It turned out to be unnecessary. The weather was so bad, with low ceilings and poor visibility, that there wasn't much to see other than gloomy snow and fog. All of the scenic pullouts only offered views of the whiteout beyond. The roads were slippery enough that driving was a white-knuckle job at half speed.
The long drive to Höfn was a bit gloomy, but the excellent traffic app gave us good notice of animals ahead (possibly on the road) - so we kept our eyes peeled and were excited to spot several reindeer before we made it to Höfn
We got to Höfn with enough daylight left to have a poke through the town museum before it closed. Then we leaned hard into the blowing snow and pretended we were having a pleasant stroll along the quay. At the far end, we came upon a "diner" called Hafnarbúðin. Since it was the only place in town other than Kaffi Hornið, and since it was about to close, we decided we had better give it a go for variety's sake.
We dripped a half gallon of melting snow onto their clean floor and then took a seat by the door to keep from spreading it too far. The guy who took our order was gracious about it. When he passed it to the kitchen, I was surprised that I actually understood some of it. Then I realized he was doing so in Castilian Spanish.
Our food was delicious. This time we had the sense to share a plate and a salad between us, otherwise, it would have been the Kaffi Hornið all over again.
At our hotel, we drove through an empty lot all the way up to the restaurant at the end. No one was there, but the door was open, so we went on in.
We rang the bell on the counter to no avail. After waiting a while, we started calling numbers and sending messages. With no response, we settled into a lively game of cards while we waited. Eventually, we received a very apologetic response from the owner, who said he was trying to get hold of his staff there.
A couple minutes later, Paulina trotted over from the rooms to check us in. She explained that the hotel were using the low season to do deep cleanings and renovations in all of the rooms and no one had heard their phones over the power tools. She seemed terribly embarrassed at our inconvenience, but we had arrived right at the earliest check-in time, so we weren't worried.
Aurora played over our hotel
We had another great night of Aurora. We figured out that we could turn off the floodlight outside our room with the circuit breaker, but taking the step was hardly necessary as the Aurora was bright enough to see through the street lamps and everything.
In the morning, we went for a breakfast that had clearly been laid out for twenty people. Sergio, the chef (from Portugal), assured us that it was no trouble at all. He has a system and it will be good practice for when the season picks up again.
After talking with him for a bit about his recommendations for things to eat in Höfn, we moved on to deeper things. When we hesitated on the, "Where are you from?" question and finally revealed that we have been living on a boat for too long to really know, his eyes lit up.
He told us he was in love (Paulina, it turns out. She's from Poland) and he always dreamt of going on such an adventure. Now he wants to take her and she wants to go. Then he started asking us specific enough questions about how we managed to do it that we knew it wasn't just idle curiosity. He wanted real advice. Talking to him was like reaching back through time to the dreamers we were twenty years ago when we wanted what we have now so badly that it hurt.
It was tough to pry ourselves away, but we had a scheduled tour to get to that we didn't want to be late for. We had booked a glacier and ice cave tour for the day.
Diamond Beach is the faux tourist name for the ice littered black sand beach of Breiðamerkursandur. The ice travels first through the stunning Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon before reaching the beaches, and we had time before our meet up to inspect them both
We drove to our meetup point near Diamond Beach. This is the place where the ice calving off Breiðamerkurjökull flows into the Atlantic and then gets washed back onto the beach as innumerable chunks varying from ice cube all the way up to minibus-sized.
Maryanne and I thought we might be the only ones on the tour when we were showed to our "super Jeep" (a jacked-up van with big tires for driving on snow and soft ground, not an actual brand-name Jeep) and handed our equipment. When we boarded, we were surprised by a Japanese family of three who were being as quiet as church mice.
The drive to the glacier was shorter than we had expected, since we had booked the extended version of the basic tour. Our Icelandic guide explained that both tours visited the same ice cave, the extra bit on our version added the walk on the glacier itself.
The walk to the glacier from the end of the road for our super jeep (All this was once glacier but it is receeding at about 100m/year)
We started with that. After taking the trail to the foot of the glacier, a volunteer was chosen to have their crampons installed by the guide for demonstration purposes. The rest of us were instructed to follow along and copy the process for ourselves.
Then it was time to start climbing. Maryanne and I have done this before, whereas the rest of the group were clearly first-timers. This made us look brilliant at it, relatively speaking, so we were left to look after each other while the guides helped the rest.
Almost immediately, we came across a big moulin (an area where water flows through a fissure in the ice and disappears out of sight). Down we went. This part was the most technically challenging, as the path was narrow enough to need to squeeze through in a few places. It was so cool, though, to descend with the water into the deep blue ice.
The moulin didn't disappoint
Once everyone had had their fill, we re-emerged and then climbed to the surface. From there, it was a short traverse to the ice cave entrance, where we would all change down from crampons to shoe spikes for the trip in.
And then there was an ice cave to see
At some point about two-thirds of the way through the traverse, Maryanne fell.
I was behind her. To me, it looked like she had just tripped on the toe spikes on her right crampon. She later said that what had actually happened was that her foot was at an angle and had basically just rolled off the high spikes.
The guide nearest to her and I helped her back onto her feet. She tried to continue walking, but was clearly limping badly. Eventually, she admitted that she wasn't up for going into the last ice cave. I knew then that she must be pretty hurt, because Maryanne hates missing anything for anything. We left her behind, sitting on a cold rock. She was dead weight after all. It's the Code of the Outdoors.
Okay, maybe that did happen, but it wasn't for long. We all got a few meters into the cave when the head guide pulled me aside to say he was going to break off and help Maryanne back to the Jeep.
Kyle visited the more extensive ice cave, while I rested up and then was guided back towards the jeep
The ice cave started by plunging into the thicker part of the glacier by the mountain. It was dark enough in here that I was glad Maryanne had slipped a headlamp into my pocket as we were getting dressed earlier. The ceiling was also so low that we could no longer make progress by crouching. We had to get on our hands and knees and crab our way in, trying to avoid the muddiest rocks. This didn't sit well with the Japanese, who had apparently brought all of their Arctic gear from a store that only sells super-clean, white things, presumably for camouflage. This, at least, made me feel better that Maryanne had made the right decision in skipping this part of the tour.
We went a bit further in. The guide took the obligatory photos of us all sitting there under the deep blue light, and then we all crawled our way back out. I was apparently doing such a great job of using the alternating-leg gait favored by experienced mountaineers everywhere, that I was briefly put in charge of returning the group safely to the Jeep while the guide ran off to find a few seconds of privacy.
Back in Höfn, we took Sergio's recommendation to return to the Kaffi Hornið and this time try the steak sandwich instead of the emergency lean-to. He was not wrong. It was normal-sized and delicious.
We took one more quick look at 'Diamond beach' before returning to town for dinner
Back at the hotel, I carefully peeled Maryanne's boots off and had a look at her foot. Her ankle was really swollen - so much so that I initially thought she may have broken something. After doing a few tests, we decided it was probably just a really bad sprain.
We didn't have much walking planned for the next day, just the long drive back to Reykjavik. She was still sore enough that she asked me to drive her the ten parking spaces between our door and the breakfast room. When we sat at the first table by the door instead of by the kitchen, Sergio seemed to think we wanted our privacy and disappeared behind the doors to do some cleaning or something.
When we waved him over, a broad smile came over his face. We explained about Maryanne's ankle. He offered a whole kitchen full of ice for a pack, which I declined, saying I could always just stick her foot out the window if we wanted to cool it off. After a few more "Are you sures", and "It's no problems", we resumed our conversation where we had left it off the day before.
For the few stops, Kyle took the pictures while I remained in the car for the drive to Reykjavik, and we took a break at Vik for lunch
After a few scenic stops, the most fun of which was the Uxafótofoss waterfall, which fell off the escarpment and then went UP, We made a brief lunchtime stop in Vik. By then, our main goal, other than clocking road miles in daylight, was to find Maryanne some crutches by scouring the giant second-hand shop there. The employees were very nice in helping me tear apart the place, looking for what I wanted. In the end, I had to settle for a walker. Maryanne thought it was a bit of overkill and a little embarrassing, but once she had a go, she decided she liked it way better than putting weight on that ankle.
We tried another, even bigger store when we got to Reykjavik. This time we found a good pair of crutches, so now we look like we are ready to start a hospital ward.
Iceland has some great second hand stores, and we found the crutches for Maryanne for under $5
The directions to get to our hotel in Reykjavik weren't great. We found the building okay and even managed score a good parking space in front, but once we got inside, found that none of the room numbers correlated with anything in our reservation. I called the office, which was in another building a few blocks away. They told me to come over and they would sort it.
Downtown Reykjavik has the usual big city driving problems of one-way streets and difficult-to-find parking. Add to that that Maryanne couldn't walk, there was snow everywhere, and it had already been a long day, and you have a pretty good recipe for frustration. I may have seemed a bit curt to the friendly desk clerk as he explained to me that we had been in the correct building initially, but the room number on our reservation was actually the post code for the downtown region generally, so it was a good thing I trotted over to get the actual room number.
"Actually, uh…never mind."
After walking a few blocks to our new parking space, where Maryanne was waiting for me in the car, we drove through three miles of one-way streets to get the ten blocks back to the building with our room. By some miracle, our old parking spot right at the door was still vacant. Well, at least that's something.
After we had moved into our room, when Maryanne asked if I wanted to go out to celebrate, I responded that what I really wanted was specifically to not go out. We could see Reykjavik tomorrow. I wanted to relax and not do anything else for the rest of the day
"Alright", she said, "It is your birthday."
No comments:
Post a Comment