Day 21 – Jökulsárgljúfur

I woke up in my bag on the ground under a bright sky in a desolate landscape.  Derek had caught some sleep in the car, eventually.

We drove to Húsavík, which was very close, hoping for the Skuld café, but it was closed.  Nearly everything was.  There was a small mall of hutches of competing whale watching tours with big colour banners overlooking the harbour, bristling with boats.

We were approached by three blond high school boys with unusually poor English, who asked us a half dozen questions off a list and recorded our answers on  a clipboard.  They couldn’t explain what their project was to us, though.  We explored the church, and happily, found a quality bakarí to start the day off with a sugar bang.

We drove on right past the Phallological (Penis) Museum.  Derek was much relieved that it was closed.  I was disappointed because this museum promised to be one of Iceland’s  weirdest, but alas, it was just too early in the day for penises.  This museum is in Reykjavík now.

To Ásbyrgi.  At the visitor’s center there, a super sweet blonde girl with a big smile did her best to teach me to say Jökulsárgljúfur and then gave us a run down on the sights in this park, now included in Vatnajökull national park to make the largest protected reserve in Europe.

We started at Ásbyrgi, a natural amphitheatre of cliffs rising straight up from the plateau.  From the top of the cliffs, you can see the formation is a perfect hoof print, where Óðinn’s horse Sleipnir accidentally touched down.  Inside the ring of the cliff, there’s a maze of paths winding through the shrubs and birch trees around little lakes and small streams of water pouring straight out of the cliffs.

Besides the hidden people, there were these crazy birds!  We first noticed them in the parking lot. White gulls, but they seemed either injured or horribly inept, because they would take off with very dramatic flapping and then crash land with a big skid on their chests.

It was a very alarming and loud, unsubtle performance.  I think we heard them before we saw them.  After each attempt the bird would lie there for a while or walk into the bushes a bit and sit there breathing heavy.

It was weird that there was more than one of them at it, but still they seemed greatly distressed.  Luckily there were signs posted saying Don’t try to help the fulmars.  It’s normal.  This is what they do.  Or words to that effect.

This happened to be the time the juvenile fulmars left the nest and found their way to the ocean, about 3 km away.

Hopefully they got better at flying on their way across that distance, because it hurt to watch them at this stage, skidding across the gravel.

One crashed right into a tree.

A drive south, on the better road west of the long gorge that is the central feature of this park, we stopped at Vesturdalur to walk around the basalt formations.   The black rods of basalt form every kind of shape, arches and caves and walls.  This is a very beautiful place, and a cozy inviting campground at the head of the hiking trail, too.

We carried on south and walked to the river again at Katlar, a delta in the river of rocky columns with the river rushing around them.  It’s a big area with little bridges across marshy spots and the waterfalls Hólmáfoss and Urriðafoss.

It was a day of big fosses.  Hafragilsfoss is huge and sends up a big spire of mist.  We were looking down on it from the viewpoint.

And Dettifoss, at the bottom of the park, is the largest volume waterfall in Iceland.  The plume of mist is so big it’s wet everywhere, and you get wet standing near it.  Which you can, stand quite near, and photographers can be seen everywhere disregarding the rope suggestions and standing out on the shelf of slick flat rocks at the edge of the water, which is hammering over the drop with such violence the water makes arrowhead shapes as it falls, and it’s tremendously loud.

On the other shore, the contents of a tour bus were walking around, looking insect like and vulnerable hopping about on the rocks above the gorge the water plunges into.  People were scaring me.

We walked upstream to see Selfoss too; on the way there are little black sand shoals where only a little water gets diverted from the main plunge, purple pumice lava that is amazingly light weight, it’s just so full of air, and farther upstream basalt cliffs above the river.  I bellied out to look over one, and saw writing in the sand on the beach below.  I want to know how those people got down there.

The basalt columns were shearing away from each other, cracking along their geometric seams, some of them standing alone where they’d separated from their neighbouring columns.  It all seemed dangerous.

So much water and so much risk.

As the sun was starting to set over Selfoss while we were there we drove fast from there to Krafla, on a packed gravel road through a long monochromatic dead zone where thankfully we could go fast.

Turning towards the Krafla power plant, where the big pipelines arch over the road like inchworms, we stopped first at the Stóra-Víti crater.

Derek took some sheep-in-the-sunset pictures and I climbed to the rim of the crater.  Seized by a spontaneous urge, I started running around it, and then once I started, I had to run the whole thing.  It wasn’t easy, the rocky trail went up and down the parabolic curve of the rim.  This was the first time I opened into a run since me last knee reconstruction, and I felt strong and whole and invincible.  There were some interesting white hot pits fed by the geothermal plant behind the crater, too.

All lit up by that, I advocated for running from the parking lot to Leirhnjúkur, where we hung out in amazement with the steam hissing from the lava heaps, a field of black lava riddling with steaming cracks and dangerous white hot ash pits.  The paths aren’t exactly marked, but they are pretty evident, compacted gravel.  Wrong steps off the path though, and you can feel the heat under foot through your shoes.  I was carefully touching the sharp rocks, amazed by the warm air and steam pushing its way out of the ground.  Derek took pictures of the sunset and the moon through steam.  Awesome.

It seemed to be a greater distance back down to the parking lot, and we saw some of those strange birds that we saw on Day 14.   They were on either side of the trail making soft questioning chirps.  Er?  We could hardly see them, but they were white on their undersides  It was hilarious to see only their bottom halves on the move, like pants walking around.  It was completely dark when we got back to the car.

We drove in the dark all the way back to Akureyri and got into the campsite in the middle of town.  I was very tired but hungry too, and I made pasta while we set up our tents.  The campsite was wide awake and lively still, but didn’t keep me awake.

More great photos of this day are here.

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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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Day 24 – Skógar and Keldur

I woke at 6am to rain sprinkling my face, and a hint of regret that the night was over.  More so, though, I was calm and peaceful and kind of in awe at the quality of night I’d had.  Immediately I looked for the mountain I’d seen, and turned to laugh at where I’d slept.

When I stood up, now that I could see in the dawn, I was in a vast wasteland of featureless lava, and the very well travelled road past the Blue Lagoon was right there.  I could see the steam of the Blue Lagoon plant, too.  However, the car, and where I’d slept, was not visible from the road, because of a slight bump in the road.

It was maybe the only hidden spot I could have found, such a small void that if I stood straight up, I could see the road, but if I lowered my eyes to the top of the car, I couldn’t.  If I walked a few feet either way, I was in plain sight.  I walked around, testing this, laughing, and then tossed my gear aboard and left to go get Derek.

Grindavík, on the coast, is windy.  Derek’s tent is better able to handle the wind, and his was upright.  He was still in it.  Mine, where I’d left it set up, pegged but empty, was leaned over right onto the ground, rippling a little, and sucked right onto the grass.  Totally flat.  When I pulled in beside it, blocking the wind, it popped up to its proper height like a jack-in-the-box.

We got off to a slow morning, hunting for a bakari and not finding one ’til Hafnarfjörður.

This was a town with unexpected character and a shockingly lavish viking hotel bristling with embellishments.  We walked around that and found some chickens and very vocal rooster in the back.

We passed through Reykjavík to Hvolsvollur, picking up a few groceries and trying to make a plan.  Indecision was the hallmark of the day.  We were on our last days, and considering backtracking to re-visit places, and see what we’d missed the first time hitchhiking.  Eventually, we elected to head for Skógar.  Derek wanted to get some better pictures than he had the first time.  It turned out to be a good choice.

As we drove, we tried to think of the things to capture on film that might have become invisible in their ubiquity. That meant lots of pictures of the normal road signs that are so different from N. America,  the familiar “no tractors” (on the road in the city), and the dreaded Malbik Engar – Road is about to become unpaved.

We were still taking pictures of the dozens of Mitsubishi Pajeros we saw daily, fascinated that my truck  at home, very unusual there, was one of the top three models on the road in Iceland.  I wasn’t expecting that.

We stopped for some roadside horses and fed them nubs of carrots.  They were quite happy about it, getting a little pushy and looking wistfully after us when we left.

On the way, we picked up a pair of hitchhikers who had just finished the Landmannalaugar to þorsmörk hike.  We’d finally let go of doing that hike when time more or less ran out.  I’d been pretty disappointed and not sure whether it had been a good idea, but our passengers, who’d done it right when we would have, told us it was dreadful.  It had rained and they’d had zero visibility the entire hike.   That that made me feel much better.

Skógasafn, the last museum we went to in Iceland, turned out to be the best.  It had been closed on our first pass.  Not only that, our hitchhikers generously paid our admission.  Apparently all the artifacts that are noticeably absent in museums around the country are all here.  The place was chock full of every kind of tool and bowl and book and boat and clothing imaginable, usually dozens of versions of each thing.  It was a vivid contrast to all the other storyboard-filled museums we’d been in.

In the basement there are stuffed animals of all kinds from Iceland, including the tiniest of birds, and some preserved genetic aberrations.  Outside, there are whole buildings to explore, a church and schoolhouse and the ubiquitous álfhol (elf houses).  Really, if you were going to see one museum in Iceland, this should be it.

(2012 note- Skógasafn, with the folk museum unchanged, is expanded into a very modern telecommunications and transportation museum in an adjacent building.  It really requires three hours to see it all.  þórður, the proprietor, is still introducing himself to visitors, jaunty and quick in his sport coat and shock of white hair)

At Skógafoss proper, Derek took pictures at the base and I climbed the stairs, walking out on the little packed pathways to look down on the water and the gulls swooping in the mist, and nesting peacefully unmolested in the black wet rocks at the sides of the roaring water column.  It’s quite scary looking down the drop like that, watching the water fall.  There was even a window of sunshine to bring out the rainbow that’s usually hanging around the base of the falls.

Heading back northwest, we made a couple of roadside stops, like the attention grabbing Rútshellir – a cave that’s a barn.  This is one of “upwards of 200”! manmade caves in the area, and it only happens to be a very prominently visible one from the ring road.  I’m still in disbelief at the type of people who think “We need a good barn.  Let’s hollow one out of solid rock.”  Wow.  It’s a good lasting barn, at any rate, formerly a hay barn and smithy. (More pics in the extra photos).

Windblown sheep is watching you.

(2012 note – when we passed here again, there was a couple with a truck parked by the cave.  They seemed to be doing some repair on the door/roof.  The really funny part was the clutch of cows clustered around watching the proceedings, circled in a little too tight with their heads all down in keen interest.  Later that day when we passed again, the cows were all inside again)

We had wheels now, so we went to Keldur.  We’d been thwarted at that the last time, on foot.  This time there was no one around that part of the farm, and we peered through the dark glass into the turf roof houses and Derek took fun pictures of some accommodating farm animals.

“You think I don’t see you back there?”
“Oops.”

For the night we went to the campsite in Hella, and luxuriated in the amenities of laundry and a long hot shower.  It was a long time now since we’d spent a night indoors, and I’d woken up to find myself lying beside my tent instead of in it (annoyed by the tent’s blocking me from starlight and air) many times.   I’d be naked in the woods living on berries in no time.

Many more fun photos of this day are here. Don’t miss out.

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