The Blue Lagoon is basically a man made dam or pond of waste water from the nearby geothermal power station. It was really just that from 1976 until 1981 when locals started bathing in it. It wasn't until 1992 that the Blue Lagoon company was started. The fact of the matter is, the company have been able to turn something which is effectively a waste, a byproduct of a geothermal power station, in a very remote area into one of the most popular tourist attractions in Iceland - and I must admit they've done it bloody well!
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| The nearby geothermal power station amongst the lava fields |
I'm writing this 6 weeks after visiting the pool and spending the best part of a month in Iceland, and seeing the top attractions like the northern lights, waterfalls, fjords, snow, black sandy beaches, glacier's etc... and visiting similar thermal spa's in Myvartn. The Blue Lagoon will go down as one of the true highlights and after experiencing it, and paying what we paid I definitely don't regret it, but would recommend doing a couple of things differently.
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| Complementary face masks. |
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| A good example of the crowd in the background. |
The water is consistently warm. Some parts of the lagoon are warmer then others, which is good, but there isn't any cold or hot pockets of water there to surprise you like we experienced in the Myvartn thermal spa. You can sort of wade through the water until you find an area which is at a temperature you are happy with. One area near an inlet was hot, actually too hot then near the lagoon entry it was comfortable but comparably cold.
The temperature on our day outside was -6 degrees Celsius, which created a lot of steam. This effect made the whole experience feel a lot more personal and secluded. We sometimes could only see a few meters in front of us, so we couldn't really judge if there were many people around, and it gave us a really cozy feeling.
The lagoon was bigger then I thought too, there was plenty of space for you to float around, sit on the edges etc. Some people we have spoke to after asked if it was over populated, but because you have to book tickets to visit, the company only allow a certain amount of reservations per hour, per which manages to keep a steady flow of people throughout the day.
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| Not the life guards we're used to in Australia. |
What we would do differently:
Get the standard package - we got the premium which included a towel, bath robe, some slippers and a complementary drink in the lagoon. To have these options you basically pay twice the price of a standard package. The change rooms are about 15m from the lagoon so you wear the robe and shoes for all of about 1 minute, and knowing what we know now we could have just taken our own towels.
Roll visiting the Lagoon into a day with a hire car and visit the surrounding area as well if you can. Just watch the drinking because the blood alcohol limit is 0.05 in iceland. But because of the heat of the water the frothies will knock you around.
Roll visiting the Lagoon into a day with a hire car and visit the surrounding area as well if you can. Just watch the drinking because the blood alcohol limit is 0.05 in iceland. But because of the heat of the water the frothies will knock you around.
We got the shuttle bus out to the Lagoon which was comfortable with wifi and easy, but offset the price of the bus into a rental car for some extra sight seeing and you'll be laughing.
Tossing up whether or not to do the Blue Lagoon? We highly recommend it!
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| Overlooking the bar on the left and what we could see of the lagoon from the restaurant. We got a cheeky hot chocolate on our way out. |
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