We did it! Sarah and I hiked to the Reykjadalur hot spring.
I mean, I did it before when I visited Iceland with Jeff in 2017. See Active adventures in Iceland: Sam hikes to a hot river and gets her heart rate up in the process.
And Sarah’s certainly in good hiking shape.
But it was seven years ago that I last did the hike when my knees still worked. Since then, I’ve had both knees replaced, and though I’m gradually getting back to longer walks and walking up hills, I really wasn’t sure how it would go. I was feeling a bit more confident after all the Rome walking last week.
Here’s the basic run down of the hike from the trails app on my phone.
It’s a pretty spectacular hike. Lots of steam and waterfalls. Here’s some photos from the hike:
Not everybody walked. Some people did the trail on bike or on horseback. The cycling looked terrifying for me, but I imagine for skilled mountain bikers, it was all fun. Here’s a photo of one, but they were in groups moving quickly across the ridges. The people on horses were getting lessons from a guide. Even for me, a long-time cyclist, the horses looked more tempting.
I went and reread Susan’s post Horse Magic in Iceland. I love the Icelandic horses. They’re so beautiful.
Here’s some photos from the hot river itself.
There were wooden platforms to change behind and lots of space to soak in the warm water. It felt delicious after the long walk.
It’s not a technically challenging walk aside from a few ridge sections and bits with large rocks. I had fun jumping across some streams. We both followed the signs telling us to stay away from the very hot water bubbling out of the ground.
My advice if you do it: Bring a towel, flip flops or water shoes, water, and snacks. Now that said we had water but not the other things, and it was still worth doing. Oh, and either go early or maybe late at night. By mid afternoon, it gets pretty busy with tourists from all over the world.
I found the walk back the hardest bit. Walking downhill is challenging. I was also very ready for a snack!
After I had the world’s best grilled cheese sandwich and hot chocolate.
In the airport, I spotted a t-shirt that summed up my feelings. Yay!
But it was only available in white and white t-shirts don’t last that long in my life. Luckily, I found it online here and it comes in different colours and in a sweater version.
Here’s the Google Fit version of our day.
Yay indeed!
