Geysers at (10pm) dusk

On our first day in Iceland, we visited one of the most popular tourist destinations, Þingvellir, in the early afternoon: peak visiting time. The parking lot was filled with white rental SUVs (including ours), the paths crawled with people (including us), and the sunlight was harsh for photography. Since the days are 20 hours long, with sunrise at 3:30am and sunset at 11:15, we decided that on our next outing, we’d go in the evening, when the light would be softer and maybe our destination wouldn’t be so crowded.

After dinner, we drove from Reykjavík to Haukadalur Valley in southwestern Iceland. We drove across a landscape devoid of trees, with the only relief being volcanic hills and rocks covered with moss and lichen. The haphazard piles of rubble scattered across the lava fields make it look like a massive construction site, but it’s just what the landscape looks like; as my husband described it, it looks like the earth barfed rocks everywhere.

As we drove across the open land, we saw a rainbow beneath distant clouds. We arrived to the geysers around 9:30pm. The earth steamed.

Mosses and flowers grew in little hillocks upwind of some of the steaming pools, where they were constantly inundated with warm moisture.

The light was definitely soft, and it was also low. I should have brought a tripod, but I tried to pack light for this trip. Next time.

One geyser in the park, Strokkur, erupts every 5-20 minutes. As we walked the path toward the large grouping of geysers, we heard Strokkur gurgle then saw it erupt from the path. Once we arrived to its edge, we waited for its next eruption. And waited. And after 20 minutes, it blew again.

Between Strokkur’s ventings, we walked around to see more pools, including the beautiful blue of these deep pools. The color was hard to pick up in the low light, but it was gorgeous.

Fewer than 5 minutes after Strokkur erupted for us, it erupted again, then again, as we walked around to other steaming pools. We headed back to it at about 10:00pm for one last wait before packing it in for the night under a still light sky. We only waited a few minutes this time.

A side benefit of our trip over to the geysers was the snow-capped mountain that was always in view beyond the steaming pools; we watched it turn pink in the late-night light. I also loved the lupine that covered the hillside up toward the slowly dropping sun.

We headed home into an 11:15 sunset, and arrived home around midnight, 45 minutes after the sun dropped behind the horizon, but still bright enough to see just fine, as if the sun were just about to rise again. Which it did in a little over three hours.