Iceland Part 2

 

Monday, October 15: We arrived at the hotel around 9:00 in the morning after a pretty sleepless, uneventful flight. We had our first of many very expensive meals ($25 per person) at the breakfast buffet at the restaurant on the top floor of the hotel, checked our bags at the desk, and when Marv and Kris returned with our rental car from the local airport, the four of us took off on our own to explore this stunningly beautiful country. They get a lot of rain in Iceland so we were lucky to have a nice sunny day with temps in the forties. We headed south, towards Vik to see waterfalls, especially. 

Despite the lack of English, you can figure out, as we did, that we left
Reykjavik and followed the main highway south and east through
the area called Sudurland (South Land) towards Vik. 

Iceland is barren of trees and has very little grass because the lava
that covers much of the land takes a long, long time to build up humus.
The green you can see here is lichen, moss and tiny green plants.

Clouds of white steam billow up everywhere in this valley and many
other areas as well, giving testament to the hallmark geothermal activity.

This pastoral scene shows a village church,
probably Icelandic Lutheran/Lutherist.

On a clear day like we had, we could pretty much always see a glacier in the distance.

A dormant (for now) volcano. One never knows when a volcano will awaken in Iceland.

We stopped by a new museum on Geothermal activity where they had several of these
topographical, lighted maps on the floor. This one shows the major glaciers (white)
and hot spots (orange) on Iceland.

This one shows the Atlantic Rift that cuts across Iceland and is responsible for all
the Geothermal activity. Two continental plates of the earth are separating along the rift.

The countryside was filled with fields of Icelandic horses, sheep, or both.

The lack of trees made for long, open vistas.

The waterfall above was just one of many falling off the cliff that ran for miles. As we walked
the trail along the bottom, we heard a hearty "Go Green" from up on the hill! We responded
with the expected "Go White" and were rewarded with cheers from our faraway fellow Spartans.

There were so many waterfalls, pretty much all with unpronounceable (for us)
names, but we did learn that the word Foss, which came at the end of  their name,
means waterfall in English.  

Heidi followed the path up to go behind this falls but as she got closer,
she realized how slick the mud on the path was and so she wisely retreated.

Skogafoss was the biggest falls we saw Monday. To the right there was a long
trail leading to the platform up on the hill. There was no way I could do it on crutches
and Heidi didn't want to try it either, but Kris and Marv made the climb.

This was the view with which they were rewarded at the top of the falls...

...but even more astounding was what they found when they followed the trail at the top!!

The people (below) climbing on the rocks in the middle of the falls
had ignored this warning sign. 

Kris got this picture of Marv at the top of the falls.

Heidi and I are two of the specks below by the river.

The sun shining on glaciers made them glow.

Jokull means glacier in English. The edge of this one was close enough to hike to.

This is what the glacial river looked like from the parking lot.

Down on the river flats you can see a group hiking out to walk on the glacier.
They are carrying cramp-ons and pick-axes and have a guide to keep them safe.
The glaciers in Iceland, like the rest of the world, are retreating at an accelerated
rate, much to the chagrin of scientists everywhere.

Our final leg of the journey was to the point near Vik pointing into the sea,
with its black sand beaches and fanciful rock outcroppings.

We drove up an improbable, rough, single-track "road" and found
ourselves at a parking lot with other intrepid explorers.

It was very windy up on the point, high above the water.

The lighthouse at the edge of the point.

There was actually a third arch that we could see from further out.

From way up high we had a nice view of the edge of the Myrdasjokull glacier. 

Those are The Three Sisters in the distance.

The city of Vik has settled up on the hill to keep it safe from tsunamis or other threats.

The sun was nearly setting as we found a little restaurant in Vik to get a bite to eat.
Kris soon realized the waitstaff was all speaking Polish so he answered in kind.
In English we found out that they, like many others, came to Iceland for work and
 have never learned Icelandic. They get by just fine with their English.
We found the same in a coffee shop later, where the barista was from Spain
but also has never even tried to learn the difficult language. 

It was around 9:00 when we returned to the hotel. We got our keys and luggage and stumbled to our rooms, wanting nothing so much as a good night’s sleep after Boston, the 7 hour flight, and a very full day of Iceland. But when we opened the door to our room, we were shocked to find it was clearly occupied by someone else! Luckily we found only luggage and crumpled bedding, not the traveler, so we closed the door and went back down to the front desk. The clerk hastened to assure us that the room wasn’t checked out to anyone else; she had made sure. We told her that it was indeed taken, and then she was quite flustered and muttered to herself about how “unprofessional” of them it was. She was very apologetic, and even more so when she realized they had only an “overflow” room on the first floor for us for Monday night. She gave us tickets for four dinners at their restaurant and told us they would be responsible for moving our luggage to the new room Tuesday morning. We told her we were way past caring where we slept; we just needed a bed so we stumbled to our ground floor room and fell gratefully into it.