Day 4 in Akureyri - waterfalls, craters, lava, intercontinental travel, and aromas

 Today, we docked in Akureyri.  As it turns out, last night, we passed through the arctic circle.  We will do that again tonight - actually, while I am writing this.  So, for the uninformed, that means we're north - like seriously north.

Today's adventure was a seven-hour tour of Northern Iceland's national treasures.

As we left the town, we were treated to a nice view of our home for the week, the Viking Sky.  This is one of Viking's ocean-going fleet.  It is a 465-stateroom, 930-guest ship.  While it doesn't have the climbing walls, roller coasters, and other attractions the mega-ships have, it does have a steam room, thermo-therapy pool, and snow grotto.

The fjords surrounding Akureyri are lovely, with snow remaining, even into July.

Our first stop was at  Godafoss Falls.

The story behind these falls had to do with a minister who got the call to Christianity.  When he did, he took all his pagan idols and threw them all over the falls over 1,000 years ago.

Downstream from the falls, we saw interesting rock formations carved out by the water at some point.  Arlona ventured down for a closer look.

The falls themselves are quite lovely and reminded us of a mini Niagara Falls.  

Our next stop was at something called pseudo-craters.

These "craters" were formed when lava met water and explored, creating these crater-like depressions in the earth.

The views were awesome and we really enjoyed the fact that they were having unseasonably warm weather.

After touring the pseudo-craters, we were served lunch - trout, potatoes, soup, and coleslaw. Then, it was back on the bus for our next stop called the dark fortress.

Dimmuborgir - the Dark Fortress at Mývatn is a series of lava formations that were forced out of the earth.

Remember that I included intercontinental travel in the title?  Well, this is it.  The following two photos show the split between the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates that reside directly under Iceland.  We were able to cross back and forth between Europe and North America multiple times, all without passports or other travel documentation.  It was awesome!

The guide stated that the tectonic plates are moving apart at the rate of about 2mm per year.  That means that over the next thousand years, this gap will grow by about six and a half feet. After our intercontinental galavanting, we resumed our tour of the lava fields.

After touring the lava fields, we were off to our last stop, and this is where the aroma portion of our day comes in. We visited the Námafjall Geothermal Area.  This area features geothermal pots where mud and water bubble up from the ground at incredibly high temperatures.  In addition, steam is constantly being released.  All of these come with a terrifically awful aroma, due to the high sulfur content of the released gas.

I should note that Iceland uses these geothermal waters for heat.  They also use a lot of hydroelectric generation to produce electricity.  As countries go, Iceland is energy-independent.  They also passed laws so that all new vehicles purchased have to be electric.  We were surprised at how many Teslas we have seen so far.

Finally, we bussed back to our waiting Viking Sky.

When we reached our room, we realized we both needed a shower, as we both stunk like sulfur.

As I am writing this, we entered the arctic circle en route to tomorrow's adventures in Seydisfjördur.  As I am typing now, it is 10:10pm.  We can look overhead and see striking blue skies, as it is as light as it is most of the day. The sun won't set until 11:41pm tonight and will rise again at 2:21am, so there will only be about 2.5 hours of "darkness".  I use that term lightly as if you have ever been out after sunset, it takes a while to get dark.  The same is true of the period before sunrise.  Given that this entire period is so short that it never gets truly dark.  Of course, the opposite is true in the winter where they can go for two months without seeing the sun.

Off to bed for us and on to Seydisfjördur.