Day 5 - The Blue Lagoon and on to London

Day 5, July 8, 2013:

Well, time to take our leave, we really regret that we didn’t have more time to circumnavigate the island but you really need a week to do so.  We decided to make our last stop before flying out the most popular tourist trap in Iceland the Blue Lagoon.  So here’s the deal, Iceland because it sits right on top of the Mid-Atlantic rift is volcanic, really volcanic, which means it has lots of heat.  Drill a hole down almost anywhere and pump down sea water and you make high pressure steam which you can use to generate electricity and heat your buildings.  But once you are done with the hot sea water, what do you do with it?  Well Iceland also has a lot of unused land (it is the most sparsely populated European country), lava fields with little else on it.  So just dump the left over water onto the surface where it will make a lagoon.  This is exactly what they did at the Svartsengi Geothermal Power station just outside of the main Airport into Iceland.  Here five power plants generate a quarter of all Iceland’s power simply by pumping sea water about a km down into an active fault line to generate high pressure steam.  Once they are done with the steam and the highly mineralized water has cooled they dump it into a huge holding pond or lagoon set in deep black volcanic basalts.  The warm waters – which average 37 degrees Celsius are rich in silica which precipitates our and coats all the surrounding rocks with a glassy white coating and makes the water in the lagoon look milky.  As well the year round warm water has blue green algae growing in it which gives the water a lovely powder blue colour.  Voila, a tourist mecca with beautiful warm ‘healing’ mineral waters in an other-worldly location. Once people reported skin ailments being cured by bathing in the waters you have the makings of a spa.  Now they call these public baths because anyone of course can go, provided you pay the fee to enter which, let me tell you, is steep! I suspect the lagoon brings in more money than the power plant ever will.  For the four of us to simply go in and steep for a couple of hours we paid 135 euros or about 200 dollars and that’s only because Duncan is still considered a child!  The place is filled with bus tours and unless you have really deep pockets to pay for the exclusive guest privileges it is crowded and you need to queue up in the locker rooms.  I will say though that the waters were soothing, although rough on any open cuts or unprotected hair (it feels like straw when you get out), and the silica mud which you can rub all over yourself was fun, but really I don’t get the attraction.  The public pools in Reykjavik and other towns are cheap, clean, well-managed and just wonderful for a swim or a soak and only cost a few bucks.  I wasn’t disappointed with the experience but the sticker shock places this attraction at the bottom of my list.  My advice, on your way in or out of Iceland, take the 15 minute detour from the airport, stop your car at the side of the road, take a couple of pictures because it really is a stunning sight and move on – this really is a tourist trap.

The rest of the day was uneventful - we returned our vehicle, boarded our Iceland Air flight and headed to London where we got to see something we hadn’t seen in almost a week – the setting sun.  We met Mary Rose’s cousin Martin who graciously ferried us from Heathrow to Glen Iris on Caddington Common where we will be based for the next couple of weeks.  We had a lovely late night supper in the garden complete with birthday cake for Steve and laughed and chatted until midnight.  We are really looking forward to a down day tomorrow to get sorted out then it is off to Paris for a mad 36 hour whirlwind tour!