What We Did Yesterday

Now that we have had a little more sleep, we detail what we did yesterday.

From the airport in Keflavik, we drove south to the small village of Gridnavik on the coast. We then drove to Strandakirkja on the coast.

At Strandakirkja we stopped at the the church for which the village is named.

The Church was originally built sometime in the 12th century. The story relates that there is one night when a group of sailors tried to navigate back to Iceland in a storm. The southern coast of Iceland is notorious for its hidden reefs and rough coast. The distressed sailors prayed to God for a safe return and vowed to build a church wherever they landed. When they ended their prayer an angel, seemingly made of light, appeared before their bow. The angel guided them through the rough surfs and led the crew into a bay for safe landing. The sailors, making good on the promise, built a wooden church at the site and named it Strandarkirkja. 

From there we went to Selfoss, bought some groceries, postcards, and famous Icelandic hotdogs called pylsur.

We then drove to the Kerið crater. Kerið is a volcanic crater lake located in the Grimsnes area in south Iceland.. The caldera, like the other volcanic rock in the area, is composed of a red volcanic rock.  Kerið’s caldera is one of the three most recognizable volcanic craters because at approximately 3,000 years old, it is only half the age of most of the surrounding volcanic features. It is believed that Kerið was a cone volcano which erupted and emptied its magma reserve. Once the magma was depleted, the weight of the cone collapsed into the empty magma chamber. 

From the crater we then drove to the Laugarvatn Fontana geothermal baths.   Here we walked outside with a guide and saw bubbling hot water come out of the ground.  At the end of a board walk we stopped and watched as our guide dug into the ground and pulled out a large steel pot.  Inside the pot was a a steaming mass of rye bread that we then took back to the spa and enjoyed with lots of butter - it was delicious. We will be coming back here on Sunday to enjoy the hot water baths.