The lake of midges

From Husavik we headed towards Myvatn. English translation of this name is "the lake of midges" so we were prepared for attack (only mentally as we didn't plan to spend here more than a few hours). We had a quick look at Grotagja: a small but very special cave (they call it fissure as far as I remember) with a hot pool inside. The water was a bit to hot to jump there but if you prepared for a few minutes you'd get an unforgetable experience. This is, of course, only joking - I don't think it's allowed to bath there and it's a touristy place so you'd have to do this at night (I bet there are people trying to do this).

Then I planned a hike around a volcano. Hverfell, a grim, wide guard of the lake, is looking at it constantly from the East. It's circumference is ca. 3km so be prepared for walking for almost an hour. If you're not interested in going around, you can just walk up to the edge (5-10 minutes) and look into the gates of hell... Joking again, there's only a grey-black sand there which, in the center, forms an irregular cone. If you decide to hike, you get a nice 360 degree view of the surroundings, especially Myvatn looks cute with all those little islands and pseudocraters. You'll see Dimmuborgir lava field as well. I think lava fields are in general best viewed from above - when you walk through it, it's just walking amongst rocks. It's much more impressive to see it's size and strange shapes that it consists of.

We decided to drive around the lake because there was another interesting natural formation on the way: pseudocraters. When lava sinks rapidly in the water, a formation is created that looks like a small volcano crater. On the south shore of the lake there is a place called Skutustadhir where a walking path is available amongst these natural wonders. You can either chose 1-1.5h path or 0.5h one - we (incidentally) chose the shorter one and I must admit it was quite pleasant despite LOADS of those little flies. The lake looks very nice from there and there's amazingly busy bird life going on. People walked with bird-watching guides and equipment to observe birds so if you're a bird lover (or a geologists, that's obvious here in Iceland), go there!

Our route was supposed to go North-East now so we decided to sleep in Asbyrgi again. However, before that we went to another camping 5km away from Asbyrgi. There's a sleeping bag accommodation in the building that looks like a school (probably because groups of children come here for holidays), a warm swimming pool with a hot pot (400 Ikr/adult) and a kind of cheap cafeteria where you can eat a dinner for 800-1500 Ikr. We didn't stay overnight here only because there was nothing to protect our tent from the wind. Apart from that, it's very nice and even a bit cheaper than Asbyrgi (750 Ikr/ person in a tent).

Zdjęcia (4)

Komentarze (1)