Greetings, European travelers!
Inspired by this new community, "Treasures of Europe", I have decided to share with you one place that is probably not the most visited tourist attraction in Iceland but it definitely is a gem of Nature and is in fact relatively close to the capital of this breathtaking island country, Reykjavik.
As my small group of Icelandic travelers has arrived to the island by an airplane, Krýsuvík was one of out first destinations. There was a convenient car parking very close to the place. Yes, renting a car and driving around is in my opinion the best way to freely explore this vast wilderness, given the time.
To say it shortly, Krýsuvík is an area with big geothermal activity.
It is a place where one could actually step inside a puddle of boiling mud and get severe burns if not paying enough attention.
It is also a place, that smells of sulfur and grass at the same time. So probably a place, that is being visited by both good and bad angels, if there are such creatures and depending on the beliefs of the visitor and observer :)
Of course, the biggest "puddles" are behind fences but hiking few hundreds meters to the top and you'll discover tens, if not hundreds of small places with strong geothermal activity.
Until we arrived here, the colors I was seeing were mainly black, green and blue.
Black - the volcanic soil, actually billions of pitch-black small pebbles, formed by the lava.
Green - coming mainly from the moss, covering, at some places, entirely the whole black ground.
Blue - from the few lakes, the sky and the ocean.
Krýsuvík however, demonstrated to us a whole new palette of Icelandic colors - from yellow, through orange to dark brown. Some nuances of gray as well ;) Muddy gray, I would say.
The first few hundreds meters are a path, covered by wooden planks where the biggest sources are.
As you can see, one has to be extremely careful. Truth is, it wasn't overcrowded and I doubt it would ever be.
Nevertheless, my feeling here was that I am very close to the Earth core. I could feel the heat and the spinning of the planet. Or was it only my head? :)
Walking only ten to fifteen minutes and the path is over so one could go pretty close to the source of action!
Indeed, a terrific place, did you see its scale on the photograph above?
A place that needs to be documented in every possible way :)
Geology isn't my area of interest but I imagine how much time would such a person spend here, given the several active "objects" around...
I noticed there is some scientific equipment installed next to some of those objects, gathering useful data, I suppose.
Now check out some of the views, the scenes that could be observed from the slope of that mountain...
Genuinely a quiet place, but not always, as you could see...
Just one of the charms of the fairy-tale land, called Iceland!
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