Reykjadalur, the Valley of Steam

Speaking of people in Iceland being incredibly kind:

My German friend Lisa joined me for the Reykjavík part of the trip, and on our first day there, we met up with Sölvi and his cousin Atli, friends of a friend through couchsurfing. We chatted a bit about this and that, then I mentioned how much I wanted to go on this one particular hike, to a place where boiling hot springs feed into a cold river.

Oh, we were thinking of going there this week too, Sölvi and Atli said. We can take you. When do you want to go? Tonight?

True to their word, they came and picked us up about 9 p.m. (It never truly gets dark in the summer, remember, so to an Icelander there's nothing strange about first setting out on a hike in the evening.) We packed up some provisions, then drove out of town to an area called Reykjadalur, a fantastical landscape of steam billowing out of holes in the ground and muddy puddles bubbling because the water comes out of the ground at the boiling point. Oh, and sheep. Iceland has lots of sheep.


Atli even brought eggs for us to boil in the hot springs – place eggs in some kind of net or bag, submerge in boiling puddle, wait 10 minutes – and we had an impromptu picnic by the river. At midnight.

Then we stripped down to our bathing suits in the very brisk Icelandic nighttime air and jumped into the water. Looks like a river, feels like a hot tub! And there is nothing quite like a natural hot tub in the open air in the middle of nowhere in the stillness of an Icelandic night.

By the time we stumbled all the way back to the car in the darkest part of the never-quite-dark night, around 1 or 2 a.m., I was so tired I could barely talk, but there was no question it was an experience-of-a-lifetime kind of thing. "I can't believe this is my first day in Iceland!" Lisa kept saying.

Sölvi and Atli, meanwhile, do that hike once a month or so (and it's much nicer in winter, says Atli, when you can lie in the river and see the stars, and sometimes the northern lights). You start to see why people might choose to stay in this cold, rainy, far-flung corner of the Earth.