On Sunday, we left Iceland and planet Earth behind. Perhaps the solar system too.

The landscapes we saw that day were unlike anything we’d experienced along our trip to that point — which is saying a lot, considering that everything we’d seen so far had almost defied belief.

We were a crew of four that day: me, Haider, Julia the German couchsurfer, and Ryan, an English guy that we’d met in the hostel the night before. Ryan had also just reached Akureyri, but he was there for good, having landed a job working at a nearby shipyard.

First up on our itinerary was Goðafoss, or the waterfall of the gods — setting us up perfectly for the otherworldly experiences of the day.

We parked in the parking lot and began the 10-minute trek out to the waterfall, but I was transfixed long before we reached it. The water that came tumbling down the streambed from the falls was a gorgeous milky blue color, contrasting so starkly against the rocky reddish brown surroundings that it almost appeared luminescent.

We hiked up to the waterfall with many detours, exploring offshoots of the path that led to neat little caverns carved out over the millenia by the power of the water’s flow. It was early in the day and I was a little hungover from the previous night’s fun, so I found myself in a contemplative mood. I stood over the falls and got lost in thought, watching the unfathomable volume of water pour down the side of the cliff.

Though not terribly tall, Goðafoss is wide and majestic, split into pieces by large boulders that interrupt its flow. The river that leads up to it is shallow and dotted with large rocks. I was fairly certain that I could have walked all the way across it, picking my way carefully from one boulder to the next, but as Ryan pointed out, the consequences of misjudging it would have been a little more unpleasant than I was prepared to face at the time.

We left the gods’ falls behind and headed out to Mývatn — aka hell and heaven and another planet all at once. Haider and I had been a little on the fence about visiting Mývatn, since all we really knew about it was the unpleasant experience of our friend Rikka (now’s probably a good time to plug her blog, Deviating the Norm — a huge inspiration for this one!). According to her account, the area had been so infested with biting, swarming flies that she and her companions had to get back in the car after only a few minutes and flee.

Considering that she’d been there at the same time of year, almost exactly a year prior, we had pretty low expectations for Mývatn (which literally means “midge lake” in Icelandic, referring to its infernal gnats). If it hadn’t been for our companions’ enthusiasm and its close proximity to Akureyri, we definitely would have skipped it altogether.

I am so, so glad we didn’t.

We approached the huge lake, driving a bit aimlessly as we didn’t know where to stop and start exploring. Then, from across its shores we noticed a bizarre blip on the landscape — a massive crater called Hverfjall. “Actually,” I informed our friends, “according to the guidebook it’s what’s known as a pseudocrater.” This means that it wasn’t created by an impact or an eruption, but rather from trapped steam exploding upward through a layer of lava, almost like a giant bubble popping up from the earth.

We found a trail map that said we could drive right up to the side of the crater, so we decided to make that our first stop. The Sad Car, now named Veronica, tore up the dirt road leading to Hverfjall with daredevil Ryan behind the wheel. None of us knew the old gal could move like that!

The crater got weirder and weirder as we approached — completely composed of dull gray volcanic rock and so crazily massive.

We noticed tiny specks descending the side of it, which turned out to be humans. There was a path leading all the way up to the top! Excitedly, we parked Veronica and began the ascent, marching up a path carved at a steep angle along the side of Hverfjall.

Though short, the going was tough, and Julia and I found ourselves huffing and puffing along as the boys scuttled quickly along up ahead of us. Luckily, every brief pause to take a breath also yielded new, incredible views and photo-ops of the lake and surrounding countryside as we climbed.

Finally, we reached the top, and looking down into the crater was perhaps the strangest part. It’s a full kilometer in diameter, making the scope of it pretty mind-boggling. I looked down into it and could barely comprehend what I was seeing.

It didn’t make any sense that it’d been so tough to climb up, because shouldn’t there be less gravity on the moon?

A hiker passing by recommended that we walk the whole circumference — a trail led all the way around the lip of the crater. We started trekking, all the while being whipped with winds so strong they threatened to pitch us right off the side of the mountain.

Though it was incredible, fighting against the intense gusts and sliding gravel underfoot made the walk very slow, so after getting about a quarter of the way around we decided to turn back. We were eager to leave this barren place behind and let our tough hike pay off with a soothing soak in the Mývatn Nature Baths.

Even if we had gone to Mývatn on our own, Haider and I probably would have skipped the baths if left to our own devices. We’d heard they were almost exactly like the Blue Lagoon, which we’d already visited, and after the incredibly wild experience of the real-deal hot spring experience in the Reykjadalur river, we were feeling a little snobbish about going to another man-made (or at least, man-enhanced) bath.

But again — so, so glad we didn’t skip it. Turns out, you can’t really get enough of slipping into magma-heated waters in the middle of wild Iceland.

And contrary to what we’d heard, the Nature Baths were so much more than just the “Blue Lagoon of the North.” Where the Blue Lagoon is a well-developed, posh spa with a view of rock walls, construction equipment and buildings all around you, Mývatn feels much more authentic. Situated on a hill, it provides a panoramic view of the striking surrounding landscape. There’s nothing like soaking in a pool of steaming waters while gazing at a distant snow-capped glacier!

It was also a fraction of the cost of the Blue Lagoon, with a fraction of the crowds. Future Iceland tourists: if it’s at all possible to make it up North on your trip, skip the Blue Lagoon — Mývatn Nature Baths is where it’s at!

After we were nice and pruney, we left the baths behind to hike back to our car, a few kilometers through geothermal hillsides that puffed steam through a myriad of tiny vents.

Next up, we stopped down the road at Hverir, a significantly more active part of the geothermal region we’d just been hiking in. Instead of a few weak wisps, here the foul-smelling, sulfurous steam raged up out of the ground with a breathtaking fury.

It was a disarming place. If the nature baths had been a place of heavenly relaxation, this — just a kilometer or two away — was clearly hell. The smoking blisters in the ground were surrounded by a weird, barren landscape of blood-red earth and crusty mineral-covered rocks.

Though hiking trails cut up the mountain through clusters of the smoky springs, we felt that we’d hiked enough for the day, and were eager to get back to Akureyri. Plus, I’d had about all I could handle of the gross, rotten sulfur smell. (Back at the Nature Baths, we’d joked that since memory was most powerfully tied to the sense of smell, the scent of a rotten egg or rancid beer fart would forever bring us back to that magical day.)

PS – We didn’t see a SINGLE FLY during our whole trip to Mývatn.

Back at the hostel, we cooked a massive meal and settled in again to the previous night’s routine of drinking Icelandic vodka and befriending the many travelers passing through town. In particular, we hit it off with three Belgian girls: Maxime, Aline and Ushi. They were all only 21 years old and had been hitchhiking and camping all over the island for the past few weeks, barely spending any time indoors regardless of rain, wind or cold. Between them and Ryan, who told us how he’d once accidentally lived in Guatemala for 14 months after flying to Nevada for what was supposed to be a two-week trip, we were starting to realize that our own travels were way less badass than we may have believed.

As the hour got late and the vodka ran low, I suggested a walk out to the harbor to see if the Northern Lights were out. Sure enough, there they were, glimmering an otherworldly shade of pale green over the dark waters of the fjord. It was the perfect way to end a day spent in another corner of the universe.