well as a gorgeous landscape. although it rained cats and dogs.




you can see the eurasian (right) and the american tectonic plate (left) on the picture. it was spreading some 70 meters the past 1000 years (as far as i remember what we read about it).

after that we went on to search hraunafoss. we didn't find it immedately, but were driving up a valley with some lost farms in it:




..but after driving about 25km on a gravel road we found hraunafoss. which was incredebly amazing! - water came out from kind-of below the ground, which means it was floating out of the rim of a lava field..



i'll go on posting tomorrow.. because anne needs her notebook for her job.

..

tomorrow we'll start again on a trip, but two pictures of the yesterday and today when we (meaning: five people in the cheapest and therefore smallest car we could get) went to snaefallsnes. grrrrreaaaaaaaaaatt, gorgeous colours, landscapes,.. more to come next week.

steam holes

bubbling, fizzling, gargling sounds coming out of the soil. near Hveragerði. in the video below, lisa tried to plug them, using her shoe.

a better video to catch an impression of the landscape can be found here



note that it might be that i'm not online until monday, because we will rent a car tomorrow and drive around the next days.


note the warning sign.


lisa being a gorilla.