Day 7 & 8: Northern Iceland- Exploring & White Water Rafting

The past week has FLOWN by, we can't believe we only have a couple of days left in Iceland. We spent the last two days in the northern region in a beautiful town Akureyri at our favourite Air BnB yet (even better than the one in Faskrudsfjordur which we didn't think was possible) I'll post a link below!
https://www.airbnb.ca/rooms/3327494?sug=50

On our way to Akureyri we mostly explored the Myvatn area, which included the Namafjall Hverir mountain and the Krafla lava fields. Hverir is a hot spring area at the base of Namafjall where there is a collection of bubbling "mud pots" and steaming fumaroles. The entire area was a rusty red colour which made it resemble Mars (especially with the steaming craters). The only thing I have to warn you about before going here is the SMELL- once you get to

Iceland you'll start to notice the rotten egg smell from the sulphur when you turn on hot water (we eventually got used to it) but this area was 100x worse than that so prepare yourself. Krafla is one of Iceland's most active volcanoes (29 reported eruptions) and its area includes the Krafla geothermal power station which supplies energy for the surrounding region, the Viti crater (which is MASSIVE- takes 30 minutes just to walk all the way around it), and the Leirhnjukur lava fields.

The last stop of the day was, you guessed it- a waterfall. The Godafoss waterfall was unlike any other (I know I've said that before too) but it's true! There were absolutely no guard railings whatsoever which Caroline and I obviously took advantage of and climbed to the highest, farthest, narrowest point overlooking the falls which almost gave dad a heart attack (but we got some pretty nice pictures out of it).

The next day we were able to relax in the morning and enjoy the view of the mountains from our patio before our white water rafting tour at 3pm. We drove an hour outside of Akureyri to a town called Varmahlid for the rafting where we got set up in full wetsuits, helmets

and life jackets before a bus drove us to the VERY top of a mountain and dropped us off at the top of the East Glacial River. We took on 20km of class 4+ rapids which ended up being around 2 hours on the water. We even went cliff jumping in the middle of the tour which was an added adrenaline rush. It was an awesome experience but we are definitely up for class 5 level rapids next time! Obviously I couldn't bring my phone with me so we only got the one photo at the end.

We also had an even better experience with the Northern Lights our second night in Akureyri since we were up in the mountains and away from any city lights. So we can now officially check that off of our bucket list!

We only have 1.5 days left (our flight leaves at 6:30pm Tuesday night) so we're going to be spending that time in the west region of Iceland (mostly the Snaefellsnes peninsula) before driving back through Reykjavik and to the Keflavik airport.