After a yummy breakfast including dairy products from the cows I saw milked yesterday. Pretty much the first farm to plate sort of feeling we've found. No aurora during the night, despite the phone alerts...too much cloud!

So, we decided to check the visitor centre and souvenir shops nearby before setting off on the drive to the west today. So glad we did. At the visitor centre we learned about just how special Myvatn is. It is the most fertile freshwater lake in europe. The water is shallow enough that photosynthetic plants grow in the full water column. The rest of the biomass is largely reliant on midges, of which there are 7 varieties with only 1 that bites. This combined with tiny freshwater crayfish are apparently it! There are some miniature versions of fish that also live in the lake, although the river that it drains carries the highest concentration of spawning salmon on earth.

Not content with that being the only unique feature of the area, unsurprisingly, volcanic features dot the landscape. Nearby, there are a number of what at first glance look like small volcanic cone/craters. These are in fact not volcanos at all, but represent 80% of the world total number of these phenomenon known as pseudo craters. These occur when magma from an erupting volcano seeps underneath the aquifer of the ground water causing it to build up in pressure/steam. Unlike other geysirs though, it doesn't just shoot the water out, it actually comes out under sufficient pressure that it sprays the overlying scoria up into the air, landing in the pattern more reminiscent of a typical cone eruption. No magma makes the surface.

There are also vent fissures where magma has formed around a superheated water vent (more typically associated with undersea mid ocean ridge vents seen on national geographic) when the lake level was higher and during an eruption event. Once the magma around the vent moves away and the water level drops, you get these above ground former water/steam vents (see photos). These are unique to the area.

The extremely polite and knowledgeable young bloke that explained all this to us, recommended we take a walk through some of these formations at a nearby area, which we did. Dodging the obligatory rude German tourists this time, we strolled around these pillars/formations. Quite eerie.

Next stop was a nearby volcano that was partly responsible for these formations some 3000 years ago. A really cool looking, black sand and tuff lava bomb sided volcano that I couldn't resist climbing despite still suffering with a really persistent virus (night time cough, general aches, very very sticky goo coming out...gross). So, up the 900m I went along a steep path on the side to reach the rim. Then, another 1000m along the rim to the highest point of the crater rim. Extreme scenery and not too bad with the vertigo as the rim was quite wide and the angle of slope wasn't too great so it didn't sneak up on me as much as it has elsewhere. The wind at the top wasn't great but once back off that section it was better again. Couldn't find any obsidian though, boo.

Back to the car and off we headed towards our accommodation, a bit of a drive away. I do find driving in the mid afternoon to be a particularly challenging thing to do. One lane each way with not many places to pull in, still with a slightly uneasy feeling with cars coming on what my brain still screams is the wrong side of the road, not made better when a number of other drivers (I assume tourists) drive/drift well towards the centre line as you are oncoming. I think, to minimise road closures with snow/ice, the roads are often raised from the surrounding terrain, so a slip off would be a major incident. Hmm.

We made a stop in very windy conditions at another very pretty waterfall before heading off the number 1 northwards to the town of Saudarkrokur in an area that is best known for sheep farming and abattoir, fish farming and skiing in the winter time. Nice to be off the tourist route and our place tonight had a hot spring bath that we hopped into before enjoying our home prepared 2 minute noodles and hot dogs for tea. The hotel has been there since 1820 which by building standards here is very old.

We've been really surprised by how little visible evidence of buildings, churches, remains of houses etc that are any more than about 100 years old. People have lived here for 1100 years and there is genuinely so little evidence of more than 80 years anywhere that we can see. It also looks like, other than horses and perhaps sheep for a few months of the year, that farming is mostly indoor housing of animals year round, with farms using manure as fertiliser for grasses which they cut and store as silage (hay would never dry out) and feed to the shedded animals. I reckon it is more to do with the softness of the ground and that after 1 year of heavy cattle on it, it would take too long to recover. Even those very few fields we've seen that have had tractors on them, it makes the ground very broken/muddy etc. Ethically, animals housed inside for their whole lives, I guess it's a matter of scale...fences replace walls out of necessity for us to have the products they produce. I reckon given the nature of the coastline here, that fisheries and fish farming ought to be the focus for feeding themselves and/or exports.

Anyway, tired tonight and hoping for a good rest and that I start to come good from this very annoying virus that we've both got a dose of.