The funny thing is that if you read wikipedia's entry it almost sounds like they did it on purpose, however according to our driver it happened by accident.
"The lagoon is fed by the water output of the nearby geothermal power plant Svartsengi. Superheated water is vented from the ground near a lava flow and used to run turbines that generate electricity. After going through the turbines, the steam and hot water passes through a heat exchanger to provide heat for a municipal hot water heating system. Then the water is fed into the lagoon for recreational and medicinal users to bathe in."
Apparently their intention was to simply pump the sea water onto the lava rock surrounding the site but because of the composition of the water (primarily silica and sulfur) it formed into pools. Our driver said "thankfully because of the minerals it has a bluish color, if it was grey it would be harder to sell to tourists."
We had a blast there, and while it was a very beautiful site it was basically the stinkiest, nastiest tasting hot tub you'll ever go in. I didn't take my camera because we weren't sure if we'd have a safe place to leave it, plus, I can't imagine anyone actually wanting to see pictures of me in a swim suit.
Here's the picture from wikipedia to give you an idea of what it looked like. More info can be found here
No comments:
Post a Comment