(Current Time & Place: 1/3/17, 5:15pm GMT, waiting for our plane to take off)
Day 3 - 12/29/16
Mike:
I've already said this but our hostess, Björg, at Guesthouse Nonni is amazing. She baked me a loaf of gluten free bread for breakfast. Everyone else was equally spoiled too. She made seven different loafs of bread, including a traditional Icelandic bread that would normally be cooked for 24 hours by a hot spring, along with sweet waffles. There was smoked lamb, pickled herring, fish paste, and two jams. I'm not a fan of the herring, but the fish paste was actually good.
Jon:
We engorged ourselves along with four Germans, Björg's spread was absolutely delicious. All of us got at least two plates, and at one point one of the German women we were eating with accidentally reverted to English and said something along the lines of "I'm so full, I can't move." She seemed rather embarrassed that she spoke in English, but we shared that sentiment. After breakfast, Björg sat with us and talked about different places to stop on our way to Vik, the next closest major town, where incidentally she was from. She gave us a map of the area and we planned out the stops we would take that day on our way to the largest glacier in Iceland, Vatnajökull.
Unfortunately, as we left Björg and Guesthouse Nonni, it began to rain again. So we didn't stop while we were driving until we arrived at our first destination for the day- Seljalandsfoss. We loaded up water resistant gear and went out to look at this pretty waterfall ("foss" means "falls", and actually I believe that the whole thing means jutting waterfall, but I digress).
The waterfall was very pretty, although the extra wind made it very wet. Lauren and Bryan did not have full water resistant gear (only jeans while we also had ski pants), so they waited by the falls while Mike and I walked behind the falls.
It was fun and gorgeous, but it was also very wet.
We then spent some time walking along the cliffs to see a second waterfall in the area at Björg's recommendation.
This one required some climbing along wet and muddy rocks to be able to see the falls, so only Bryan climbed the topmost rock formation, but otherwise it was pretty neat to see everything.
After we got our fill of the waterfalls we walked back to the car soaked. So we used the dashboard to hold our wet clothes and dry them, and since it continued to alternate between gentle rain and a soaking rain we decided to skip the next waterfall (sad face). We also decided to skip out on the next destination, which involved 2-4km of hiking to get to a plane crash site that was supposed to be really interesting to look at... The weather simply wasn't cooperating, and we still had 3+ hours of driving to do in a full car. Doing this while wet did not sound like fun.
Finally we had a nice break from the rain when we made it to Reynisdrangar, or the black beach of Iceland.
In truth, Björg told us that almost all of the beaches in Iceland were black, but this particular stop was a nice tourist spot because the ocean was accessible and there are some interesting rock formations and caves nearby. No one was in the water and that was for two reasons. One, I'm sure the water was freezing and two, while the waves aren't tall, they are "sneaky", every 7th wave or so is a bit higher than the rest, and it can sweep unsuspecting people to sea. The waves are also rough and have a significant undertow, so it doesn't seem like people spend a lot of time on the beach here in Iceland like they do in other countries.
It was really interesting to see black sand; it was extremely fine and I believe it is remnants of the volcanic activity on Iceland. The cave I mentioned before wasn't deep at all, but it showed an interesting geological rock formation that can be seen all over Iceland.
The rocks split or form hexagonal structures in the rock face. It looks rather artificial, but it really is naturally made and incredible to see. I wonder how that forms...
Anyway, we were gearing up to leave the black beach because we saw a storm coming in and as we were about to head into the car we saw the sun!
Granted it was still behind a lot of clouds, but it was the first time we could see the sun on our trip. We stopped for lunch at a gas station while filling up; some more Icelandic soup for Mike and some lamb goulash for everyone else to share, along with snacks. Unfortunately the rest of the drive was obscured by rain, darkness, and lots of blowing snow.
East of Vik, all the bridges on the coastal road were single lane bridges. Closer to Reykjavik there had been two lane bridges around, but for whatever reason in the central southern lowlands and eastward they stopped making them two lanes. Most were only 5m long, so very short, but there were one or two that were quite long, and actually had several wider spots for cars to be able to pass each other if they both went on the bridge at the same time. We were glad to be encounter these during the evening because we could all communicate with headlights/brights, but we wondered how people did this during the day, especially with some of the longer ones.
We finally made it to our hostel around 7pm; Vagnsstadir Hostel is actually part of a farmstead, so rather than having a check-in counter, we had to call someone in to officially check in. It took us a bit of time to get settled in, especially since they didn't give us the right sized sheets for our beds or the towels we needed to shower the next day, and they weren't immediately available to come back and correct the mistake. Sadly they did not have a restaurant nearby either (they had a kitchen, but we didn't bring any groceries...), so we had to do some searching to find someplace to eat and by now we were hungry. The closest major town nearby was Höfn, which was 40 minutes away and wasn't a viable option since most restaurants would be closing. Luckily, we found a couple hotels nearby so we started calling to see which had an open restaurant. Success! We ate at Hotel Smyrlabjörg, where we all had lamb burgers (Mike ordered his without a bun, but unfortunately it took two tries to actually receive a burger without a bun). While not really "Icelandic," the burgers were good, and after struggling with some weak wifi signals for a bit we decided to call it a night.
Jon:
We engorged ourselves along with four Germans, Björg's spread was absolutely delicious. All of us got at least two plates, and at one point one of the German women we were eating with accidentally reverted to English and said something along the lines of "I'm so full, I can't move." She seemed rather embarrassed that she spoke in English, but we shared that sentiment. After breakfast, Björg sat with us and talked about different places to stop on our way to Vik, the next closest major town, where incidentally she was from. She gave us a map of the area and we planned out the stops we would take that day on our way to the largest glacier in Iceland, Vatnajökull.
Unfortunately, as we left Björg and Guesthouse Nonni, it began to rain again. So we didn't stop while we were driving until we arrived at our first destination for the day- Seljalandsfoss. We loaded up water resistant gear and went out to look at this pretty waterfall ("foss" means "falls", and actually I believe that the whole thing means jutting waterfall, but I digress).
The waterfall was very pretty, although the extra wind made it very wet. Lauren and Bryan did not have full water resistant gear (only jeans while we also had ski pants), so they waited by the falls while Mike and I walked behind the falls.
It was fun and gorgeous, but it was also very wet.
We then spent some time walking along the cliffs to see a second waterfall in the area at Björg's recommendation.
This one required some climbing along wet and muddy rocks to be able to see the falls, so only Bryan climbed the topmost rock formation, but otherwise it was pretty neat to see everything.
After we got our fill of the waterfalls we walked back to the car soaked. So we used the dashboard to hold our wet clothes and dry them, and since it continued to alternate between gentle rain and a soaking rain we decided to skip the next waterfall (sad face). We also decided to skip out on the next destination, which involved 2-4km of hiking to get to a plane crash site that was supposed to be really interesting to look at... The weather simply wasn't cooperating, and we still had 3+ hours of driving to do in a full car. Doing this while wet did not sound like fun.
Finally we had a nice break from the rain when we made it to Reynisdrangar, or the black beach of Iceland.
In truth, Björg told us that almost all of the beaches in Iceland were black, but this particular stop was a nice tourist spot because the ocean was accessible and there are some interesting rock formations and caves nearby. No one was in the water and that was for two reasons. One, I'm sure the water was freezing and two, while the waves aren't tall, they are "sneaky", every 7th wave or so is a bit higher than the rest, and it can sweep unsuspecting people to sea. The waves are also rough and have a significant undertow, so it doesn't seem like people spend a lot of time on the beach here in Iceland like they do in other countries.
It was really interesting to see black sand; it was extremely fine and I believe it is remnants of the volcanic activity on Iceland. The cave I mentioned before wasn't deep at all, but it showed an interesting geological rock formation that can be seen all over Iceland.
The rocks split or form hexagonal structures in the rock face. It looks rather artificial, but it really is naturally made and incredible to see. I wonder how that forms...
Anyway, we were gearing up to leave the black beach because we saw a storm coming in and as we were about to head into the car we saw the sun!
Granted it was still behind a lot of clouds, but it was the first time we could see the sun on our trip. We stopped for lunch at a gas station while filling up; some more Icelandic soup for Mike and some lamb goulash for everyone else to share, along with snacks. Unfortunately the rest of the drive was obscured by rain, darkness, and lots of blowing snow.
East of Vik, all the bridges on the coastal road were single lane bridges. Closer to Reykjavik there had been two lane bridges around, but for whatever reason in the central southern lowlands and eastward they stopped making them two lanes. Most were only 5m long, so very short, but there were one or two that were quite long, and actually had several wider spots for cars to be able to pass each other if they both went on the bridge at the same time. We were glad to be encounter these during the evening because we could all communicate with headlights/brights, but we wondered how people did this during the day, especially with some of the longer ones.
We finally made it to our hostel around 7pm; Vagnsstadir Hostel is actually part of a farmstead, so rather than having a check-in counter, we had to call someone in to officially check in. It took us a bit of time to get settled in, especially since they didn't give us the right sized sheets for our beds or the towels we needed to shower the next day, and they weren't immediately available to come back and correct the mistake. Sadly they did not have a restaurant nearby either (they had a kitchen, but we didn't bring any groceries...), so we had to do some searching to find someplace to eat and by now we were hungry. The closest major town nearby was Höfn, which was 40 minutes away and wasn't a viable option since most restaurants would be closing. Luckily, we found a couple hotels nearby so we started calling to see which had an open restaurant. Success! We ate at Hotel Smyrlabjörg, where we all had lamb burgers (Mike ordered his without a bun, but unfortunately it took two tries to actually receive a burger without a bun). While not really "Icelandic," the burgers were good, and after struggling with some weak wifi signals for a bit we decided to call it a night.
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