Trip to Iceland day 13 / 2022-05-06

We woke up in Eldhestar hotel and had breakfast. My wife and son had booked a horse ride for the afternoon, so we had some hours before that started and visited Hveragerði.

The area around Hveragerði has had several serious earthquakes. The library and shops building had an exhibition on the 2008 earthquake with pictures and stories from eyewitnesses. The building that this is all in has a scary detail of its own: during construction a huge crack in the earth was found right between the foundations. The decision was made to not build the 4 floor tower nearby and adapt the building to deal with earthquakes. Still the 2008 earthquake caused damage.

To the north-east of Hveragerði is an area with lots of geothermal activity which can be hiked easily.

Geothermal activity around Hveragerði

We also visited the geothermal park inside Hveragerði. According to the descriptions some parts of this park have changed as a result of that 2008 earthquake.

In the afternoon was the horse ride. My son and wife had a great time with very easygoing Icelandic horses. I decided to drive to the coast and have a look there. It turned out this was a non-tourist area so the coast was just some harbour areas and industrial fish handling.

After all that it was a relatively short drive to Reykjavik. We wanted to visit the city the day after so we drove to our place to stay. We went from driving on the 2-lane ring road near Hveragerði to huge highways near Reykjavik. But with only 1 serious correction we managed to find our apartment: Stay Apartments Bolholt where we made dinner and went to bed somewhat early.