Day 19 – Hólmavík and Akureyri

I slept in ’til 8 and headed straight for the pool.  Derek did the same, to get warm, and when he came back we ate muesli and broke camp.  Going to retrieve my laundry, I found it all hung on the lines run along the low ceiling, a typical Iceland laundry setup.   The laundry room was warm from being below ground, I think, and all our clothes and even my hikers were all dry!

Lots of skyr, every day

There was a close call with the camera charger- we almost left it behind plugged in the bathroom, but thankfully remembered while pulling out.

We headed for Hólmavík, interested in the Witchcraft museum, excited by the Lonely Planet and their description of the necropants – wooooo!  When there’s the possibility of seeing, at a bona-fide “award-winning” museum, the magical money-producing trousers skinned off a dead man’s legs and groin, of course you must seize the day.

On the way we stopped for photo ops of seals hanging out with heads and tails stiffly out of the water.  Is that comfortable?  Why do they do it?  Also sheep and swans crossing the road made the morning drive interesting.

The museum was unfortunately like all the other museums- lots to read and little to see, although severe stuffed ravens overlooked it all and there was an appropriately creepy vibe.  The necropants, were, alas, obviously not real.  Sorry, the cat’s out of the bag (pun intended), we know, they’re not real pants made from the skinned lower half of a male corpse.  You could see where the hairs were glued on.  To be fair, the guidebook does say “plastic replica”.  I felt like I was at Ripley’s in Niagara Falls, anyways.

The genuine stone bowl that had been used for blood was considerably creepier.  It’s a nice museum, aesthetic and well-lit and nicely designed.  Reading material abounds, about the witches who were slaughtered for supposedly practicing sorcery, and their real craft books under glass.  I just can’t get into reading when the rest of Iceland waits, though, so I bought a book and coveted the fat little woollen ravens standing on rocks in the gift shop.  Later I had to have them mail me one.

In Staðarskali we almost left the camera charger behind again.  We were still on our usual program of charging at every stop where we could subtly find a socket.

It was slow driving.  We drove right past the seal museum and the sea ice museum, but we stopped for the turf church and the site of the biggest battle in Iceland.  We stopped for a white-tailed eagle, and the seals at Kirkuból.

Finally we made it to Akureyri.  It was somewhat welcome to be in a town with streetlights.  The first thing I noticed was that the circles of the red lights were masked out a little.  They looked a bit like hearts.  At the actually department sized Intersport store, I impulse bought a pair of white skate shoes that had line drawings of superheroes on them.  I couldn’t not, they were so awesome.

Unfortunately, they were children’s shoes only, and the largest kid’s size definitely didn’t fit me.  I walked around in them for awhile, going I can’t, they really don’t fit, but I have to, because of their sheer awesomeness; I may never see them again.  I decided if I wore them barefoot, they fit.   Bought them.  They became my totally favorite shoes for awhile.  When I tore out the insole and put a thinner one in, I could even wear socks, and only my big toe would hurt a bit.

We visited another camping store and then parked downtown and walked about.  There seemed to be hearts everywhere, pasted on storefront windows.  It was a mystery.  We went in the beautiful, grand Akureyri library, desperate for a rest room.  The library was wonderful!  Icelandic authors, by first name,  were mixed with English ones.  Derek said “Tolkien!”, and we rushed around looking for them.  The three Lord of the Rings books were there, in a beautiful colourful hardbound set I was dying to have.  That led us to the book store, the multi-storied Eymundson, which was totally overwhelming with books and CDs.  Eat, Pray, Love was in vogue, and the Icelandic translation had stacked tabletop displays.

Starving, we headed to Bautinn to eat.  An unlimited soup and salad buffet really hit the spot.  All was delicious, and there was an abundance of different kinds of bread.  Back to the bookstore for some music.  By this time, the two CDs, one unlistenable and one questionable, that had been in the car when we rented it, were wearing pretty thin after days of driving.  New music was a necessity purchase.  We checked out a couple of places and their hours to sightsee tomorrow, and headed for a campsite well after sunset.

On the way we found a rink, glowing in the dark next to the highway.  A genuine arena!  Excited, we parked and I barged in.  There were men on the ice playing mediocre hockey for about a minute.  I’d arrived just before close, as the final bell was about to ring.  Still breathless, I quizzed the puzzled men at the reception waiting to turn out the lights.  No, there were no skate rentals.  No, there was no “public skating”.  Quizzical looks.  Sigh.  We were this close to skating in Iceland, but it was not to be.  It was still exciting to be in the cold, musty air of an actual hockey arena!

I went back out and found Derek in the verge with a tripod, taking pictures of the lights on the hill across the water in the shape of a heart.  The lights would pulse, fading in and out, like a beating heart.  It was a big heart, described in lights on a hillside.  What was with all the hearts?  We figured there must be some event in progress today or this week or something.

Following the guidebook’s directions we fortunately found our way directly to the campsite.  It was one of the biggest we’d ever seen, fields after fields, bounded by shrubbery so it wasn’t just one gigantic field.  When we went in, just before close, the girl at the kiosk didn’t want our money because she’d already rung off.  “Oh, just pay in the morning on your way out,” she said, and waved us through.   We crept along through the many fields, trying not to disturb sleeping campers with our headlights and engine, and found our way to a field all our own, on the edge of the property.

There was a strange wall of electrical boxes on a panel at the mouth of the field.  I investigated with a flashlight and it turned out to be many different plugs, probably for RV hookups.  I found a standard one, and even in the middle of nowhere as it felt, we got to charge our electronics for the night.

It was an amazing night, so dark and quiet a location that I had an extremely restful sleep.  There was a beautiful moon and the air was cool.

So restful, that we woke up very early.

A few more pictures from this day

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Day 20 – Mývatn

We woke up in a dense light mist that promised a beautiful clear day.  We were packed and out early, headed north east to Mývatn.  Just as we were about to turn onto the highway a plane took off right over us.  It was so low and loud and sudden, it was terrifying.  A little early in the day, too, for jets to leap out of the mist.

The low fog in the bright rising sun made everything gorgeous. On the hill out of Akureyri, there’s a sheep crossing sign like on the postcard, and we had a brush with capturing the “sheep crossing the road near a sheep crossing sign” photo, but didn’t quite.  Sheep can move quick.

At Goðafoss there was so much mist our clothes got damp walking around.  Goðafoss was multi-layered with webs of little trails along the bank.  Derek had been trying to find a better way to clean his lens and in my usual manner I said “Just ask someone with a big camera who looks like they know their way around it.  Here, I’ll do it.”  So I struck up conversation with a random guy holding a camera at Goðafoss, and Derek quickly took over and they discussed “camera stuff” at length.

Naturally, he and his partner were Canadian as well, on a one week whirlwind of Iceland, and he really surprised us with what he did.  Upon saying “Here, you need one of these”,  and pulling a lens pen out of his pocket (cleaning brush gadget), he passed it to Derek told him to have it.   Not “there’s a camera store in Akureyri, they’re about $10,” but “here’s one”. We protested, and he insisted, shrugging, “I usually have two on me, you can have that one.”  So that was an unexpected act of generosity.

We approached Mývatn from the south, taking a short walk around the pseudocraters at the south of the lake and taking pictures of some Icelandic cows.  On up the west side of the lake, we stopped at Dimmuborgir.  There were no guided tours on, which may have been more interesting, so we showed ourselves around the Church circle, we think, but saw no church.  It wasn’t that interesting, possibly because this type of skin-tearing ragged igneous lava structures had become quite familiar.  This are unusually large, creating a maze one could get lost in, but still, it was “hraun and still more hraun”.  We surprised some sheep lounging in a cave.  It looked like their regular spot to hide from the sun in the cool air.

Dimmuborgir is the home of the Jólasveinarnir, or Yule lads – the grown sons of a wicked trolless, Grylla, that play the role of thirteen ragged Santas in Iceland.  My favourite story is the Christmas Cat, though.  It is  vitally important that everyone have some new article of clothing for Christmas, because anyone who doesn’t wear new clothes will be eaten by the Christmas Cat!  That’s the lovely Grylla’s cat.  And they all live in Dimmuborgir.  Or the lads do, now that they left the nest.  No wonder, with that cat hanging around Mom’s.

Up to Hverafell from there, a vast crater with a walking path around the ring, about a mile around.  All grey tephra and boulders, it was a stunning landscape, looking over the crater and out from it at the varying geology surrounding the lake and mountain.  We spent ages up there, taking pictures and fooling around, until we got too hungry to carry on and had to come down for a burger  and ice cream at the N1.

We were hoping to go to Askja but didn’t grasp that it was five 1/2 hours away!  And expensive.  There were a flock of fancy jacked trucks parked at the info center, all equipped for the F roads, and the excursion was not cheap.  We wouldn’t go for a guided tour and weren’t inclined to spend a day to reach Askja, so we passed on that major natural attraction.

There was a golf course in Mývatn, though!  When we drove up (quite a hill) to check it out, this golf course was patches of green cut into the top of two hills and the valley between them. I think of golf courses as pretty flat, by necessity.  I’ve never seen or imagined a golf course with such extreme differences in elevation between holes, and even between tee and hole.  And there are flat areas all around Mývatn, it’s like they picked the top of a hill for some reason.   From the parking lot we could see a guy on the green in a valley below us with crazy blue plaid pants on whacking balls down the green.  He had a sheepdog that appeared to be retrieving all his balls for him.  We avoided him, but another guy working there told us to go to the Hótel.

At the Hótel a girl said that the manager was at the course at the moment – her hilariously accurate description matched the character we’d seen – but she could take our money, and did we have our own clubs?  Well, no.  Then she could call “some guy” to loan us his clubs.  We went to get cash, I ate a sandwich watching the pretty horses and some ducks being picturesque in the backyard of the hotel, and “the guy” with the clubs pulled up, handing over his personal bag of clubs and also some balls and scorecards.  This sort of exchange never failed to surprise and delight me in Iceland.

The course was ridiculous. It was hilly, hard.  Fun.  At times we had to search for the next tee because it wasn’t in sight.  Some holes are a trail hike from others.  Some fairways are a gap across valleys of brush, or on a plateau with slopes cutting away.  Keep it on the grass or else.  Overshoot the green and it’s gone.  Whacking the balls hundreds of feet uphill. We spent some time hunting for balls in the blueberries (+2 on balls for the day).  Flags that can’t be seen from the tee because they’re over a hill. It was such a phenomenally challenging course and terrain that it was hilarious and entertaining.  We’re looking around, okay, so where’s the flag?  It can’t be that one, up there?  No way!

We had to consult the course map a lot, like we were orienteering.  At one point I dragged the golf bag up a steep scramble to get to the next tee, then I realized that it was probably protocol to carry only one driver up there with you, because you had to go back down, walk along a road, and then climb back up to find your ball again.  Luckily we got nice straight drives on that hole.  Here the midges, aka blackflies, that Mývatn is named after were in evidence.  Derek busted out his mesh hood- he’d read about the midges, and golfed in comfort, except for my laughing.

We finished around seven, dropped the clubs back at the hotel, and carried on to see “the rest” of the sights.    Stóragjá, where the earth is ripping apart like at Þingvellir, and you can climb down and walk around the narrow crevasse.  Grjótagjá, farther along in the same tectonic plate tear feature – a cave full of hot water.  This cave was beautiful, and I so wanted to swim in it, but it was just a little bit too hot.  I tried my best, sitting in there and slowly putting my limbs in deeper and deeper.

I could put my hands, and arms in, but not for very long, and I worked my feet and legs in, but it was just too uncomfortable to be pleasant.  It made a lasting red high water mark on my legs.  Some guy from L.A. came along and dropped his glasses in the water, and then we moved on.  There is another cave with slighter cooler water a bit farther south that the locals sometime swim in.

We saw the vibrantly blue toxic lake on the left driving out of Mývatn, and were blown away by the mud pots of Hverir.  The colours!  Blue and pink-orange, and the boiling mud!  Everyone cleared out, and we were getting extraordinary pictures of steam, just hissing out of the ground like a giant kettle.  We kind of rushed it, though, Derek literally running between the features to get some shots before dark.    Just in time for the sunset we climbed up Námafjall, looking back over the town and the lake for some sunset pictures and shots of the moon.

It was very dark when we came down, and we stopped at the Nature Baths but they were closing at 10, and after seeing the price we weren’t sorry about it.

We decided to head for Húsavík, and got part way there.  Just out of town the Northern Lights started up and we pulled over.  It just happened to be on a little pull out, and I backed off the road and cooked pumpkin soup with Ichiban by the back wheel.  Derek was getting crazy excited by the lights but I was so tired I just threw my bag on the ground and fell asleep in it.  Derek took pictures for half the night, and I was in some of them.

Mývatn is spectacular in so many different ways.  This was a very photo-rich day and I encourage you to look at all the other great pictures that wouldn’t fit in this post.

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Day 22 – Akureyri to Reykjavík

On a mission to have a relaxing night, I slept in with determination.  Up at 9:30, I fixed my broken flip flop with dental floss and went to the pool.  Akureyri’s sundlaug is very nice, with massaging jets and stairs over the water.  I warmed right up at the pool, had some skyr and went back to camp.  Derek was all packed up and unfortunately, it was overcast now.  We went downtown, got a parking clock, which I was thrilled about, and we spent some time in Eymundson writing postcards, using the internet, and forming a plan for our remaining days.  We finally ruled out a trip to Askja due to the long drive, and decided to be in Keflavík  the next night for the Festival of Lights.

Can you see the heart red light? The parking clock is also visible in this picture.

We checked out lots of things in Akureyri then.  We found the Red Cross thrift store, wandered into an art museum full of large format photography, mostly of the riots in January 2009, and another fabulous exhibit of textiles celebrating rhubarb.

We bought a stack of books in Froði, an unkempt and awesome little used bookstore cluttered with piled boxes of books.  There wasn’t any Tolkien, but we finally got an explanation of the hearts sprinkled around Akureyri.  The sweet bookstore lady said that it was started a year ago, to remind everyone “to have a good heart”, and to “drive gently”.  She also explained that Icelandic books were so expensive because the print runs were tiny for such a limited audience.

An outdoor store downtown had Light My Fire spoons.  I’d snapped Derek’s much earlier in the trip in a jar of peanut butter, and replacing it had nearly become a grail quest.  Nowhere could we find these camping spoons, ’til now.  We bought extras.  Finally to Bautinn, to tank ourselves up properly.  That is one memorable buffet.

We collected a hitchhiker at the campsite, a young German woman who had approached me earlier asking for a ride to Reykjavík.  We tanked up the car and stopped at the biggest Bónus we’d seen yet, although it didn’t have decent bread or skyr, and hit the road, burning towards the capital.

A few stops, at Örlygsstaðir and for the sunset, but mostly driving.  We took the tunnel and got into Reykjavík long after dark.  We dropped our passenger downtown, and the city was busy and drunk and kind of scary.

A motorcycle whipped past us at at least 150kmh, cars were speeding, and I wanted out.  We went directly to Hveragerði.    The drive there was a whiteout of dense fog, and then Hveragerði was totally clear, under the blanket of fog.

We set up our tents in the mist at the back of the campsite in town and crashed hard.

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