I am kicking myself for leaving my camera charger back home. I’ve been nursing only a few pictures and now I’m totally out of juice. I have more pictures in my head than in the camera. And they are wonderful….
A much cheaper alternative to a guided tour is a local bus to the same or different place. The only hard part is figuring out where and what bus will take you there. I decided on Hveragerði which is a small village to the south. It sits in an active geothermal field and is known for its greenhouses. On the trip to the village you quickly rise over a pass where the iconic moss covered lava fields and snow covered mountains are all around you. Instantly recognizable as Iceland these are the mountains that I’ve seen in hundreds of pictures. With the limited and low angle sunshine you often pass snow and ice despite the +5C temperature. The slopes are covered in ice and snow in a style often seen in the Arctic.
On the other side of the mountain pass are numerous plumes of steam. And then more of them. And then a huge concentration of steam and when we get closer we pass an electrical power station run from that lovely steam. Large insulated pipes snake around the country side. Some feeding the plant from the boreholes and other pipes feeding hot water back to the city and towns. This is where all that hot water and heat is coming from.
If I hadn’t been on a bus I would have stopped my car a dozen times in the first 30 minutes with all the beautiful vistas we were passing. The other passengers seemed to all be locals heading back home and were used to what to me were unusual sites. I had just passed incredibly beautiful countryside that also happens to supply electricity, heat, hot and cold water without a drop of fossil fuel being burned. Well, the bus was burning some to get there.
Hveragerði itself sits in the middle of another geothermal field. Hundreds of steam vents are belching steam from everywhere including in the middle of town. A few houses and shops would use them for “curb appeal” with a cute lava rock formation surrounding a small steam vent. Be careful, that is boiling water and will burn you in a hurry.
Even down at the river there are steam vents on the shore and in the stream. Up on the slopes are a lot more so that makes for a nice hike along black lava trails. The larger vents were capped and piped to collector zones before running back to town. Along the river the pipes were teed at each house to feed it heat and hot water. Eventually the pipes would get much larger as more and more feeder lines joined up. If there were guides they might explain more details of what some of the hardware was all about. All kinds of hissing and other steam noises can be heard from various areas. When you get close enough you can smell that sulfur from deep in the earth. I was essentially walking on top of an active volcano.
Amazing.
Hveragerði, Iceland. Active geothermal zone.
Tags: Clean Energy, Iceland, Travel
