It was our third day in Iceland and we had now acclimatized to the 10am sunrise! We left our AirBnb and realised it had snowed overnight so whilst Stu worked on getting the car off the drive – Tom, Izzy and I went and took lots of photos!

^{The lane outside our AirBnb – good job we had a snow truck!}

We had planned to drive the Golden Circle today and our first stop was going to be Gulloss. We were wondering what the roads would be like – they were absolutely fine!

Gullfoss

We arrived at Gullfoss, put our crampons on (really appreciating the fact Stu had thought to buy them for us!) and headed down the trail to see the falls. The river was very icy but you could see the water flowing under the ice. Also the sun was very low in the sky which created a shadow over Gullfoss.

^Gullfoss

^{A very icy river!}

Strokkur Geyser

We then drove down the road to Strokkur Geyser which was literally just 10 minutes away. We hiked up the trail where we past lots of little bubbling mud pools before we reached the Geyser. Strokkur erupts every 6-10 minutes so we didn’t need to wait long before we saw it. We then stayed for about half an hour watching lots more eruptions!

^{Strokkur erupting}

Thingvellir National Park

We then had a 45 minute drive to Thingvellir National Park – the boundary between the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates. It is one of the only places in the world where the movement of tectonic plates can be witnessed above sea level.

^{Walking between two tectonic plates and collecting snow for a snowball fight.}

We really enjoyed our time at Thingvellir but we were about an hour from home and wanted to return before it got dark. As we drove home the wind started to pick up and was blowing all the snow across the road quite quickly. We felt very happy to have a snow plough just a few cars in front!

When we returned to Hella we had the most beautiful sunset. There was also an aurora alert in place and we were hopeful of seeing the northern lights due to the clear skies.

^{Sunset in Hella}

We kept going outside every 15 minutes but couldn’t see anything. At about 8pm we noticed a mist in the sky so knew they were there.

It was so cold you could not stay out for long. We assumed that was it for the evening but about two hours later the aurora tracker started sending notifications. This time due to the freezing cold Stu pulled the car out onto the lane so we could sit inside it and wait. Eventually we noticed a haze in the sky and the northern lights really appeared. With your eyes they looked like swirls of white mist but when we photographed them with the iPhone the colours came out. We enjoyed the display for about 45 minutes before heading off to bed.

^{The Northern Lights in Hella}