The Gates of Hell

We've fallen a few days behind in our posts.  Sorry to everyone for that.  It's been a fair bit of driving each day, as well as much more to see, that by the end of the night, we don't have any time for blogging.
Here's a catchup day from Friday Sept 11.

We started the day in Egilsstaðir.  It's a nice little town that is the capital of the South-East region.  The area comprises the eastern fijords, and highlands so the topography is dramatic as you climb from the ocean up a mountain saddle and back down to the sea again.
As we knew we had a number of things we wanted to see today, we set off promptly and covered approximately 2 hrs of our 3-4 hrs drive today right off the bat.  With a quick stop off along the way to find a geocache (though it was an unsuccessful attempt), we made our way to Selfoss and Dettifoss.  These are the two 'big' waterfalls in the north.  Dettifoss is the largest waterfall in Europe by volume of water.
The area leading up to the waterfalls looks like it could be the scenery for either a moon landing, or the next instalment of Mad Max.  The area itself is actually the rift zone between the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates, and one of the many recently active volcanic regions of Iceland.  The area has no large plants or pretty well any sign of life at all.  
Selfoss is the smaller of the two, located upstream of Dettifoss, It reminded both Kristin and I of Niagara Falls, because of the various islands and smaller falls right nearby.  It was very picturesque and rather a bit quieter than Dettifoss.  

We then walked to the larger waterfall and captured a number of great photographs there as well, including our first rainbow of the trip.  The sun provided us about 30 seconds of good light to snap a picture and Kris was able to get it.

We then travelled to the Lake Myvtan region.  This is one of the more geologically active areas of Iceland.  They have a famous hot-spring lagoon, as well as a major geothermal generating plant there.  Much of the power is provided by hot streams of gas finding their way to the surface and erupting, either as steam or very hot water, both of which contain ample amounts of sulfur, giving the entire area a fresh scent of eggs.  The area just outside the power plant is where the grey mud photos were taken.  These mud pots are actually highly corrosive sulfuric acid bubbling away.  Although it appears there has only been gas flowing from them recently, the entire hillside downwind of the vents is devoid of plantlife because of the acidity of the vents.

We also visited nearby Dimmuborgir, which is referred to as the Gates of Hell by the locals.  Here we descended to the base of lava cones and walked around under their shadow.  The formations are incredible to see.  We stopped in a local farm and tried their smoked Arctic Char as well as a raw lamb salad.  Both were delicious and surprisingly tasty.

We finished off our tour in this area with a visit to the Lake Myvtan lagoon.  This is the main competition to The Blue Lagoon located near Reykjavik.  While the air was pretty cool (a thermometer showed the air temperature between 8-10 degrees Celsius), the pool was lovely and warm.  The water itself is fed from the same spring as the power station, so has an incredible flourescent blue colour to it.  It was lovely to swim and soak in.

We then drove to Akeuyeri, for our final stop of the night.  We heard there was a chance to try some local Icelandic delicacies, so treated ourselves to a nice dinner at a local restaurant.  The choice for the night was grilled whale.  It was a darker red meat than we were expecting but was remarkably tender and delicious.  

To top off what had already been a pretty awesome day, we took our chances the sky would clear from the few clouds we saw, and went to seek out the Aurora lights that we showed in the previous post.   The pictures show an amazing scene, but don't begin to capture the actual experience.  It was my first time seeing the northern lights, and I was flabbergasted.  It is truly an awe-inspiring sight to see what nature can do.  We had some fun capturing the pictures we shared, and taking in the full experience until we were little frozen popsicles, and called it a night.