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| Landscape below Ljosafoss Power Station |
We came to Iceland mainly for a chance to see the Northern Lights and this is our last day and our last chance. Fortunately the skies were clearing and there was a real possibility. Given that, we scheduled a retake on our Northern Lights Tour from Sunday night for tonight. You are allowed retakes for free until you see the lights and even though it meant another long bus ride, we were going to try again.
That meant rearranging some of our plans to get back in time for the tour. So we removed a visit to the Selialandsfoss Waterfalls in southern Iceland and exchanged a visit to the Blue Lagoon for a visit to the Sundhöll Reykjavíkur thermal bath in town. In truth, I should have scheduled the Blue Lagoon a few days earlier to make sure we got a time slot that fit because earliest opening left for today was 5 pm, too late to make the tour. So we traded an expensive ($200) tourist spot for a less expensive ($20) place where the locals go. Not a total loss.
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| Kerið crater |
We were driving in a loop around southern Iceland today and with clear skies and breathtaking scenery, it was a very pleasant trip. First stop was the Ljosafoss Power Station which has a self-guided tour of the hydroelectric plant. Definitely off the tourist route but we found it interesting and they had free hot chocolate at the end of the tour.
Close by next was the Kerið crater, which is on the Golden Circle route but the tour didn’t stop there. Kerið is a volcanic crater whose caldera is approximately 3,000 years old, which is relatively young. In the summer, there is a vivid aquamarine lake at the bottom but only ice at the bottom in the winter. We chose to walk around the top which turned out to be a bit of a mistake as Jeanne’s boots weren’t geared for the snow and ice and it was quite slippery for her.
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| Selfoss Church |
Next we drove through Selfoss which is the largest town in southern Iceland and a farming region in the summer. The region is also the center of a large number of greenhouses. There is a very scenic church in Selfoss, which is said to be a good spot to see the Northern Lights. They were having a funeral service so we couldn’t really look around.
Next we drove along the rugged coast line and through lots of lava fields until turning back north and past the Blue Lagoon. We did stop in at the Blue Lagoon just to make sure there really were no openings, but no luck. So we headed back to Reykjavik for our afternoon visit to the thermal pool. That turned out to be a quite pleasant experience. All the pools are outdoors and on the rooftop where it was about 30 degrees, but the thermal water in the pools kept things nice and comfortable. We started in the larger thermally heated pool and stayed there for a while until we headed to the area with hot spring baths. One was 41 C (108 F) which was a bit hot for us and we moved to the 37 C (98 F). It is recommended that you only stay for 15 minutes in these baths, which is enough. It was really relaxing.
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| Horses (South Coast of Iceland) |
We had dinner in Hafnarfjörður, not far from our hotel and waited for our tour bus. They split the tour into 7:30 and 8:30 departures and we were on the later departure and this turned out to be lucky for us. This time we headed to the Þingvellir National Park rest stop area and got there probably pretty close to 10 pm and the place was mobbed with busses. We tried to wait outside for the lights to appear but the Arctic winds were blowing very strongly and it was just too cold so we went back on the bus to wait it out.
No one had seen the lights for the past 7 days. Not only do you need a clear night, which we had tonight, but you also need solar flare actively for them to show up and the flare activity had only been mild recently. Nothing for almost two hours and the earlier busses had long ago headed back into town while we waited until midnight for our departure. But suddenly at about 5 minutes before it was time to leave, they appeared. It took about 30 seconds once they started for them to fully form. When they do, they stretch completely across the sky above you kind of like a rainbow. The northernmost end actually shimmers like you see in photos.
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| Aurora Borealis (northern end) |
So now for some truth about the lights. While the photos you see make it appear that the sky is lit up by colors, it isn’t really like that. To the naked eye, the arc appears to be gray in color. It is only the long exposure of the lens that fully brings out the color. I think the lights would have been more colorful if we were in a darker area, but we had two factors working against us. One, there was a full super moon tonight and there was a lot of ambient light from it. Two, there were still lights on at the rest stop. I suspect that if we had ventured out further in the fields that we would have seen a little more color, but I don’t know that for a fact. So instead of being breathtaking, it was maybe only marvelous. The tour guide said they were a 6.5 out of 10 so I’ll go with that.
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| Aurora Borealis (southern end) |
The lights arced across the sky for about 15 minutes and then dissipated in about 30 seconds. We got on the bus and headed back to town when they appeared again about 45 minutes later. By the time we found a safe place to pull off, they had again dissipated. This time they were only out for about 5 minutes. The tour guide said they usually come and go until about 5 am.
To wrap things up for the trip, we slept in the next day and barely made breakfast. Then we packed up and headed to the airport for our 3 pm flight home. Were the lights as spectacular as we had imagined, maybe not. But seeing them was certainly much better than not seeing them at all. You have to remember that two-thirds of the people who come to Iceland like us for a short visit do not see the lights at all so we consider ourselves very lucky.
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