At five or six in the morning it rained on me, and I shuffled into my tent. It was clear over Hekla though. I woke again and again, but made an effort to sleep until eight, which was almost early enough for us to get our tents packed dry.
We turned back for a café but it was closed so breakfast was coffee and skyr at the Olís (ubiquitous gas/fuel station). On the way to Hekla we stopped at Leirubakki, where there was a Hekla museum we didn’t expect. It’s an amazingly well designed and very unique building, worth seeing just for its design. Inside, underground for effect, there’s an interactive museum devoted to the looming volcano. Hekla is one of Iceland’s most threatening eruptors- it blew in 2000 and is overdue for a big one, I gather. Hekla’s “big ones” can be apocalyptic.
There wasn’t a great deal of information for our 700 kr. admission, but it was a worthwhile experience. I was especially fascinated with the giant screen visually depicting seismic information from the multitude of sensors stippled around the mountain, monitoring it. The vibrating line like an erratic heart rate monitor had little aberrations spiking in it with a constant vitality. I drew the attendant lady’s attention to it and she said that was normal. “If there was an earthquake”, she said, trailing off while swooping her arm fast up and down dramatically. Then she said that despite this information gathering, there were no warning systems for the area. “But you’ll feel an advance earthquake,” she said calmly. Some people live literally in the shadow of Hekla.
This museum was attached to a farm, and there were two sheepdogs lying on the bank above where we were parked. They were statuesque and almost stoically calm, completely ignoring us as we got back into the car and Derek took pictures of them from the passenger seat. Hoping to get them to turn towards us for a photo, I gave a little honk, and both dogs erupted into a frenzy of barking so fast that I jumped, twin furballs suddenly animated with rage. The contrast was unnerving, as was the ruckus. We just had to leave asap after setting off the dog alarm.
225 Landmannalaugar is a very well travelled road, due to the major attraction it serves, but it’s still an F road, rocky and bone-rattling. As we turned onto it, the views turned into vistas – crazy sweeps of hraun and green, sprinkled liberally with sheep.
It was a clear day, but Hekla had cloaked itself in cloud as is customary for her. We picked up a pair of French hikers and dropped them at the cutoff to hike Heklutind – the summit. We weren’t going to do it, by all accounts chances of seeing anything while you’re at the top or on the way up are slim to marginal due to the cloud that clings to the top nearly 100% of the time, and it is a little bit risky. Of course there are tens of thousands of days where the volcano won’t go off, but if it happens to on the one day you’re up there, then you have nearly no chance of getting to safety fast enough. Hikers are warned to this effect. “You’re on your own. Have fun!” It was less about risk than wanting to pack other things in this day for us anyways.
On the way we had to cross a river to get to Landmannahellir cave, which mostly just reminded me how cool so many other caves in Iceland had been. The road on, red from the iron rich pumice, started to climb, and we parked at an outlook point behind a tourist couple in a white car. They were also stopped for the photo op, a panoramic view over each side of a saddle looking over a small lake on one side and the valley holding Landmannalaugar hut. The weather was very changeable, going from mild and cloudy to threatening lashings of rain, very quickly.
To reach the Landmannalaugar hut by vehicle, there are two river crossings, or two parts of the same river. As we pulled up to it and looked, considering, an older couple rolled up their pant legs and strode into the water with hiking poles. We saw they were in knee deep, and the current wasn’t as pushy as it seemed from the bank. It was a daunting crossing, though. There’s a reason there’s a wide parking area on the shoulder of the road on the dry side of the bank. Probably more than half of the visitors opt to not take their vehicles across and wade and walk the last half mile in to the hut.
Naturally, we decided to drive it. I don’t remember how I logicked myself into thinking it was a reasonable idea, but no matter how you get there, once you’ve nosed your vehicle down the bank and enter the water, there is no backing out. The water was way deeper than it looked from the bank, and it flowed and splashed over the hood and windshield against the wipers on full so that we may as well have just driven straight under water. It was terrifying (although not in a “we’re going to die” way, more of a “this is going to go wrong and cost thousands of dollars and the rest of my life to pay off” way). I heard Derek suck in his breath. My heart stopped and I gripped the steering wheel and drove smoothly out and up the other side before I dared to breathe again. Wheeew! Of course, one river down, we were now in the space between the two, so we were completely committed to the whole meal deal – another ford to get to the hut and two more crossings on the way out.
This hut is the stepping off point for the three day hike to Þorsmörk (long out of the question for us this trip). It very nice. Big. We made it to the hut, where the warden was in a big rush and only suggested to us that in this kind of iffy weather, Ljótipollur was a nice hike to do (back on the other side of those fords). We were cold and indecisive, and I thrashed around in the back of the car, “organizing”. While I was standing at the back with the hatch open, the same car we had stopped near earlier caught my attention. They were headed back out from the hut and had paused on this side of the river, even doing a little weaving repositioning, obviously choosing the spot in the wide ford that they would cross. I waited to watch them cross with mild interest, never expecting to see what I did.
The driver gunned it and the car surged ahead with a roar I could hear, tires throwing rocks, gathering as much speed as possible in the short run-up until WHAM! The nose slammed into the water and a wall of water went straight up in the air (at least 12 feet, no exaggeration), and came straight back down on the car, which came to a halt in the middle of the river as if they’d hid a brick wall. The river curled and settled back to flowing around the car. This was the funniest thing we’d ever seen, and it was completely unexpected – the sudden punching it at the water and then the Red Sea effect of the sheet of water lifting straight up in front of the bumper. Then we realized their car was stalled, wasn’t starting, and wasn’t ever going to start, now. It was just a normal car, a four door Ford sedan or something, not meant to be amphibious. (Ironic branding, if it was a Ford).
By the way, that’s a river crossing tactic that exemplifies what not to do with perfect clarity. You are supposed to drive into the water at a smooth constant (reasonable) speed and avoid accelerating or stopping while you are in the water. Then the water doesn’t go in your exhaust or have time to come in your doors.
By the time we drove back across, this hapless couple was up on the median between the two bands of river. Someone had towed them out of the water. We stopped to say hi, and the woman was perched on the passenger seat, soaking wet, wearing no pants and huddled up wrapped in a towel with her feet pulled up. They were laughing, but the whole floor of the car inside was soaked. They’d had the river literally flowing through their cab.
We went and did the Ljótipollur walk, which was lovely and fun even in the persistent cold rain. I made the hike very memorable by forgetting my day pack full of food, water, and Brennivin on the rim of the crater lake where I set it down for jumping pictures. I got distracted by beauty and fascination on the rest of the 10km loop that slaved up a big mountain and then over a small caldera mountain, thinking no more of my pack until we were all the way back to the car. Frustrated with needless wastes of time, I ran the whole 3-4 km back up the hill to get my pack, nearly bursting my lungs, then back down to the car. It didn’t take all that long, but I was thoroughly soaked in the wind-driven rain.
Back to the Landmannalaugar hut. This time we parked with the reasonable people on the safe side of the fords. The car that had tried and failed to part the sea was still sitting in the middle, parked, wet, and vacant. I walked across to the hot pools that were nearer than the hut. I left my wet boots and socks in the WC and took my Brennivin to the water with me. I stubbed my toe badly on the boardwalk in my hurry to get warm. Even though a Reykjavík Excursions bus had disgorged while we were snacking in the car, there was no one in the water.
Light rain was stippling the surface of the water, there was a confluence of hot water and a cold creek, and mist was hanging over the dark water. The pools were lined with shrub and sulphury with notes of duck parasite and sensuous strands of green and brown slime that would wrap around an ankle underwater. It wasn’t the greatest hot pool atmosphere for Iceland, but it warmed me up. I took my time and then got out of the algae slimed water looking for a shower. Rebuffed by the 400 ISK price of a shower, I washed myself off good with a Nalgene full of cold water, hoping not to catch the duck itch.
There’s a duck parasite endemic to this pool, aka “duck itch”. It was described to me exactly like this: “It feels like mosquito bites, but then when the parasite realizes that you are not a duck, then it dies, and no itch.” Great summary, and no thanks. Derek had elected to stay in the car while I went in the pool on a risk/reward assessment, and he hadn’t even known about the ropy slime. It was an experiment like some others in Iceland – almost sublime, except for…
Dusk was impending now and scoping for a place to sleep, the rock field was not appealing, and neither was Landmannahellir, unless we stayed in the cave, so we drove on on the one road out. We took an utterly spontaneous redirection at the 26, turning right to go farther inland instead of out to the ring road. We headed northeast to the 32 looking for Stöng. We cranked the heat to dry out our sodden selves until the CD player got too hot to play. Our boots dried but our chocolate melted. Amazingly, we found Stöng in the dark. There was a terrible teeth rattling road, a bad sign and a gate.
We shuffled around in the dark on a clear trail, around and around on trails avoiding a looming structure that seemed to be an empty farmhouse in the dark, but that turned out to be the site. The structure was a roof over the excavation. It was amazing. It was so dark it was ridiculous to be in there at night, and it felt very haunted, full of life. We moved around slowly and reverently in the earthy smell, taking pictures to see what was in front of us on the little glowing camera screens.
Derek was having none of camping in the area, so we drove back out the long dirt road and found a magical camping spot – a closed campsite very far from any lights, or anything really. It felt like the middle of nowhere, always so nearby in Iceland. There were geese whonking in the dark, there was a mouse in the bushes, we were exhausted. I cooked and wrote notes and set up my tent and then slept on the ground next to it, as usual.
This was our second last night in Iceland. No aurora, only clouds and wind, but it was a beautiful light-less peaceful spot.
A few extra pictures on the Extra Photos page.
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