Iceland, Day 2, continued

Following the debacle on the beach, we continued on our way around Reykjanesbaer.  It was much more uneventful, but still quite pretty.  Here we go!

 On our little tour we got to see loads of geothermic spots where the earth was literally boiling.  Appropriately, there were also some nice fairy tales connected to these unusual spots. 

 Not only that, but due to the sulfur content, they certainly stank!  It was definitely no fun being caught in a cloud of hot, rotten-egg-smelling steam!

 Nonetheless, all these steamy holes in the Earth were quite impressive and awe-inspiring!

 Next up we stopped at the southwest tip of the island and got a nice look at the crumbling coastline.  I do love giant rocks!

 This, sadly enough, was the only puffin we saw.  I really, really wanted to see some live puffins, I've adored them for as long as I can remember, but at least this time around, we were not so lucky.

 Nevertheless, the scenery and wildlife were gorgeous!

 Our next stop was the Blue Lagoon, which we nearly missed because a couple of roads leading to it were closed for a bike tour.  Fortunately, we managed to wrangle our way in.  This is a funny place because there is a tourist temple built in the middle, and it's kind of fortified and cordoned off.  You pay a whole lot to get in and lay yourself down in warm pools of blue, geothermal power plant runoff.  We didn't do this, instead we walked around the public paths around the place where there were cool or extremely hot pools of the mineral-rich blue water. 

 You can see the power plant in the background.  The way they found out about the healing properties of this water was that power plant employees used to swim in the pools of runoff after work, and they noticed that after doing so, their skin problems vanished.  So they smartly decided to harness this great thing, build a clinic and a public pool and charge admission.  The public areas where you can look around are all too cold or too hot to go into, so nobody's just jumping in outside the pay area.  They probably have security personnel to put a stop to that kind of activity anyway.  We did not fear any kind of repercussions and scooped up as much of that salt as we possibly could.  We got about 2 gummy bear size bags full, but have yet to put it in the bathtub at home. 

 In this photo you can see the clinic, I didn't photograph the spa because I didn't want to get any pictures of bathing beauties.  We couldn't even get that close to it.  It didn't look huge from where we were, but I can imagine that a dip in that water would be quite pleasing!  I just don't really care to pay 30 Euro or more to do so.  The other thing that put me off were the sheer masses of people going in there.  I'm also not a huge fan of hanging around in a bathing suit with a bunch of strangers. 

After our lovely tour of the peninsula, we just headed back to Reykjavik for some dinner and then back to the cabin to sleep and get ready for our last day touring around the Golden Circle.

Iceland, Day 2: Reykjanesbaer

After a day of driving, we decided to spend our second day closer to where we were staying in Njardvik, namely on the Reykjanesbaer peninsula.  I became intrigued while looking at a map I found in our accommodation showing the sights on the peninsula:  some geothermic spots, craters, a place where 2 tectonic plates meet, the Blue Lagoon.  All in all, it wasn't as boring as I'd previously assumed.  I thought there wasn't anything to see nearby, but was pleasantly wrong!

The first sight of the day was this, outside the supermarket where we picked up the bread, cookies and treats we'd need for the day-and boy, did we need them: 

I found this mildly amusing, in particular the poor spelling.  Just what language was the writer a native speaker of, anyway?  Probably not English, despite their impressive vocabulary. 

Even more pleasing than badly spelled insults, however, was this find at the grocery store checkout:  my initiation into the wonderful world of chocolate covered licorice!  This was one of those things that I saw and thought, "It's either going to be wonderful or horrible, with no in between."  I was right:  it was the most wonderful form of licorice I've ever tasted!  This was sort of my gateway licorice, later in the day I became overwhelmed with bulk licorice, which I've already posted about. 

After shopping, we went back to our little cabin, made some coffee, had some breakfast, packed some sandwiches and were on our way. 

 Much of the peninsula looked like this, which didn't make me very optimistic about having an interesting day, but things picked up later.

I enjoyed the patches of lupines, which added a touch of color to the otherwise rocky, mossy landscape.  Apparently these natives of northwestern North America were imported from Canada to help stop erosion, but they've spread so quickly and so well that they are practically weeds in some areas.

 It was kind of neat to see the place where two of the Earth's tectonic plates meet.

 Here I am between the North American Plate and the Eurasian Plate, a line I've been treading for quite some time now.

Now I'm back in Europe.

This was the tourist stop, with nice signs and paths.  On the way here, we noticed a gravel road going in the opposite direction, toward the ocean.  We decided to take that road, likely the one less travelled, after making the official tourist stop.  It turned out to be quite the experience.  We probably should have read this sticker in the car before doing so:

 But that's why we rented a four wheel drive!  We ended up doing a couple of these things.  We drove on road 35, which was no problem at all, it was just a dirt road.  Perhaps it's problematic in the winter.  The more questionable decision, however, was driving on a track with no road number.  But you'll see more of that below.

The thing that lured us back in here were the cool black sand dunes, which I would have liked to have walked on, but then I got distracted.

 Here's a view of the beach and the Atlantic ocean, it really was lovely!

 More of the dunes, and someone else drove in here, so it should be fine...

Oops.  We had a little trouble driving along the beach, it was slow going, but at one point the drive was over.  We just sank right in.

Fortunately there was a gracious family farther down the beach who had a bigger 4x4 than we did, so we ran to them and asked for help.  They didn't have a rope, but we did.  We'd found a big, thick rope that had washed up on the beach, it must've fallen off a ship.  That's the whole reason we drove out onto the beach, we wanted to take the rope home and had been carrying it, but it was kind of a pain in the neck, so drove out, and, well, you can see what happened next...

So we got down on our hands and knees and started digging out our tires.  You can't really see it in the pictures, but sand was all jammed up under the car and even up in it, so we worked on clearing it out, and slowly, slowly pulled it out, all of us taking turns driving the cars and pushing BOTH cars, because later on we managed to get the Jeep stuck, too.  The poor guy had just put his summer tires on, and on that sand winter tires would've definitely been better!

Many push marks were left on the car after that little 2-hour adventure.  There was more to our tour of Reykjanesbaer, but I think we all need a rest after that.  Quote of the day:  "Now this is like vacation!  It's getting fun now," said 100% irony free, and not by me.

Iceland, Day 1 continued: Dritvik

On our day tour of the Snaefellsnes peninsula we made a quick stop at the beach in Dritvik, where you can view the remains of a shipwreck from 1948.

All that's left on the beach are some metal remains, not surprising after 66 years!

Iceland, Day 1: Snaefellsnes

On our first full day in Iceland, we followed our friend Patrick's advice and went on an excursion to the Snaefellsnes peninsula, approx. 230 kilometers from where we were staying in Njardvik. In hindsight, it was a bit much for the first day, but with such limited time in Iceland, it was an optimum use of our time!

We'd landed the night before at about 11:30 pm, got our rental car after waiting a while for the agent to show up at the airport, and finally got to our accomodation in Njardvik sometime after 2:00 am.  It took us a while to find it, the navigation systems and phone were not working, and finally we ended up going back to airport, getting a printout of a map from a different car rental agency and finding the place.  Needless to say, on our first day we were running on little sleep and even less coffee.  I was okay with it, other members of our party were not. 

Our first stop was in Reykjavik to find Patrick and Thor on what we later learned was Reykjavik's hardest-to-find street:  a tiny street nestled among one way streets and construction sites.  But we found them, stopped at the store to get some sweets and soda for the drive (highly recommendable: Appelsin orange soda, not so good:  malt soda) and were off.  First destination:  Borgarnes.  We reached the town after driving almost 6 kilometers through the tunnel under Hvalfjördur (Whale Fjord), which apparently was a great place to catch whales and I've read that it is still home to one of Iceland's biggest whaling stations.  I didn't learn much about Borgarnes, except that there is a saga museum, the Settlement Centre, there which has an excellent restaurant.  We didn't go into the Settlement Centre, but opted for their delicious vegetarian lunch buffet instead.  It included, among other things, homemade bread, broccoli soup, red cabbage salad, barley salad, sweet potato salad, cucumbers, tomatoes, green salad, all I could wish for and more!  The sweet potato salad was a funny coincidence, because I think I've had sweet potatoes about five times in my whole life, two of those times being with Patrick:  once on Cape Cod, this time in Iceland!  The other three times were Patrick-inspired sweet potato fries from my home deep fryer, which I only fire up on special occasions.

Road 54 stretching in front of us, Snaefellsjökull in the distance.

 The long drive north to the Snaefellsnes pensinsula continued along relatively flat, uneventful, but very tranquil roads.  The road is perfectly set between the ocean on one side and the mountains on the other, with just the occasional house and waterfall to break things up.  As we approached the peninsula, the scenery became more varied, with Snaefellsjökull becoming visible, along with some more hills and a giant crater.

Our first scenic stop was to pay a visit to the Deity of Mt. Snaefell and then for a walk around the lovely basalt cliffs of Arnarstapi. 

Careful out there, the cliffs have cracks!  If you go too close to the warning sign to make it out, you may fall in!

 

The cliffs were just crawling with birds, much to my dismay.

 

 

I did like the vegetation, though.

This was a neat bird.  I can't remember which kind it was, but it was much more pleasant with its non-threatening long beak as opposed to the pointy-beaked and aggressive arctic terns, which we were to meet on every day of our trip, diving at our heads and pretending to pierce our skulls.

Next we paid a quick visit to Dritvik, a black stony beach with an old rusty shipwreck, and finally attempted to cross the mountain pass, to no avail.  Snow stopped us.  25% of our party wished to attempt to cross the snow, but was vetoed by the other 75% of us.  It was probably better that way.  You'll see why when you see what happened on day 2.