Day 14 Thursday 12/7 Reykjavik, Golden Circle, Hvolsvollur Area

After a very comfortable night’s sleep in our guest house we went down to the breakfast room and enjoyed a generous breakfast. When we booked this trip we knew that the maximum number in our group would be 20….well it’s only 9 plus our tour guide/driver. We have plenty of room in our mini van so feel very lucky. There are 5 Australians (a couple from Ballina, a young female doctor and Rob and I) 3 from the UK (a couple and a guy on his own) and 1 young guy from Germany. Rob and I are the oldest by a whisker! We set out and did a guided tour around Reykjavik first learning that most of its growth and development happened after the WW2. We then drove out to the famous “Golden Circle”, a very popular day trip route which takes in a few extremely spectacular sights of Iceland. Our guide explained that Iceland is a young land, 16million years old compared to Australia, 500 million years old. Running east west through the Iceland is the meeting of the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates. They are moving apart at 1 &1/2 cm a year and the result is the Silfra fissure. We visited the stunning location of Iceland’s first parliament in 930 with beautiful waterfalls and water ways. Following this we visited the geothermal Geyser area and checked out the Strokkur Geyser watching it erupt and shoot a cloud of water some 20 to 30 metres into the air. From here we went to Gullfoss double waterfall. I’ll let the pictures do the talking. On our way to our accommodation we called in to a farm and fed some beautiful Icelandic horses, visited The Lava Centre to learn all about the seismic activity happening all the time across Iceland and then to another small but stunning waterfall.