One of the climaxes of our trip to Iceland was visiting the famous Gullfoss waterfall attracting landscape and travel photographers from all over the world every year. It happened so that we were extremely lucky and had much fun capturing the superstar destination. This is how it all happened:
On one sunny Icelandic morning we drove to the west from Reykjavik. Due to the inexperienced navigator, or the happy
chance of her inexperience, the chosen route was not a touristic one, as it later appeared. It lead us through the golden, green, red fields of total desertion our eyes had never seen before and glorious snowy mountains that never left our view! The deeper we went into the island, the more we felt the freezing wind. It was +2 degrees, but the wind made it feel like -10. Between the golden and red fields we came across a power plant on sulphur springs, a remote farm with friendly furry horses and a lake. Majestic half frozen, but yet alive lake, with the pebble shore and the voice from the past, from ancestors who enjoyed its views and bore its freeze.
The voice from the past was heard many times again, but especially when passing between red and green fields. There we came across a small cave which at the beginning of 20th century hosted a Norwegian couple who brought to life three children and
all in that cave with no other man within 50 km radius! Having turned back from the cave to our car, in that complete remoteness we saw 2 white geese happily walking around the green field. How the two comrades appeared, which winds brought them there and what for remains a mystery.
At the moment when we almost lost the hope of moving into the right direction and the first signs of the panic started to shape out in our brains, we saw the Geysers and people waiting for their outbursts. That meant Gullfoss must have been near. And after about half an hour of driving again in a complete desertion all of a sudden with the bus packed with Chinese and French tourists there it was, the renowned waterfall, all on our palm.
Our first attempt to capture it with out cameras was pretty nasty. We got all twenty fingers along with our noses frozen off by the wind. Besides, we were wet from the waterfall which made the task even more difficult. And the light was neither our side giving a
dim shadowed light one could not use even for amateur photos. So we just enjoyed the view as much as we could. Tried to catch the mentioned voice of the past and went to have some soup in the only café-shop nearby.
The soup was delicious and warm!!
And overall it was a good decision to stop and give it a time.
We had almost finished having our lunch when we noticed the strays of sun lighting up the Gullfoss.
There were no more words needed. We immediately equipped
ourselves once more, put scarves tightly around our faces against the strong wind and wet drops and went down again to challenged the waterfall once more. This time we went much further. Crossed the chain denoting the unsafe territory and went right onto the chest of Gulfoss to take its full beauty. And we did it! We did it!!
It is amazing why people having put themselves into a highly uncomfortable dangerous situation feel satisfaction. But this happened to us too. The extreme caused by the freeze, wind, wetness, risk and the experience of it all brought us immense happiness. Surely not only the process, but the result matters too. We had seen and captured the beauty of the waterfall, a half frozen Gullfoss and done it when she was so unwilling to be captured!
