ICELAND | Kevlavík – Bridge Between Continents – Reykjanesviti Lighthouse – Reykjanestá – Gunnuhver Hot Springs – Grindavík – Reykjavík

Iceland in November and December? Really? I saw an Icelandair promotion on Instagram which I couldn’t resist. The catch? It had to be late November to the start of December 2022. But I could – easily – enthuse Oriol to come along for a road trip in the South and West of Iceland.

After an uneventful flight to Kevlavík International Airport, we picked up our rental car at Hertz. We opted for an all-wheel-drive SUV. It was a Hyundai Tucson Plug-In Hybrid. It had studded winter tyres.

Our road trip booking with Iceland Tours not only included accommodation and the car, but also a mobile WiFi device. Something by Huawei.

Although it was getting dark early -a running theme this trip – we decided to explore a bit before going to our hotel in Reykjavík.

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1: Bridge Between Continents

The lava-scarred Reykjanes Peninsula lies on one of the world’s major plate boundaries, the Mid Atlantic Ridge. The Eurasian and North American tectonic plates are continuously drifting apart with great forces under the gaping rifts. As the plates diverge, linear fractures, known as fissures form due to stresses created by the tension that builds up as the plates move away from each other.

The Bridge between two continents at Sandvík is a small footbridge over a major fissure which provides clear evidence of the presence of a diverging plate margin. The bridge was built as a symbol for the connection between Europe and North America.

2: Reykjanesviti Lighthouse

Reykjanesvíti lighthouse was first build in 1878. The current building was raised in 1907–1908 and, save from having gas installed in 1929, has remained little-changed since. Due to the erosion of the cliff on which it stands, however, it is expected that a new building will be needed in the next few years.

3: Reykjanestá

Reykjanestá is fairly easy to find by following the signs. You have to drive through an area with a geothermal power plant, which as a bonus has some cool compositions if you want to photograph pipelines and steam.

Furthermore there’s a few rather large hotspots, where you can see boiling mud and steam fiss out of the ground.

4: Gunnuhver Hot Springs

The area is collectively named Gunnuhver after a female ghost. She had caused great disturbance until a priest set a trap for her and she fell into the spring. This happened about 400 years ago.

The mud pools take form where steam from boiling geothermal reservoir water emanates and condenses and mixes with surface water. Accompanying gases such as carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulphide make the water acid. This causes alteration of the fresh lava rock to clay.

As it was now really dark, we barely saw a thing.

5: Grindavík

We figured out we would not make it to Reykjavík in time to check in at Hotel Cabin and a nice place to eat on a Saturday night in time. We rightly guessed Icelanders dine early. Si we stopped at Grindavík.

Grindavík is a fishing town on the Southern Peninsula (Suðurnes) of Iceland not far from the tuya Þorbjörn. A tuya is a flat-topped, steep-sided volcano formed when lava erupts through a thick glacier or ice sheet. They are rare worldwide, being confined to regions which were covered by glaciers and had active volcanism during the same period.

It is one of the few cities with a harbour on this coast. Most of the inhabitants work in the fishing industry. The Blue Lagoon, Grindavík’s premiere attraction, is located 5 kilometres or 3 miles from the town centre.

We had dinner at Bryggjan. When I say dinner… well at that time of night we could only get some soup, half-open sandwiches and cakes. We had lobster soup and two sandwiches here.

It tasted nice, for sure. But we found it expensive for basically soup and bread. We feared it would be like this the whole trip. Luckily not.