Laugarvellir Hot Natural Pot

Hot water does not seep into this pool — it falls into it. A geothermal stream drops over a rock lip into a natural tub roughly a metre deep, and you can sit with the warm water landing on your shoulders. The pool runs at about 36–38 °C; one visitor measured the falling water at 40 °C. A glacial river runs ten metres away, and that is where people go for the cold half of the routine. On the bank stands a small hut, once home to an Icelandic family in the 19th century. Stuðlagil canyon is just over an hour away by road, which makes the two an easy pair on an eastern itinerary.

• 4x4 only. The last stretch is an F road — bumpy, stony, holed in places. A two-wheel-drive sedan will not do it.
• Check your rental contract. F roads may be excluded from your agreement, and damage on them is then yours to pay.
• Google Maps loses the final track. It has no name. Carry on past the point Maps gives you to the Hafrahvammagljúfur signpost; the track is opposite it.
• Facilities are basic. A compost toilet, a changing room and huts with a table indoors. No drinking water source within 5 km.
• Not a winter trip. A winter attempt without the right vehicle and experience ends in a stuck car and a costly recovery.

No bus comes here, so you drive. From the north the approach is F910, a long run on F roads; routing instead via the Kárahnjúkar hydropower plant cuts the F-road time, even though Google Maps calls it the slower option. Reckon on about 20 km/h on that surface, not the 60 km/h the app assumes. There are two car parks: one before the river, with a pedestrian bridge across it, and one on the far side reached by a shallow ford.

Better: July and the summer months.

Avoid: winter.

The pool changes little through the year; the drive changes completely. In summer a standard 4x4 SUV handles the track, and the water sits at a comfortable temperature for a long soak. In winter the same route strands part-time visitors, and being pulled out costs real money.