Trip to Iceland 2010: Day 3 - Geysir and Strokkur

After seeing Kerið (Kerid) crater, I leave for my next stop, to see the mother of all geysers, the Geysir. I take a road no. 37 and stop at Laugarvatn for a quick lunch. And finally, I arrive at my destination. It immediately becomes clear that this is THE tourist attraction. There's everything here, the gas station, hotel, restaurant and a gift shop. Of course, all insanely expensive :) But who cares, it's not what I came here for, and the geysers are right across the road. You can clearly smell them (you really need to get used to the sulfuric smell) and see the steam all over the place.

Right as I enter the area, I see this weird thing:

If you know what's the purpose of this, let me know

And a few meters away, the Little Geysir, that kinda reminds me of a pot of boiling water.

Litli Geysir - a tiny cousin of the Geysir

Unfortunately, the real thing is inactive as of late. It only wakes up after some major seismic activity, which happened in 2000 last time. So I was not meant to see the grand eruption of Geysir, which as I heard could spew water for a whooping 60 meters in the air.

But not all is lost, as there is Strokkur, which is very active and erupts regularly every 5 minutes or so. It's smaller than Geysir, but still very impressive.

Strokkur - the water is rising

Strokkur - the bubble has formed, eruption imminent

Strokkur - eruption

The size of the water stream is not clear from the photos above, so here's the eruption in wider perspective

Strokkur eruption from far away

I take my time here and decide to take a walk up the hill. On my way there, I'm surprised to find a sun clock. I don't know the story behind it, so lets just leave it at the photo.

A sun clock near the Geysir

So, back to the hill, it looks like any other hill, nothing special, just a bunch of rocks and a nice view on the geysers. The surprise awaited me once I reached the top. It then became apparent that there is no other side. There's just a 40 meter (or so) cliff there with a small stream at the bottom.

On the other side of a hill in Geysir area

Anyway, back to the geysers area. I was really impressed with a small water pool called Blesi, which is connected with another pool of boiling water. Its blue color makes it stand out from the rest.

The blue water of Blesi makes it unique from other pools around Geysir

This is in stark contrast to the water of other pools/geysers around, which can be very clear, like this:

All in all, I spent a quite a lot of time in the area, watching Strokkur erupt couple of times. It's no wonder this is one of the most famous tourist attractions of Iceland. This is a must see for anyone who decides to put his foot on Icelandic soil.

I leave content and ready to see the next big attraction of Iceland, Gullfoss.