It was not even noon on this day and we'd already seen a beautiful waterfall and unbelievable crater. Now we arrived at Geysir, the Geysir that all geysers are named after.
Above is Litli-Geysir, one of the surrounding geysirs and hot pools. I'd estimate it was 2 or 3 feet wide? It was wild experience to see, feel and smell all the steam all around us. So bizarre to be standing on the warm ground on a cold, damp (and of course rainy) day.
The water in this cavernous pool was so still and so clear. Speaking of water, the tap water in Iceland is noticeably delicious, if is is possible to say something like that about water. It is supposed to be some of the purest water in the world. Wish I could have brought gallons home with me.
With hot-hot-hot geothermal heat all around, they had areas fenced off for your safety.
I still can't get over the colours and textures that exist in the land there. Quite a sight for a concrete city dweller like me.
This is Strokkur, the geyser located metres away from Geysir. Geysir rarely erupts anymore. Our guide told us that years ago, to impress visitors to Geysir, dirt and bars of soap would be thrown in to agitate it. Now it rarely goes off -- nature's way of telling us not to mess with it. We did meet a couple at the Blue Lagoon that said they saw it go off earlier in the week and it went on for about 10 minutes. Must have been amazing. We saw Strokkur erupt numerous times as it goes off every 5-10 minutes, each time for seconds at a time. This smaller geyser was already plenty awe-inspiring. You can see the water moving in the pit and then push upwards in a bulge before blasting the boiling water up to 100 feet into the air. The first time blew us away -- literally, then we were mesmerized and watched it again and again and again...
And I took lots of pictures of Strokkur erupting again and again!
See? I mean lots!
It was pretty darn awesome.
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