This morning we were due to check out and there was an optional dawn shoot back up on the cliffs (as Rob hadn't seen our mountain view until the colours had faded and was desperate to catch the lovely scene). Jill, Wendy and I had had enough of that area and decided to stay close to our hotel and have a wander around the grounds. In fact when we woke, it was snowing very hard so we abandoned the idea but I rather like this one I managed to catch during a brief break in the snow.
The hotel had its own snowplough for the large areas and a mini one for the smaller ones.
The early part of our drive to the next location, Gullfoss, was quite tricky. Luckily we have the very able Dirk as our driver and we stayed intact, but there were numerous cars in ditches and overturned. An hour or so out of Vik and the weather improved and the snow on the ground was less. There were some lovely views along the way but as before no safe places to pull over and take pictures.
We arrived at our Hotel Gullfoss early afternoon and picked up room keys. Whereas before we'd been allocated rooms, this time there were 8 keys on the counter and Rob said to help ourselves. 3 had enormous antlers as key fobs and the other 5 had small pocked sized white metal tags - no contest obviously. Us 4 girls + Colin got lucky as the small white ones were for rooms with this wonderful view.
whereas the others had a view of the carpark - needless to say our leader wasn't too amused!
Being his first trip to Iceland, Rob had stressed from the start that the format would be very fluid, so I deliberately didn't do any research on places we might visit so I wouldn't be disappointed if we didn't. We headed out after a couple of hours to Gullfoss only 7 mins away and although there were a few coaches it wasn't heaving. My jaw dropped at the glorious sight of the falls (foss) with their turquiose waters and iced up sides. I'm sure these photos don't do the place justice but to give you a flavour.
The wind was so incredibly strong you could barely stand your ground at times, but there is always one idiot to cross the safety barrier, albeit a single rope about 2ft above the ground so not particular "safe.
The spray seemed to weld itself to our lenses so I'm sure I have many blurry pictures, although these two are deliberate slow shutter speed attempts.
We then moved on to Geysir (the origin of the word) which was great fun. There are a couple there, one which goes off very unfrequently when it feels like it and the other regularly about every 5-6 mins. It's fascinating to watch the waters bubbling and building up pressure until you get a huge turquoise dome and then suddenly whoosh, a plume of water is fired into the air.
The multi-coloured minerals in the mud will make good textures and the crystals they form are really pretty.
Surprisingly entrance and parking is free at all these natural attractions which is good news given the overall high cost of visiting here. The only place we paid entrance fees was at the Black Sand Dunes (Vestrahorn Mountains) as the land was tenanted - quite dear at about £6 pp.