It was not my first time in Thingvellir National Park in Iceland. I visited this place in 2018 too but the weather was no good. We basically drove there, spent maybe 20 minutes and back to the car. This time however during my most recent trip to Iceland we decided that we should go back there with great weather and see thoroughly what there is to see.
Thingvellir Park is one of the best places in the world to watch where continental plates drift apart. In this case, there are the Northern American plate and the Eurasian tectonic plate. In the photo above you can clearly see the fracture zone. I am standing on the American plat at the moment in the photo. Both of these tectonic plates move about 2cm apart from each other each year. That's really fast if you ask me.
What you see back there is the lake Thingvellir. It's the largest lake in Iceland. The deepest part is 115m deep and this lake gets 90% of its water from cold springs underground. This is the reason why the temperature stays at 3-4 degrees C all year around.
Another viewpoint to the north.
It's a huge tourist attraction so crowds are expected. Especially on a nice day like this.
There used to be a gravel road in the late 80s and cars drove between the plates. At some point, the gravel road crumbled into the abyss below, and not there is a bridge over the place you see in the photo below, no more car traffic.
There are several rivers, flowing through the park.
Also, a waterfall named Öxarárfoss. This is the one we visited in 2018 too but only stayed there a couple of minutes due to heavy rain. This time we spent there a good half an hour. Just laying on the wooden platform, listening to the sound of water.
We started to make our way back to the car park from the other side. Found some quite deep crevasses that were filled with clear blue water.
There is a church named Thingvallakirkja.
It was cool to go back there and actually see the place not like 5 years ago. If you visit Iceland then it's definitely one of a kind place to visit. In fact, Iceland is the only location in the world where you can see major plate boundaries drift apart. All the other ones are sub-surface.
