The seemingly placid landscape of Thingvillir belies the youthful geological nature of Iceland, but not too far away is the location of Geysir.

Here, the earth is cooking: steaming fumaroles, burbling pools of boiling water and gushing spouts of hot steam and gasses from deep within the ground – all clearly demonstrate that Iceland is most definitely active.

Strokkur shoots a column of water and gas up to a height of around 20m, every 10 minutes or so – although I can tell you I have waited at least 20 mins for one gush, then witnessed three gushes within a couple of minutes.  I guess that’s just Mother Nature’s prerogative.

Strokkur in action

Storkkur fires one off… time for “High-Speed Continuous”

Geysir – the original gusher, has been dormant since 2005 (as it was between 1915-2000).  In the past it has shot a column of water approximately 70m high.  Now that would have been amazing to have seen, but alas – it’s currently just a steaming hot-tub.

The utterly fantastic thing about the entire place is the fact that the entrance is absolutely free.  If this were a tourist attraction in the UK/USA, I’m pretty sure it would have been walled off and a preposterous fee would be charged at the gate.  Then, you would have to fend off the candy-floss and hot-dog vendors to get to the main attraction, which would have obnoxious information boards blocking the best views anyway.

Well done, Icelandic Tourist Board – you rock ;)

I took hundreds of photographs.  I could have taken more…  My new-found sport was to try and capture the meniscus of hot water of Strokkur as the gas bubbles surged upwards – just before they exploded at the surface.

I’m experimenting with a slide-show. Let’s see if this works…

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Epic…

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