(Kingston, Ontario, Canada)

I was flipping through my photos from Iceland when I came across this series of pictures from our trip to the mud cauldrons, fumaroles and boiling earth at Námaskarð.  It was easy to remember why we were so impressed on our trip to Iceland!

It was like nothing else I have seen on earth.  We’d visited hot springs and geysers on our way to northern Iceland…but nothing like this.  This was a full-on assault on the senses:  shockingly vivid colours, offensive sulphuric odours everywhere, a complete lack of plant or animal life, the earth bubbling and belching at your feet, and steam hissing as it gets ejected from the bowels of the earth.

Actually, it doesn’t feel like “earth” at all.  The area has the desolation and lifelessness of the moon, while everything else feels like the underworld…except that we saw it under blue skies and with the temperature at a comfortable 13’C.   It popped up without warning, too:  we had just descended through the Námaskarð mountain pass and there it was!

I’ve been to some dangerous places before but this one had a heightened element of danger.  If you wandered off the marked paths or stepped over a thin rope, you could fall into the scalding earth.

I was glad that we had a wise guide to show us around the place and make sure we didn’t get into any trouble.  As with many Icelanders, Siggi had some relatives in Canada and seemed genuinely happy to have some Canadians on his tour.   He also had the expertise to know which bizarre substances were safe to touch:  you can see him handling some warm sulphuric matter in one of these photos.

I could have taken pictures here all day; as it was, all of today’s photos were taken within about 30 minutes.  Yes, this was just one of many destinations on our one-day tour of the Lake Mývatn region: I’ll be reporting on the other spectacular sites in future blogs.  I think it remains the most prolific day of sightseeing that I have ever done.

Stay tuned for more from spectacular northern Iceland!