Brendan Doms

After a day in the city we decided to rent a car and head out into the wilderness again, though with a much smaller group: only five of us this time around.

We headed first for Mt. Esja, a mountain that sits across the bay from Reykjavik and keeps watch over the city. It was a short drive, and a hike that took about an hour and a half to reach the peak of 816 meters (2677 feet).

We approach the peak of Mt. Esja.

The views of the city and ocean below us were breathtaking. And the suburban sprawl of Reykjavik was a lot more obvious from this high up vantage point.

Reykjavik and its suburbs spread out below us from the top of Mt. Esja.

Despite having a relatively easy ascent, the climb down was a lot harder for me. Not because of any technical challenge, but because my body had still not fully recovered from the huge trek earlier in the week. Aches and pains I had almost forgotten about re-emerged with a vengeance; it was a slow, excruciating walk down, every step a jolt of fire in my joints. By the end of it I never wanted to see another mountain again.

After taking the afternoon off we still had the rental car, so we headed out to a natural hot river at night. I imagined it would be like Blue Lagoon, but without the tourists.

It was another hour long hike (though much less vertical than Mt. Esja) to the best part of the hot river. There were sheep and a lot of mud along the way. When we finally did arrive it was a spectacular sight: hot rivers heated by the earth meeting streams cooled by the glaciers threw up massive amounts of billowing steam. We picked a winding tributary that had several man-made dams of stone creating shallow pools. The water was quite hot, and the air cool, making a transition in either direction an uncomfortable experience.

The hot river steams a lot where the geothermal heated waters clash with the glacial cooled streams.

Monica was smart enough to bring along a device I hadn't even heard of: a one-time grill. It's a bunch of coals with some lighter fluid in an aluminum tray. It lit easily, and set up on the bank it made the perfect setting on which to roast some marshmallows for a dessert of smores while soaking in the river. Although used to roasting marshmallows over a fire, smores themselves are a foreign idea to Icelanders: they cocked their heads and asked us about them quizzically. We also never found evidence that true graham crackers exist in Iceland, and had to deal with improvised substitutes by crackers of a lesser quality.

The camera flash catches the steam rising from the hot river as the sun sets.

The heat soaked into my muscles and alleviated most of the soreness that had been plaguing me since our earlier excursion. It seemed to rejuvenate all of us, and the hike back was a good twenty minutes faster with the extra spring in our step. It was a truly unique experience to watch the sunset at midnight while bathing outdoors in a steaming river at that high of a latitude.