Our Last Day in Iceland

Monday, June 9, 2014

Yesterday and today are national holidays.  Besides Christmas and Easter, Pentecost is a huge holiday here.  That's when the Holy Spirit descended into the disciples.

Today we found an excursion that fit PERFECTLY with our itinerary.  After breakfast we took our rental car back to the company (total driven - 2460 km), and the excursion bus picked us up right there at 9 am.  After 2 more pickups, we were on our way.

The shuttle driver gave us some interesting information about the vast fields of lupins around Iceland.  They will bloom for most of the month of June, so we came at a great time.  They were originally imported from Canada to help the soil erosion problem that Iceland was facing.  They have spread like weeds.  Some of the local people don't like them because they are not native plants.  How could you not like them????  The plan is for the lupins to make the soil stronger so it can support native plants again.

Our excursion was to the Leidarendi Cave, which is 900 meters long and situated in a lava field near a volcanic crater outside of Reykjavik.  It wasn't mapped until 1992. This one is open to the public, but there is NO WAY we would go into this one without a guide!  This was a completely different experience from yesterday's cave!  We started at the entrance, 2 small pits that led downwards.

Our guide said that usually he goes the easy way and saves the difficult part for the end.  Today he switched them.  It should be stated right now that THERE WAS NO EASY WAY!!!  We started by climbing over some huge lava rocks, and then all of a sudden there was the ceiling!  We had to climb on all fours for quite a distance, it was literally a 2 foot clearing!  And that was over rough rocks.  The info on the tour had said, "You might have to crawl for a short distance".  I guess a short distance for these billy goats is 15 - 20 minutes!  We lost count of how many times our helmets hit the ceiling.  It became a regular sound.

There were also lots of times when we had to walk all hunched over, so our body was at a 45 degree angle.  Definitely the most strenuous activity we've done all trip.  Plus we noticed that everyone else seemed to be in their 20's and 30's, I think we were the old folks. We were actually thankful when it was just loose gravel we had to tread, ha ha.

The cave was not nearly as deep as Vatnshellir so it was much warmer, especially with all the working out we were doing.  The cave ran in two directions and connected in two parts, so we entered one cave and came out the other an hour later.

A few times there were spots where he had all of us turn off our flashlights and just stand in the dark listening to the cave (it was very drippy).  A few times we all sat around him and he told stories.  He REALLY liked to tell ghost stories.  And he told of elves and the yule lads and the invisible people.  He also told us traditions of Icelandic Christmas.  For example, the Icelandic Christmas Cat is a giant cat that will come and eat you if you don't receive at least one item of clothing at Christmas. Even a pair of socks will do.  That's a good way of getting children to be thankful to receive clothing, if you ask me!

There was a lava formation inside the cave that they call "The Crown" because it hangs from the ceiling and you can stick your head inside.  There was a spot where you could view the skeleton of a lamb that wandered inside and couldn't find its way out.  Sort of like the arctic fox but this one this had its skull.  And there was a spot where some locals had started a bonfire and danced around it naked.  No one knows why.  Not a smart idea because fires suck oxygen.

After the cave tour, they took us to a field where they had acres and acres of hanging fish drying from racks.  It takes about 2 months for it to dry completely.  Boy, did it smell fishy!  I'm sure we will be a lovely treat for the passengers around us in the airplane!

Then I think he was killing time because he took us to a guy's farm so we could see the horses.

One of the reasons we picked this tour is because there was an option of being delivered to the airport at 2:00, which worked perfectly for us since we had a 5 pm flight. We expected him to drive us in the shuttle, but we pulled over on the road and waited a few minutes, then we got picked up by a full-size "Airport Express" bus.  Not so express for the people already aboard when they had to stop and pick us up!

Check-in was the absolute EASIEST we've EVER had.  EVER!  No lines.  And security was just as fast.  NICE!  There was a spot where you could rate your security experience (back home they wouldn't care).  There were 4 happy to sad faces that you could punch.  We gave them a big happy face.

That gave us lots of time to sit and have lunch.  Frankie finally got to try the Icelandic meat soup, yummy but salty.  Anton enjoyed his bacon and banana pizza.  Yes, bacon and banana.  It was a nice spot to sit and finish our last blog.

And the last blog it is.  Till our next trip!

Snæfellsnes Peninsula

Sunday, June 8, 2014

It doesn't get dark  here.  It makes it way too easy to go to bed late!  At night Frankie wears eye shades, and sometimes Anton hangs his coat over the window.  A bonus:  it makes finding the washroom in the middle of the night much easier.

We were the first ones down to breakfast so no bumping elbows at the small buffet areas.  Every single breakfast has been the SAME:  a continental Nordic thing.  Bread, yogurt, boiled eggs, meat and cheese slices, cereal, a small choice of fruit, and tomatoes and cucumbers.

Today we took our time going around the Snæfellsnes Peninsula.  The Snæfellsnes Peninsula has been called a miniature Iceland because of its many iconic features, including volcanoes, basalt cliffs, glaciers, lava fields, waterfalls, craters, etc.  The receptionist at last night's hotel was very helpful in mapping out some interesting sites for us.  There are a lot!

There were lots of sheep on the road again today.  The little black ones are adorable.

On the way to our first site, we saw a little church and stopped for a picture.  Anton got divebombed by Arctic terns again.

We took a gravel sideroad to Ondverdarnes, right along the coast, where we found a solar heated lighthouse.  The lighthouses are quite small here, and bright orange.

We found Saxholl crater and climbed up 109 meters.  It was VERY slippery in both directions, so they had metal grates to climb.  It was peaceful because we were the only ones there.

Nearby was Holaholar crater, very unique because we drove our car right into the crater.  There is a big parking lot in the middle of the crater.  Probably the wall of the crater collapsed at some point, and it's a low crater to begin with.

We drove into Djupalonssandur which had been highly recommended, but the road ended!  We figured out it must be a hiking trail, which we didn't have time for.

At 10 am we took a guided tour of Vatnshellir Cave (Water Cave). Scientists believe Vatnshellir was created in an eruption between 6,000-8,000 years ago. This is a lava cave, or tube. A lava tube is formed by flowing lava which moves beneath the hardened surface of a lava flow. This tube is extinct, meaning the lava has stopped flowing and has cooled, leaving a long, cave-like channel. 

We travelled about 200 meters into the cave and 35 meters below the surface. There are two main sections. The upper section has stalactites and stalagmites formed by dripping lava.  

The lower part of the lava cave was reached by a long and narrow staircase. These caves had been undiscovered for thousands of years.  Then tourists started coming and taking bits of it away as souvenirs, so the government shut it down and only reopened it to the public in 2011, but with guided tours.  Even then, the guides don't catch everything.  Just last week a tourist walked away with an arctic fox skull from a skeleton that had been there for 40 years.

There were 7 of us on the tour, not too crowded.  At one point in the lower level, the guide had us all turn off our flashlights and just listen to the cave.  It was pitch dark down there, there would be NO adjusting to that darkness.  The guide took pictures of us (no flash) and called our shadows trolls behind us.

Lóndrangar is a site that has two prominent rocks (cliffs) that stand like pillars on the coast of the peninsula. They are 75 m and 61 m tall. The taller one is called “Christian Pillar” and the shorter one is “Heathen Pillar”. They are actually volcanic plugs of basalt. A volcanic plug is a volcanic landform created when magma hardens within a vent on an active volcano.

We got a phone call on our Nordic Visitor cell phone (Anton doesn't know how to use it because it is not a smartphone!).  There were not enough people for our 12:00 tour but we could take the 2:00 one if we wanted.  So we spent the time taking a 2.5 km trail between the two villages of Arnarstapi to Hellnar both small fishing villages), and back again.  The trail went through lava fields and along the coast, we would guess it is a moderate difficulty.  It was a very nice trail, we were glad for the delay.  Today we felt that we were running from site to site so quickly that we didn't have time to stop and enjoy anything, so the hike was nice.

We were finally ready to take our excursion!  There are 4 national parks in Iceland. Snæfellsjökull is a national park that contains an active volcano covered by a glacier of the same name. The mountain is one of the most famous sites of Iceland, mainly because of the 1864 Jules Verne novel Journey to the Center of the Earth. On Snæfellsjökull, the main characters find the entrance to a passage leading to the center of the earth.

We were told that we had to drive right up to the foot of the glacier.  We tried that once before on this trip, the glacier kept retreating.  And our GPS got quite mad at us because we were on an F-road.  It took 15 minutes up the mountain and some interesting road encounters, but we made it.  To tour the Snæfellsjökull Glacier, the Snjofell company uses snow cats. A snowcat is a truck-sized snowmobile (they're really built for grooming ski hills). These had bench space for 20 passengers and were open so riders could enjoy the views along the way. 

We were taken all the way up the glacier, to about 4,600 feet above sea level.  There was a crack that our guide warned us to stay away from because it was breaking off. At the top there was one little peak that people were climbing and then snowboarding down or even sliding on their butts.  They were creating little avalanches.

The top of the glacier was very soft snow that we sank into, and got our socks and shoes all wet.  Not ice like we expected.

After our excursion, we kept going around the peninsula.  We drove into Budir and found a small church and graveyard. There had been several churches on this spot, but the perish was "abolished" whatever that means.  One lady fought and fought for a new church, she was finally given permission to build a new one in 1848.  There is a quote on the door ring that says, "This church was built in 1848 without the support of the spiritual fathers."

From the church we took a short hike towards the coast.  We actually found sand hills.  Very unusual for Iceland!  From here we could see the Buðahraun lava field and the Buðaklettur crater.

Across the road was Barnafoss waterfall (Child Falls), so named because there is a legend of two children getting lost and falling into the waterfall.

We did a pull up stop at Gerðuberg.  Gerðuberg is a wall of basalt columns that form geometric patterns in the cliffs. Gerðuberg was created when basaltic lava emerged from the sea, then cooled and solidified in very uniform columns. These are between 1 and 1.5 m wide and 7-14 m high.

We travelled through the Hvalfjörður Tunnel, which is a 5.7 km long tunnel under the fjord of the same name. It reaches a depth of 165m below sea level. It is a 7 minute drive. At 2-3 lanes wide, it seemed quite easy after some of the tunnels we travelled through in northern Iceland.  

The tunnel shortens the drive to Reykjavik by 45 km and 50 minutes. It is also the only tunnel where tolls are charged ($10). No worries, they took credit cards. The money goes to pay for the construction of the tunnel, and when the investment has been fully repaid the tunnel will become property of the state. The original plan assumed it would take 20 years (until 2018) to pay back the cost of building the tunnel, but traffic has proved to be significantly higher than originally projected. The volume of traffic is so high that the operator of the tunnel has suggested building a new tunnel alongside the current one. The Hvalfjörður Tunnel received a bad rating in the 2010 European tunnel test. Different aspects were criticized, especially the weak lighting, absence of an automatic fire alarm system, weak ventilation in case of a fire, and too far a distance to the next fire station (28 km).

We arrived back in Reykjavik at 7 pm.  There were a lot of speed cameras and tons of roundabouts getting into the city.  We decided to eat dinner at the Perlan revolving restaurant, it takes 2 hours for it to revolve once, with great views of Reykjavik.  Of course they "recommended" the 4 course meal for each of us, at $90 each, ouch.  We went for a simple meal each, no drinks, no appetizers, and no desserts, and paid $90 total.

Then back to our original hotel, we have come full circle.  Do the blog, repack.  Get ready for our last day tomorrow!

Journey to Snæfellsnes Peninsula

Saturday, June 7, 2014

The Internet has been EXCELLENT in Iceland, and free in hotels and restaurants.  It has made writing the blog much easier.

Another bright and sunny day.  We've lost count now.  We are beginning to believe that weather in Iceland is very regional.  Apparently the south is still having cloudy rainy weather like when we were there.  If we had to choose, we would put the yucky weather at the beginning of the trip anyways and end with the nice weather like we are doing.

Well, this is the farthest we've had to go for breakfast.  This is one of two guesthouses owned by the family, so we took a little walk through the cemetery to go to the other guesthouse.  At breakfast, we were absolutely spoiled with lots of personal attention, I guess it's more like a bed and breakfast.  The owners had bought gluten-free food just for Frankie because they had been told ahead of time, and they refrained from wearing perfume.  So thoughtful.  There was way too much gluten-free food, so Frankie took some along for lunch.

Our drive today started out foggy, which made blind hills and curves interesting, especially when all of a sudden there were sheep on the road.  In Iceland, if you hit a sheep, you have to pay the farmer for it.  A lot of the sheep have little babies frolicking about, so cute.  Must be lambing season.

Today we drove through Tröllaskagi.  Tröllaskagi (the “Peninsula of the Trolls”) is a mountainous peninsula in northern Iceland. 

We ran across the cutest wooden church set into sod, called Grafarkirkja.  It was built in the late 1600s.  The church was deconsecrated in 1765, we didn't know they could do that!  It was rebuilt in 1953.  Around the church were some stones set into the ground, a graveyard with 4 or 5 stones.

We drove through Skagafjörður which is an area famous for horse breeding. Skagafjörður is the only county in Iceland where horses outnumber people. Icelandic horses are small but hardy and long-lived. Icelandic law has prevented other horses from being imported into the country for over 800 years, and exported animals are not allowed to return. It is illegal to bring any riding gear from other countries (to protect from diseases). The Icelandic horses have two additional gaits that most horses around the world do not have. The first additional gait is a four-beat lateral ambling gait known as the tölt. This is known for its explosive acceleration and speed; it is also comfortable and ground-covering. The breed also performs a pace called a skeið, flugskeið, or "flying pace".  It is used in pacing races, and is fast and smooth.  When horses compete in Iceland, it is not in racing, it is to see who has the best gait.  Only one horse at a time goes around the track.

We decided there was no better place to try horseback riding in Iceland than here, so we booked horseback riding with Hestasport at noon. We took the one hour “Pleasure in Every Hoofstep” tour, which took us alongside the river Svartá with the prominent mountains of Skagafjörður in the background.  Our guide Michael took us to Reylijafoss, their very own waterfall, and they also have their own hot spring. What was nice was that we didn't stick to the trail, but ambled across some meadows as well.  We were the only ones with Michael today, so he gave us an hour and a half instead of an hour.

Anton had a nice docile mare named Nös, who obeyed his every command, while Frankie got lucky with a spirited and stubborn mare named Dila, who dug in her heels several times refusing to budge.  But we did get up to a tölt a few times, it was so nice and smooth.

Just further south we drove through Vatnsdalshólar, which is an area of small, cone-shaped hills clustered together. They are thought to have been formed by a catastrophic landslide. There are so many of them that they are considered to be one of the three “innumerables” (uncountable) things in Iceland, along with the lakes in Arnarvatnsheidi and the islands on Breidarfjord in the west.

We took a little detour to visit Eiríksstaðir, the home of Eiríkur the Red and the birthplace of Leif the Lucky, who discovered North America in 1000 AD. This is a living museum, there was a guide dressed in costume describing the people who lived there and their lifestyle.  Eiríkur the Red seems to have been a very unsavoury character.  He was outlawed from Norway for killing some of his neighbours, so he came to Iceland.  Here his son Leif was born.  Again Eiríkur got into trouble, killed a few more of his neighbours, and was outlawed from Iceland.  He sailed to Greenland with his family.  His family all became Christians but he remained a pagan his whole life.  They heard of land to the south from a passerby, and his son Leif wanted to sail to explore.  On the way to the ship, Eiríkur the Red fell off his horse and broke his collarbone.  He took it as a sign from the gods that he was not to sail.  Leif sailed without him and discovered North America.

The 10^th century longhouse is on display, although it was a bit hard to find. We had to start at the small statue of Leifur and take the gravel path to the right up the hillside heading towards the waterfall. A replica of the longhouse has been built nearby. This is where the guide told her stories.  It has 12m by 4m turf walls, a dirt floor, and a roof made of rafters covered over with turf and twigs.

Much of our drive was gravel roads for the second half of the day.  We got stuck behind one car that decided it was okay to take the blindhaeds (blind hills) on the wrong side of the road, and stop their car at the top of a blindhaed.  Sheesh.

We are at the Hotel Frammes in Grundarfjördur for the night.  It is a small sized hotel with two floors.  Much smaller room than last night.

Northern Iceland

Friday, June 6, 2014

This morning when we went for breakfast, they found Frankie's gluten-free bread right away, AND they had baked fresh gluten-free banana bread for her!  Yummy!

After breakfast we tried going to Dimmuborgir again, since the construction vehicles had impeded us yesterday.  So glad we did!  Dimmuborgir is a 2000 year old forest of black lava rock pillars, some as tall as 65 feet. It is the only place on earth where formations like this exist. It was created when steam bubbles popped out of a giant lava lake. The steam bubbles formed cooling vents which hardened into these pillars.

We had intended a quick look, maybe the 20 minute walk, but when we got there we liked it so much that we went on the one hour hike.  The paths were very nice and very well laid out.

The name Dimmuborgir means “dark castles”. It got this name because humans could live in the large hollow structures. In fact, they claim there are "Yule Lads" living here, kind of like dwarfs.  But the Yule Lads are resting right now.  Your best bet for seeing them is in December when they are getting ready for Christmas.  They did have props in some of the caves, though (like a pair of skis!).

Dimmuborgir has several unusual lava formations and caves. The most well-known is called Kirkjan (“the church”) because it has an entrance that is vaulted like a cathedral. The area is under threat from blowing wind, and some parts have been completely submerged in the past.

We left our guesthouse and stopped at Goðafoss Waterfall. It is called “Waterfalls of the Gods” because there was a pagan chieftain who threw all his wooden statues of Norse gods into the waterfall after he embraced Christianity around 1000 AD. The waterfall is quite spectacular, with the water of the Skjálfandafljót River falling from a height of 12 meters over a width of 30 meters.  It was one of our favourite waterfalls, and we've seen a few.

We noticed on our drive that the GPS said we were going 97 kph, but the car said 100 kph.  Anton said that the 100 referred to his driving skills, ha ha.

We arrived at Akureyri a bit early.  The city of Akureyri is known as the “Capital of North Iceland”. It is the largest city after Reykjavik (population 17,000). The town was settled in the 800's and became an important fishing and trading centre. The city has a relatively warm climate due to geographical factors, and an ice-free harbour. In the 1870s Akureyri only had 5 trees, but an intense tree planting campaign has led to a tree haven for Icelanders, even though it seems like a normal woods for us.

Crime is low, and Akureyri has a total of five police officers. They make up for that with their Parking Patrol. For parking in Akureyri , they have something called the parking clock. There is lots of parking in Akureyri, with no parking meters in sight. If we hadn't been warned ahead of time, we might have thought the parking was free. Well, technically it is free, just not unlimited. You have to get a little sticky clock that goes on the windshield. These are given out by gas stations, banks, and businesses. When you park, you set the clock hand to the current time, and you are fine as long as you don't go over the limit for your particular spot. It's confusing because spots can either be good for 15, 30, 60, or 120 minutes. The moment you go over your time, you get a ticket for a flat $100. You can, however, just run outside to your car and change your clock.

We thought we would check out the Akureyrarkirkja, a Lutheran church which sits on a hill in the middle of the city. It was completed in 1940. One of the stained glass windows comes from Coventry Cathedral in England. When they felt that they might be targeted by German aid raids, Coventry Cathedral removed their stained glass windows and placed them in farms in the countryside. Somehow one of those windows ended up here in Iceland.  

However, the church was closed for a funeral.  This has happened to us 3 times. Are we bad luck? So instead we found the Botanic Garden on a hill overlooking the city.   We found a peaceful bench and ate our bag lunch (still food from our grocery stop at the beginning of the trip, plus all the chocolate we have picked up along the way ha ha).

Today we were booked on our own little excursion at 1:15. For 250 euros, we took a 30 minute flight from the airport in Akureyri to the little northern island of Grimsey. The airport was pretty small and informal.  When we walked up to check in, we said we were there for a flight to Grimsey and the guy said, "Are you Anton and Frances?" He handed us boarding passes printed on cash register receipts.  Don't worry about where you parked your car, and bringing your own water is just fine.  The plane was a twin engine Fokker, which sat 20 people, but there were only 8 passengers.  

Grimsey is 40 km off the mainland, and still belongs to Iceland. There is no night there at all in the summer. It is about 5 square km. They have a school, swimming pool, and a shop. Sixty-five people live there in winter and 102 in summer.  And one million seabirds. Often when the planes need to land in Grimsey, they need to do a dive bomb pass first to clear the birds off the runway. The birds are so bad in the summer that people wear thick hats and carry sticks for self-defense.

Our purpose for visiting Grimsey was because the Arctic Circle runs through it. We were able to walk around the island for a few hours.  We started by walking towards town and got literally swarmed (and dive-bombed!) by protective arctic terns.  We chatted with the nice lady from the guesthouse who gave us sticks to carry against the birds.  We walked along the coast, then took our touristy picture under the Arctic Circle signpost. Conveniently, this signpost is located right next to the baggage claim at the airport, ha ha. There is a legend that the Arctic Circle passed straight through the bedroom of a pastor and his wife, dividing their bed. 

The funny thing is that due to gradual changes in the tilt of the earth's axis, technically the Arctic Circle on Grimsey moves by about 15 meters per year, and no one knows exactly where it is. That means that even if we were directly on the Arctic Circle, we would just touch it and the line would be moving. Not to worry, since because the earth wobbles, the Arctic Circle corrects itself every 18.6 years. A sure way to find the Arctic Circle is to arrive on June 21 and walk backwards until any portion of the sun disappears from your sight. Oh well, we came home proud of our “Arctic Circle” certificates anyways!

We returned to the mainland at 4:30.  There were 12 people on the flight back, it seems that more people want to leave Grimsey than go there ha ha.  We wanted to go back to check out the church now that the funeral was over, but alas, it was closed for the day.  So we walked in the Akureyri Public Park and Botanic Garden for an hour and quite enjoyed it.  The garden was established in 1912 and is the world's northernmost botanical garden.  Interestingly, about 430 species are native, while 6600 species are not native.  We noticed plants in bloom at the same time here that would bloom in different seasons back home, such as daffodils, lupins, and daisies.

It was only an hour's drive to our next stop.  Along the way,  we had to drive through 3 long tunnels.  The first was one was a little exciting because it had one lane only! There were regular spots to pull over when you met an oncoming car.  The pullover spots were only for cars going in our direction.

We found the Herring Guesthouse in Siglufjörður. Siglufjörður is a small fishing town with a population of 1000, which has declined significantly with the loss of herring in the area. This area was once a world leader in the export of herring until the collapse of the herring stock in 1969. Before this, herring accounted for up to half of Iceland's export income.

When we arrived at our guesthouse, there was no one there!  A sign told us a number to call, which we did, and the guy was there in 2 minutes flat.  We have the entire downstairs to ourselves, which has 2 bedrooms, a kitchen, bath, and sitting area. Nice!  The two couples upstairs are from Halifax.

We went into town for a fancy meal at Hannes Boy Restaurant.  When Anton asked who Hannes Boy was, the answer was, "An alcoholic."

After supper we walked around the harbour, it really didn't take long, then we walked through the cemetery a bit.  The headstones that were dated 1800's all looked new.

Lake Myvatn Area

Thursday, June 5, 2014

Last night Frankie had brought her loaf of gluten-free bread to the restaurant staff to refrigerate overnight, as she often does.  When we came for breakfast today, they could NOT find it!  The poor ladies looked for over half an hour, and Frankie had a tour of their walk-in fridges and freezers also looking for it.  By the time they found it, it was too late because we had to leave for our excursion.

It was a balmy 17C today, and not a stitch of rain.  Wahoo!  And we still ended up trudging through snow ha ha.

This morning we drove to Húsavík (House Bay). It took us 45 minutes to drive there from our guesthouse. The bugs on the windshield were so thick it sounded like rain. It is said that Húsavík was the very first settlement in Iceland, when a Swedish Viking landed and built himself a house in the bay around the year 860. He travelled to Iceland because his mother had seen it in a dream. When he left a few months later, he accidentally left behind a sailor and two slaves who settled here permanently. However, they are NOT considered the first settlers of Iceland, because their being here was not voluntary.

When we drove in, we saw a quaint, cross-shaped wooden church.  It was built in 1907 and is said to be the most beautiful wooden church in Iceland. Every piece of the church was shipped from Norway, already cut and painted.  Behind the altar is a painting of Lazarus that is clearly set in Iceland. The painting did not go over well with the townspeople of Húsavík when they recognized their own faces in the painting.

Húsavík is known as the “whale watching capital of Europe”, and we had a whale watching tour scheduled for 9:30 am in. Icelandic waters make a home for around 24 species of whales. Some of them stay here all year round, while the bigger ones come only for the summertime to feed. Tourists arrive at the same time. We took the 2 ½ hour Gentle Giants Big Whale Safari & Puffins tour, which uses an RIB (rigid-inflatable boat) to travel faster and farther in the hopes of seeing more whales. Cruising speed was about 30 knots.  The boat was half empty which was great for us. Everyone crowded to the front seats so we headed to the back and had unobstructed views.

Besides whales, the tour started with a visit to Puffin Island. We saw thousands of puffins (called "The Clowns of the Ocean") because it was their nesting period (May 1st - August 20th).  They are not much at flying, but they can dive down to 50 meters. Wow!  Hunters come out here to try to catch them because they are a local delicacy, but it seems cruel to do that because they mate for life.  Plus, they are so darn cute!

Our boat went out about 4 miles while the normal whale watching boat stayed in the harbour.  Apparently all those boats were clustered around one poor minke whale, the most common whales in Iceland.  We didn't see any minke whales, but we had up close and personal encounters with no fewer than 6 blue whales!  And several blow holes off in the distance.  Blue whales are 20-33m, 110-190 tons, and they are the biggest animals that have ever lived on the earth. Its heart is as big as a car. Some of their blood vessels are so big that you could swim in them.  Our captain could not believe how many we encountered on this one tour.  His quotation when he didn't know which whale to zip to:  "An unusual problem, there are too many blue whales."

We found our way to Ásbyrgi (Fortress of the Gods), a canyon in the northernmost part of Vatnajökull National Park (one of 3 national parks in Iceland). The canyon is 1 km wide and 3 km long. It is divided through the middle by a rock formation 25 meters high called Eyjan ("the Island").  The canyon is horseshoe shaped, and legend says it was created when the Norse god Odin's eight-legged horse put his foot down while travelling over the area. We parked and hiked in the tip of the canyon.  The walls were quite sheer going up all around us.

Legend also says that the canyon is the home of the Huldufólk ("hidden people"), who live in cracks within the surrounding cliffs. Huldufólk are said to be descended from children that Eve hid from God because they were not washed. God made them invisible. Because the Huldufólk live in rocks, they are the reason that roads will be re-routed and large boulders left in fields. It is bad luck to disturb their home. They are to blame for all the tractors and bulldozers that have broken down. Only 5% of Icelanders have ever met one.  They are sometimes called elves.

From the canyon we took a long gravel road to Dettifoss (Tumble Falls), which is Europe's most powerful waterfall. It is 45 m high and 100 m long, and it releases 300-400 cubic m of water per second into the gorge.  The land around Dettifoss is dry and barren plains, except for an oasis created by the spray of the falls.

We continued down the gravel road for what seemed forever, until we got back to the Ring Road.  We couldn't believe it was already 5 pm at this point, and there was still a lot we wanted to do!

This whole area is the Krafla area.  Krafla is a volcano that erupted 9 times between 1974 and 1984, and 29 times in recorded history.  The caldera is 40 km long and 15 km wide.  It is 2 km deep.  Since 1977 the Krafla area has been the source of the geothermal energy used by the Krafla geothermal power plant. The drilling from the Krafla power plant has been blamed for causing all the recent eruptions, since there had been no eruptions since the 1700s.

We drove to the end of the Krafla road and climbed up the Víti.  Viti is a small crater lake that has a diameter of 300 meters and steep sides. Viti means hell, and the early settlers believed that it was one of the openings to hell. The water inside the crater is 100C. 

We then decided to check out the lava field around Leirhnjúkur.  It was a long hike just to get there, on what is supposed to be a trail but right now is mostly still snow. It felt strange walking through snow again.  Yet oddly familiar, sigh.  

The Leirhnjúkur area is a great plain which overflowed with lava during the 1984 eruption of Krafla. The trail begins with some lava covered with moss from the 1700s eruption. Then you hike through more recent lava. There used to be a sign warning “Volcanic Hazard Zone -Do Not Enter”, but this just attracted more people, so it has been removed.  There was steam coming from some of the lava spots.

We were pretty tired and hungry by this point, so we went back to our hotel for dinner, then we drove the road around Lake Mývatn. This is called a eutrophic lake because of its high biological productivity. As far as we could tell, the only biological anything we saw was midges.  Swarms and swarms of midges!  Later, we found out that Mývatn means “midge lake”.

Our first stop as we drove around the lake was Mount Hverfjall. Mount Hverfjall is a large tephra crater formed during an eruption 2500 years ago. That means that the mound was created by the debris of the volcanic eruption.  The crater is about 1 km in diameter and 140 meters deep.  We climbed those 140 meters straight up, phew, and looked down into - a completely barren caldera.  The size of this crater made the other ones we climbed look like anthills.

We tried going to Dimmuborgir (lava rock pillars), but the road was being worked on (at 8 pm!), so we moved on.   

Skútustaðargígar are large craters at the end of Lake Mývatn. They are called pseudocraters because it resembles a volcanic crater, but it is not an actual vent from which lava has erupted. They were created by steam explosions when lava flowed over the wetlands.  We walked up a few to look down, but got chased back to the car by the midges.

By this time it was 9 pm and we still had the blog to do, so we did the circuit of the lake back towards our hotel.  We could hardly see out our windshield for all the dead bugs.  We looked at the gas station to see if they had windshield cleaner buckets, but no luck.  Then we saw a guy who had driven into a cubicle space and was wet-brushing off his whole car.  It's like a hose with a brush attached.  Brilliant!  And no cost!  Way better than back home!