I rented a car and headed out along the Golden Circle, a traditional tourist route for folks who don’t have much time. The primary stops along the way are the Pingvellir, the home of Iceland’s first Democratic Parliament, established in 930AD; Geysir, a guyser; and Gullfoss, a dramatic double waterfall. It’s an easy day trip, and there are plenty of tours you can take out of Reykjavik, but I wanted to drive down the southwest coast to spend the night in the fishing village of Vik so I went it alone. I’d heard that stretch of the coast was gorgeous, and I was hoping getting away from the city might help my chances with seeing the Northern Lights.

It was nice to do a road trip. Having been without a car for so long, I forgot how liberating it can be... but also how tiring. The three main attractions were OK, but I found the geothermal site at Nesjavellir most interesting. The landscape was unreal. All around steam made it’s way out of little fissures in the mountainsides. Geodesic domes scattered the landscape. These housed the boreholes that are drilled 2km into the earth. The plant generates most of Iceland’s power.

I found some back roads to the coastal Route 1, the ring road that, given enough time, will take you around the whole of the island. Probably driving on roads not necessarily covered by my car rental agreement, I headed inland through a very barren and rocky area, eventually coming south along the base of the active Hekla volcano. Just down the coast is the Katla volcano which blows it’s top every couple of hundred years, and 2010 marked the 200 year anniversary of the last eruption. People are on edge about the eruption and there are a lot of emergency precautions in place, but what can you really do about it? How fast can you act? The volcano spews rock, ash and molten lava for miles. Because Katla is covered by glacier, the water melts extremely fast causing flash flooding. The force of the eruption triggers tidal waves, and finally the suffocating ash causes violent lightning storms... The eruption that happened in 2010 (also in this neighborhood on the Southwest Coast), grounding all planes to and from Europe, is apparently child’s play compared to what Katla has in store.

The drive to Vik along the coast was great. I realized that I am slowly turning into my father, pulling the car over every twenty minutes or so to take a picture of some sheep, or an old barn or something...

The Golden Circle was OK, looking back though, I wish I had spent the brief time I had doing a hike over Fimmvorduhals pass, spending the night in a hut high up on the pass, sandwiched between the Eyjafjallajokull and Myrdalsjokull glaciers.