From the south of the country, we headed back up toward Selfoss before heading into the interior a little way as we were heading to the Big Three tourist destinations - Geysir, Gulfoss and Pingvellir.

I found this are less visually appealing than the south which was pretty stunning, but anything that has hot water shooting out of the ground randomly was probably going to be fun. Also, there were a few more people up here and I thought they may have Puffin supplies.

(Puffin Update: We'd visited some cliffs and a lighthouse (Dyrholaey) in the South with a bunch of nesting birds and discovered then that there are no Puffins in Iceland in the winter - they return in April - so it seemed like we'd only find Puffin would be in some pre-packed form or other - Frozen Puffin nuggets, or Puffin biltong or some such. A quick scan of the Klaustur supermarket frozen section didn't help.)

OK - so I found Geysir a little disappointing. I suppose you can't plan where the geothermal spouts will appear but it was a pretty dull location in a land not really consisting of many dull locations - bad luck all round. Geysir itself stopped working a long time back after tourists like us chucked too much rubbish into it. But Strokkur was active and didn't disappoint in 'spouting hot water'-terms. More interesting than the spout of water is the hole into the bowels of the earth where the water comes from - which was quite beautiful and also mysterious, as of course you couldn't get near it because it was spouting hot jets of steam and water.

Gulfoss, on the other hand, was great! It was widely dissed in the guide books. It's a waterfall though, so I won't bang on about it - you get the idea. At Gulfoss, we met 4 scousers who were complaining about paying a tenner for two chicken breasts in a supermarket.

Which brings me to guide books. I like the Lonely Planet guides, though I prefer Rough Guides, but I wish they'd stop being so bloody cynical about anything remotely mainstream. Conformance is not a weakness - you don't have to hike round Iceland (or any other country) on a specific type of donkey before staying at a commune staffed only by blind martians to understand or gape in awe at the wonder of a place.

That night we drove to Fludir and stayed there. Cunningly we had a drink and surveyed the menu before committing to a table in the restaurant (only 2 other people in the hotel). This time, the prices were around 100 quid a head (no booze), so we skipped and ate Doritos with chilli cheese and watched TV.