Namaskard ...#6 Cruise Diary

Cruising Greenland, Iceland and Norway #6

Continuing my 'Jewels of the North' tour on Iceland. 

28th August 2017

Namaskard, Iceland

The last stop of the 'Jewels of the North' tour was at Namaskard  - an other worldly steamy scene in a landscape that makes the word barren somehow wrong. Barren for me in Scotland means very little vegetation covering the landscape and what exists clings low on the soil, whether sloping or flat.

Over the area approaching Namaskard the limited vegetation petered to none and what we drove into was an area of bare, grit covered rocks. Reddish, light brownish, greyish - it was a sort of sludgy sandy rock covering slight rises but the upland was nothing at all like Dimmuborgir, and nothing at all like the pseudo craters at Lake Myvatn either.

Namaskard, Iceland

The land beneath my feet was literally bubbling, steam rising from cracks on the surface with little rivulets a bit like you sometimes see on a sandy Scottish beach after the tide has receded. There the similarity ends because there was going to be no paddling in this water since it was literally boiling hot water and the drifting vapours around the area were pure, smelly steam. 

There was a slight drizzle dampening me from above which may have contributed to the natural heat of the area being less than it would have been on a sunny or clear day but any bubbling water around Namaskard wouldn't entice anyone to have a dip here. 

Namaskard, Iceland

Mud pots, steam vents, sulphur deposits, boiling springs (solfataras and fumaroles if you are geologically minded) are part of the description for this tourist stop.

Going to Iceland really shouldn’t be done without seeing some of these fabulous geological wonders. But make sure you're wearing decent boots or shoes because the warm sludgy grit clings like mad in the same way that concrete and mortar mixes do on a building site. 

Again, the area covered by this tourist stop is small and is constrained by where it is safe to tread. Very basic low rope barriers indicate the best pathways around the mud pots. These indicated routes are changed daily, according to the tour guide, and probably even within the day, to ensure the safety of the wandering sightseers.

The colours and smells at Namaskard are so different to those at Dimmuborgir.

Yes- the sulphur smell is definitely potent like a hundred stink bombs have simultaneously gone off and the muddy colours are like another world.

The stop at Namaskard was fairly short, thankfully because it wouldn't have been too healthy to breathe in the delightful sulphurous air for too long!

I’ve seen lava flows and bubbling lava ‘pots’ on Mount Etna, Scicily but they were on what was essentially a green clad mountain. The area around Namaskard is a barren, low rise rocky surface with a totally different vista.

Our ‘Jewels of the North’ tour was quite a long one but very well worth it!

Check in soon for #7 Cruise Diary- Norway -first stop Alesund which was immensely different from Namaskard but that's what travel is all about. It's about appreciating the huge differences that exist across our planet. 

Slainthe!