(07/31/14) Hveragerdi Hot Pots

Today was originally going to be our day to do a 12 mile round trip hike up to the top of a volcano. But neither of us was feeling quite up to the task so we switched our tour last night at the last minute.Today was set up to be a very fun, relaxing one for both of us. Instead of a twelve mile hike, we only did a seven mile hike in Hveragardi and went back into a canyon where we did some "hot potting". This is when you bathe in the water from a stream or river that is being fed by geothermal hot springs, making the water warmer like a hot tub. The best part though was that we were the only ones on the tour today! We had the guide, Aevar, all to ourselves! This was mostly because Arctic Adventures is a much smaller company and doesn't even own any of the big tour buses that we've been riding.

The entire first half of the hike was up, very little flat and definitely no down. I kept joking to Aevar that I am just a slow hiker, but I do get there eventually.

I am including a picture of some wild thyme that we saw growing all over the place. The sheep like to eat it and the Icelanders use it to flavor their meat. They like to think the sheep are pre-seasoning themselves.

We were even able to look for a traditional geocache on the way. George was keeping an eye on our handheld GPS as we hiked back to the hot pots and finally Aevar asked him what we were doing. George and I quickly explained what geocaching was and our guide got so enthused that he practically ran off through the lava field in the direction we had pointed. We got to within 70 feet and realized we had to cross the river. The guys took off and had the cache in hand relatively quickly. Our guide was taking pictures with his phone for facebook and was totally into it. I think we may have made a convert!

When we got back to the canyon, we checked out some of the geothermal features first, the fumaroles, the mud pots and such. And then we checked out the waterfall. It was a great area. We had grabbed some sandwiches at a bakery in town and packed them in our bags so we had a picnic lunch and then went for a swim. 

Today's water was about 103 degrees. It was pretty warm and there were people everywhere. We only lasted for about half an hour because the water was so warm. Again, we were changing in front of people and this time it was outside, so George and I are getting a lot of practice being naked in front of others. We may come back nudists! Joke!

We got back into town around three, so we made good use of our time and picked up some Tylenol and Tums from the pharmacy and grabbed some snacks from the grocery store. We got dinner at a great vegetarian restaurant, Glo, and then went back to our hotel. We grabbed the car keys so we could get some stuff from the car and then we went and found another geocache down by the waterfront. When we got back to the hotel again, we borrowed a highlighter and mapped out where we are going to be driving when we leave Rekyavik in a few days. We are calling it an early night tonight because we are whupped. 

 

Make sure to check out all the pictures from our trip on the right hand side of this blog under the heading "Our Flickr Photostream".