our first stop was Þingvellir national park, home of the mid-atlantic ridge and Þingvallavatn, the largest natural lake in iceland.
from the lake we headed up to higher ground toward langjokull, the second-largest glacier in iceland. if you've never driven around on a 600-square-mile glacier, i highly recommend it. i've never seen such an expanse of pure white nothingness. we stopped for a while at the the top of a snow-covered crater to take in this incredible view of the icelandic highlands. also, our guide did a bunch of crazy tricks in a {highly successful} attempt to scare the crap out of me. we all had a good laugh {*not me}.
after our glacier shenanigans, we crossed a small river with a sweet little waterfall. then we crossed a really big river {sans waterfall} many times, just for fun {i could see the bridge}.
we stopped for lunch at a little restaurant in the middle of nowhere with a four-item menu: vegetable soup, meat soup, hamborgar, sandwich. we'd been informed that this restaurant was known for its traditional icelandic meat soup, so we went for it. and it kind of tasted like...nothing. oh well. at least it didn't have any pig hairs in it.
after lunch we ventured back out into the world and into the hallmundarhraun lava fields. we ended up at surtshellir, the largest lava cave in iceland, which also happened to be almost entirely covered in snow and ice {surprise!}. we donned our doozer-ific headlight helmets and climbed as far into the dark icy tube as we could without disturbing the many elves and fairies that obviously lived there.
miraculously our entire company made it out injury-free. so to celebrate we all went out for more meat soup!
{no we didn't.} but we did go to the most beautiful waterfalls i've ever seen in my life. hraunfossar {"lava falls"} and barnafoss {"children's waterfall"} are right next to each other and they took my breath away with their aqua-blue waters and all-around gorgeousness. i could've stayed there all day.
as it turns out, we had one more stop: deildartunguhver, a natural above-ground hot spring with the largest output of any thermal spring in the world. it was hot {200 degrees}. and stinky. and you could totally buy tomatoes {on the honor system of course} from the little greenhouse next door.
after that {and some icelandic horse sightings!}, we headed back to reykjavik for a drink and some sleep.
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