One of the last posts of my travel to Iceland last year, this was two days before we left the country.
We had a camper van where we stayed the night but for this night I decided that we should book a house and sleep in a proper bed after a long while. There is a farm called Snorrastadir which has several houses on their territory you can book and stay in. They even have a hot tub on the porch but sadly it was very warm, at least not enough to soak in there for 20 minutes. This is the house I'm talking about, overall a really nice place.
From their property, a hiking route also starts which leads to the volcano crater Eldborg. We decided to take that hike. This is located in East Iceland, quite near the Snaefells peninsula.
This is the start of the hike.
The trail to the crater is 2.5 kilometers long. It's mostly on flat ground but the terrain gets a bit rough sometimes and you have plenty of opportunities to twist your ankle on this trail. The crater is situated in a middle of a huge volcanic field it once created. During the hike, you have beautiful landscape views all around.
It doesn't take too long until you see Eldborg in the distance. This is the biggest volcanic crater on this rift and reaches 60 meters in height. This crater is a splatter cone, like the one erupting at the moment on Reykjanes peninsula. A splatter cone means it throws lava in the air which lands in and around the eruption and solidifies, that way the cone is built over some time. Also, liquid lava pours out of the cone and can flow some great distances, hence the volcanic field around it. Eldborg erupted around 5 or 6 thousand years ago.
Even though most of the hike is on flat ground, getting up the top of the crater rim is very steep and rugged.
Here is the panorama picture I took of the whole crater.
And some more pics.
Can't complain about the sunset as well, nice god rays.
The following picture is currently also my PC desktop picture.
Eldborg is not the only crater in this vicinity, it's the biggest but there are several smaller ones too that appeared during the same eruptions. Below are some shots from these.
This hike was absolutely worth it. This is also a place you don't see many tourists. Almost no tourists simply know about this place.
Tomorrow will be the last post of my trip to Iceland. In this post, I visit the new and fresh lava fields created by an eruption that took place last year, quite an experience.
