6/5/13 - 6/9/13, otherwise known as Adventures in North Iceland, Part 4

6/8/13, Saturday: Travel Day 1!

The midnight sun starts to take a toll. Apparently staying up past midnight in a cheese tub and then conferencing all day and travel in general can result in illness. 

We leave at 9am and after packing I sleepily decide to walk to the party van in my socks. Putting on shoes while wearing my backpack seems too challenging. However, I get too comfortable in the van (I managed to claim the whole back seat) and forget about the critical step of going back into the guest house to get my shoes, which is a shame, since they are my new bright green running shoes. Sad.

Laura tells me Camille got no sleep due to walking alone on the beach all night and Loudi hit her head on the van, tweaking her neck for the rest two days. I think I must have been asleep already because I have no memory of this. The party van is seeming more sickly than party-like.

Next thing I know it, we arrive at Goðafoss. When it's time to vacate the car, I realize I have no shoes. (Not totally true, since I have another pair of sneakers and some flip flops, but they are not really ideal for hiking.) We walk across a lovely bridge, check out the waterfall, then Camille and I fall asleep. Christian embarrassingly/hilariously falls over and pretends he wanted to be on the ground in the first place. We depart from the falls, I call the guest house and they say they'll mail my shoes to Selfoss (yay!!), and then I go back to sleep just a little bit happier.

Bridge:

Waterfall:

 Nap:

The second stop is Myvatn, a big lake with cool craters around it. Turns out Myvatn translates into "fly water". This might have been good to know. There are swarms of flies all over the place. We walk a short distance around the lake, until I give up first and run back to the car. Laura follows soon after, and then the others. We devise a system of getting back in the van where one person whips a towel around to shoo the flies away while the others very quickly open the door, hop in, and then close it again. It is mostly successful. The front of our van is another story... I have no words, only this picture (credit goes to Laura):

 Maybe the lake was worth it?, not sure..

We drive a short distance to Dimmuborgir, home of the Yule Lads. (We do not see them.) I get some ice cream and feel a bit better. Loudi gets some too and continues her streak of photo bombing by inserting into one of Laura's pictures. This stop is otherwise pretty uneventful.

Back to sleep in the car. Next stop is Myvatn Nature Baths. They are nice:

Camille befriends the other french smokers outside while we have lunch overlooking the steaming blue pools.  They aren't quite tempting enough to justify the price for an hour or so since we can't stay long.  Luckily, smoking pays off occasionally (or knowing someone who does) since Camille learns that there are hot pools inside some nearby caves that are free.  We find the caves just a few miles back along the road beneath a surface fault trace (where I plank for the second time in Iceland and then promptly fall asleep on a sunny rock).  The water is clear and strikingly blue, but also strikingly hot according to those who actually touch it.  Pool one is too hot, but pool two proves somewhat more manageable.  Loudi dips her toes in while Laura and Camille slow cook themselves (note Laura's legs below).

 

I fall asleep again in the van and wake up at Námaskard.  I've never seen anything like it, but picture a hard packed dirt desert with bubbling steaming mud pits scattered about and an excruciating rotten egg odor (or just look at the picture).  Since I can't find any acceptable ground to pass out on, we decide to fake my first sleeping picture (it turns out the others had been taking pictures of me every other time I was legitimately sleeping up to this point), quickly starting a theme for the trip of me sleeping at various tourist attractions around Iceland.

  

Internet is not working and so Laura navigates us by memory a little bit too hastily to the left and we arrive at Viti crater rather than Dettifoss.  It turns out to be quite beautiful and provides a humorous snowy bed for the next sleeping photo shoot.  

 

On to Dettifoss for real this time, but our group communication breaks down at this point and I awake from my nap ready for another "20 minute stroll to a viewing lookout and back to the car" in my jammies and flip flops.  Turns out it was more like a 20 minute hike over snow and little streams. Perhaps the icy moat and water surrounding the now inaccessible bathroom and trailhead should be have been a clue. 

 

 Cold feet, mist, more of the flies, and some mud are all worth the view of Europe's largest waterfall (by volume)!  More miscommunications on the return to the car and we are off to see another fall (with the same name as our settlement: Selfoss!) rather than returning to the car!  Waterfalls photographed and feet totally numb we hit the road again and I take over as co-pilot/DJ for a while.  

 

Dettifoss!:

We pass some cool waterfalls, but don't stop again until the town of Egilstadir (which lies along a river where the Icelandic sea serpent may live) for a long bathroom/snack break that quickly becomes our dinner stop where we debate pizza toppings for far too long. (We settle on blue cheese and pepperoni on one half and pineapple and ham on the other half.)

Back on the road by 9ish and heading for our hostel in Höfn we take a short cut suggested by Benedikt with the warning BE CAREFUL! The road seems fine, a solid dirt road and not denoted a 4WD road on the map like most of Iceland. However, mere minutes into our shortcut-ing the fog rolls in and it's thicker than any fog we've seen before. We inch along, sure that no one is meant to drive in these conditions.  But we are soon passed by a car with an old grey-haired couple! We follow them as long as we can, but they are too fast, and by the time we emerge from the fog they are out of sight! 

 

The rest of the road to the hostel is green, lush, full of fjords, and rainy until Loudi spots REINDEER!!!  Peeing and reindeer photographing ensue before the final stretch to our hostel on Havannah St. (Hotel Höfn on Hvannabraut).  We finally get the key to the co-ed dorm around midnight and all decide to forgo the extra fee for bedding.  Christian opens the door, and excited to see a small room of bunk beds exclaims "Yessss!" while flipping on the light (he has clearly never stayed in a hostel before).  The man asleep gurgles some obscenities while pulling the covers over his head.  The light goes off again immediately and as we clamor around in the dark, Christian climbs up to the last bed which is above our new friend.  As he crawls onto it, the bed breaks beneath him, severely frightening both Christian and the stranger below for the second time in 10 minutes!