Sunday, July 8, 2012

Day 5: Hrossholt to Arnarstapi

The farther we travel, the more interesting the landscape becomes. At one point today, if you looked left to right from about 9 to 3 o'clock, you would see, in order, a wide sandy beach, a lava field, cliffs with waterfalls dropping into the sea, the road, a famous volcano/glacier, pastoral mountains, and sandy desert-like mountains...surreal!

Our requisite Sundlaug (pool, etc.) visit today was to a natural hot spring. They actually have to cool the water down from 50 degrees C to the popular 42 (107.6 if you remember!). What a great midday break!

The most amazing thing about this break was when a "Trek" van pulled up to drop off some excursion pamphlets. We got excited, being about 260 km away from their home base in the city, and greeted the driver, saying, "Hey, we're hiking Laugavegur with you guys in two weeks!" He was excited too, and it turns out that he might be our guide! His name is Gummi (like John over here), and we will be hiking with either him or Cole. This chance encounter reminded us of when Stefan, our bike guy, said that if anything goes wrong that we can't fix, we can just send it back on the bus to Reykjavik and he'll send up a new one. "Anything is possible in Iceland!"

The rain and head winds we battled only literally put a damper on our day - we still had a great time and made it to our next goal: the campground just south of the famous Snaefellsjokull volcano/mountain/glacier. Never heard of it? Go watch "Journey to the Center of the Earth"! Although this is known to be Jules Verne's inspiration, we suspect that Hitchcock was on the Snaefellsjokull Peninsula prior to (or while!) filming "Birds." A few territorial arctic terns pestered/hovered over/chirped at us until we were a safe distance past their breeding ground. VERY reminiscent of the dogs in KS/CA.

2 comments:

  1. I think I've been to that same spot! The view you described totally makes up for the prison, landfill, OTB, brothel, and sewage treatment facility from 4 to 8 o'clock.
    -Gummi

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  2. sounds like rain falls every day...a warm dip is a daily prerequisite, and help is never too far away! those camp sites look pretty cool. How is the food holding up, Steph?
    how many hours of darkness??
    I am liking the sound of icelanders!

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