Iceland (Part 2 of 4)

[Kyle]In the morning, we emerged into the lobby of our Höfn hotel for breakfast. The attendant/front desk clerk had put out enough food for at least five. He reconfirmed that we were not only the only guests, but also fully half of the occupants of the hotel, along with himself and his girlfriend, who also works there. When I asked him about the pronunciation of the hotel's name, Jokull, which means Glacier in Icelandic and is supposed to be pronounced something like, "Yo-kutl", he explained that he was Polish and has never really figured it out himself. He said it was more important, especially when talking over the phone, to know the whole range of how tourists speaking English might try to pronounce it.

We were underway in the dark again as we continued our eastward push east along the south coast. We started with a crazy-steep drive up a 4WD road to a high viewpoint over Höfn and the adjacent bay.

Morning light arriving encourages us to pull over for the viewpoints along the coastal road

And the various waterfalls along the stream at Skútafoss

Just around the corner, we stopped for a short walk to Skútafoss (the suffix foss in Icelandic translates to waterfall) While viewing the half-frozen falls, we couldn't help but notice another, more interesting-looking set a little further up. From there, we saw another one and so on… After a happy hour or so bounding around the rocks and splashing through the rivulets, we finally made it back to our car.

The long drive was a filmstrip of beautiful sights

This was bad. Since we were heading northeast, the sun would be setting earlier and earlier with every mile. Plus, it was starting to snow. At our rental cabin in Egilsstaðir, official sunset would be at 2:45pm. It was already noon and we still had 200km to go, mostly along winding fjords that you just know are peppered with amazing viewpoints. Maryanne and I reluctantly agreed that any subsequent stops would have to be both fewer and further between.

In ideal conditions, we would have had almost an extra hour to play with. In reality, the increasingly heavy snowfall was making the roads more and more treacherous. Instead of driving the 90kph speed limit, we ended up doing most of the journey between 60 and 70kph, which was about 5kph below the speed at which the tires would start to lose their grip on the road. That pretty much ate up the rest of our extra time. We had been hoping for a nice lunch at a cafe in the pretty little seaside village of Djúpivogr, but by the time we got there, we were so far behind that we had to settle for a quick breeze through the town.

It was just starting to get really dark by the time we fetched up at Egilsstaðir. After reviewing our dinner options, we decided to go to a hole-in-the-wall fish and chip shop for takeout. It was a great little place that was all business with no pretense whatsoever. While we watched the woman behind the counter filet and then cook our order, a stream of bundled-up locals came through for their orders.

The last, an old man with a cane, turned out not to be there for the fish and chips, but had been waiting patiently in line to tell me off.

He was the owner of the machine shop next door. When we had parked and shut down the car, the cooling fan came on for a bit. It is admittedly ridiculously loud, and he apparently had come out to investigate the noise. That's when he found us parked one space too far over at the front of his shop.

I effected a very British-style apology, "Oh, terribly sorry! My mistake, I'll move it right away."

"NO MISTAKE!" He yelled at me. He swung his cane so close to my face that I had to step back, and then started jabbing it at a tiny sign high up in the corner of the building with a picture of a tow truck on it. "NO PARKING!!"

How the hell would I have seen that!? "Sorry", I said as I opened the driver's side door, "I'm moving!"

"NOT SORRY!!! MOVE! NOW!" he bellowed, and then hunched over his cane with a scowl and started moving back towards his shop, looking very much like Ebenezer Scrooge himself.

I thought for a brief moment that I still might be close enough to kick that cane out from under him, but decided to focus my energy on moving the car instead. That fan really was annoying.

Icelandic Christmas lore includes the Yule Lads, thirteen brothers who one-at-a-time come down from the hills in the thirteen days before Christmas to play pranks and be mean to misbehaving children. They have descriptive names like The Spoon Licker, The Door Slammer, and the Sausage Swiper. As it was the fourteenth day before Christmas, I wondered if we had encountered Reyr Sveifla, The Cane Swinger, a secret fourteenth brother who punishes bad parkers and makes their next meal taste like fish.

Once I had properly re-parked, the woman behind the counter welcomed me back with a look that seemed meant to convey, "Don't worry about him, Sweetie, he does that fifteen times a day." She then disappeared into the back. A garage door could be heard opening, and then she entered through the main door behind me and tapped me on the shoulder. She took me back outside by the arm, and led me in again through a warren of fishy-smelling processing equipment until we both emerged behind the counter opposite Maryanne. Then, with gesturing and broken English, she handed me a pushpin and told me to put it at our home on a map of the world on the wall. At this point, I froze for a bit trying to figure out where it should go exactly. Maryanne waved at me, "Honey, Canada." That'll do!

A fish and chip supper was perfect for our first night in our new accomodation on the lake near Egilsstaðir

Our accommodation was a stand-alone A-frame cabin on the other side of the lake from the Egilsstaðir. It was nice and toasty, like everywhere else indoors in Iceland, but had what I thought was a major drawback for such a quiet, peaceful location. In compliance with what I'm sure is otherwise a sensible government regulation requiring exit signs in public spaces, one was installed in the main room above the entry door.

In most places, this is a glow-in-the-dark sign that has been stuck to the wall, but for some reason, this place had a big one that was hardwired into the electrical system and had an internal set of fluorescent bulbs that made it the single brightest light fixture in the room. It didn't have a switch and even tripping all of the circuit breakers wouldn't extinguish it. In addition to that, there was a bright outdoor floodlight on the deck that was controlled by a light sensor that turns it on at night. Looking out over the lake at night, instead of stars or the lights of the city, all we could see was the glare of the exit sign and the floodlight. The only way we could experience Iceland's long, dark nights was to hide in the bedroom, shut the door and stuff a towel in the crack at the bottom.

This became a problem later when Maryanne started getting alerts on her phone announcing good conditions for seeing the Aurora Borealis. At this, she would tell me to go check to see if anything was visible. After all, one of the main reasons you come to Iceland near the Winter Solstice is to have lots of good darkness to see the lights.

In this context, "Go check…" did not mean to merely pop out and see if anything was visible. Visible or not, I needed to take the camera and tripod with me and get a few long-exposure shots, in case most of the action is too dim to see with the naked eye.

We did have a north-facing window in the bedroom, but it only revealed a small patch of sky. To get a good view, I would have to go outside, get far enough away from the deck floodlights to be in good darkness, and then find a stable surface for the tripod. The top of the car in its parking spot by the road was ideal.

The temperature outside was around -15C, with windchill making it feel ten degrees lower. My choices for "go check" were to, a: Spend ten minutes bundling and unbundling before and after every foray. That was the most sensible option if there was actually good Northern Lights to see, but how would I know until I got out there? Or, I could go for Option 2: Pop out in my indoor wear and hope I'm not out there long enough to actually get too cold. Maryanne rooted for me from her warm bed behind the window.

I had a few attempts without good results. It seemed that just as I was back in a warm bed and falling asleep again, Maryanne would wake me and ask me to try again. In this way, neither of us slept well and I rarely got fully warmed up again.

We managed to see the Aurora at last in Iceland! Not the dramatic displays we were really hoping for - but YAY, it happened

It turned out we needn't have gone through all that. When our normal alarm went off at 7am, the Aurora event that had started at three o'clock was still going strong. We both had plenty of time to see it in full darkness after we had bundled up for our day.

We had another night staying at the same place, allowing us to stay in the area for the day.

We started with a drive to the trailhead for Hengifoss. This was a very steep climb to what is usually a series of big waterfalls. Today, the flow was minimal, but the frozen falls made for lots of interesting ice sculptures. We were glad we had brought crampons for the hike.

The loop walk at Hengifoss was worth the effort

Afterwards, we took the car over the pass to the pretty little village of Seydisfjordur, nestled at the head of a long, east-west fjord. The brightly painted houses are so far below the mountains above that the closest direct sunlight bathes the summits on the northern side in pink and orange light for an hour or so before disappearing for the day.

Snow was blowing about the road as we transitted the high pass, but we were soon back down at sea level in tranquil Seydisfjordur

We had been planning to find a nice restaurant for a bite to eat, fully prepared to ignore any feelings about whatever prices we saw. Nothing was open, though, so we ended up buying ingredients for cooking at our cabin at the local grocery store. We both did a double-take when the cashier thanked us in a distinctly Yorkshire accent. There had to be a good story behind that, but there were other patrons waiting, so we had to let the mystery be.

We actually saved enough time to be able to make it through the snowfields at the top of the pass and then to our accommodation before darkness fell. That was nice because I'm sure part of what we were paying for was the view.

Once we finished our dinner and it was properly dark, we drove to nearby Vök Baths for a soak. A geothermal soak is one of the things you just have to do in Iceland, so I figured we might as well do it here. The Vök Baths is built over a hot spring at the edge of Urriðavatn, a small, local lake. The place is a bit pricey, but the facilities are very nice, with big, private showers in the locker rooms, fluffy towels and dispensers with all manner of cosmetic liquids in a variety of scents.

Since it was so cold out (-15C), we splurged and rented Maryanne a bathrobe. The idea was that she would have something to keep out the cold while darting from the warm, indoor locker rooms to the outdoor baths.

It didn't turn out that way. After trying to take our stuff with us, we quickly realized there were no chairs or pegs by the actual hot baths. Perhaps this was because it was late December and no one would want to lounge anyway, but we ended with no options other than draping our towels and bathrobe over a nearby railing. A few minutes and some passing steam later, our stuff was frozen stiff as a board. It turned out the best place to leave everything was on the pegs inside the building, just outside the locker rooms. This meant that we just spent fifteen bucks to rent Maryanne a bathrobe for the ten steps between her locker and the pegs.

Apart from that, the warm water of the pools was very nice. The way Vök Baths is set up is that the nearest pool to the lockers is at 37C. From there, you can go to the next, 39C pool. It floats on the surface of Urriðavatn, which the information sign at the entrance told us was currently sitting at -1C. The last, 41C pool floats further out in the lake over the heat source.

Since the air was so cold, the hot pools were filling the air with so much steam that it was sometimes hard to see where we were walking when going between pools.

This caused Maryanne a bit of frustration when the Northern Lights really started putting on a show. Firstly, it was hard to hold the phone still enough to take multi-second exposures. Secondly, the steam and condensation on the lenses made photography impossible.

Once she realized the futility of the endeavor and gave up trying to record the event, we were able to relax and have a good time.

It was a pretty amazing experience to be able to sit stewing in hot water with wet heads frozen into ice helmets, and watch the clouds of steam part to reveal an active Aurora Borealis dancing across a dark backdrop of stars.

During a pique of bravery, I decided to give descending the swim ladder into lake a try. I didn't get too far. The ice was thick enough to support my entire weight. I even had to worry about the soles of my wet feet freezing to the surface if I lingered too long.

One of my favorite things was to sit at the edge of the hottest pool with my arms in the thin zone at the edge of the ice of Urriðavatn. If I left them there for a few seconds, I could even feel forming ice crystals radiating from my fingers.

Once we exhausted the diversions of sitting in really hot water, we decided to call it a night and head for home. One last bit of business remaining was to collect our free cups of tea.

Geothermal baths are a popular pastime in Iceland, Vök Baths is one of the rate places on the east coast. We found it impossible to catpure the overhead auroras, but got to marvel at them from the hot baths in the outside air

One thing they are very proud of at Vök Baths is that their hot spring is the only one in the country that is certified as safe to drink. Because of this, as part of the admission price, they offer a visit to their tea bar. This is basically a selection of different tea bags near a valve at the end of a long pipe from the spring. After filling my cup with what was decidedly tepid water, I noticed the feed pipe running along the ceiling, with no outlet other than my cup. With little traffic during the low season, that meant my hot spring water was effectively room temperature, albeit a warm room. My English wife has taught me that tea that temperature is meant to be thrown out. We took a couple of sips to be polite and then did just that.