Iceland (Part 3 of 4)

[Kyle]Based on the time it had taken us to drive from Höfn to Egilsstaðir, we left Egilsstaðir with plenty of time to do the return drive to Höfn without having to limit our sightseeing stops as much as on the drive out.

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."

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.