Iceland: Day 1 - Thingvellir
June 25, 2004
Thingvellir is a national park of historic significance because it is the site of the first Althing (parliament) of Iceland. It also has natural significance because it is the site of the Atlantic rift where the European and North American continental plates meet. The plates are actually moving apart so each year the rift gets a bit bigger. Iceland is the only place where the rift is visible on land so we were quite excited to be here and the rain wasn't going to stop us from taking it all in. The guide said we would take a short walk down along the rift and meet the bus back at the other end. Unfortunately, we lost the guide pretty much as soon as we got off the bus. So we just made sure that we stayed relatively close to a bunch of german speaking people and figured we'd be all right. Alas, when we got to the parking lot, the bus was no longer there. This was how we got introduced to the tourgroup... the 2 Canadians that got lost on their first outing. It turns out that we were following the wrong Germans (we would soon realize that Iceland is just teeming with german tourists so language was no way to recognize the people from our bus). The others must have booted it along the trail at a much faster pace to get out of the rain and after waiting for us at the parking lot for a while they figured we'd gone to another lot or back up the hill and took off. We did finally meet up again but we were feeling pretty sheepish and forlorn by then. And we still didn't have much of a chance to look around at everything so we decided we'd have to come back at the end of the trip.
Rope lava at thingvellir national park
The Oxara River in Thingvellir
Rubby taking shelter from the rain
The geese seem to be enjoying the free shower
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