After a marvelous last evening with Deb & Peter in South Tawton, they drove us to the airport Monday morning for our flight back to Reykjavik. We arrived to a little better weather than the last time, and more importantly, our bags were there too. It felt good to know our way around a bit, and we found our camper van place pretty easily. After getting the tutorial on it, we headed into town to see if we could fit the bikes in we’d rented. Unfortunately, the van wasn’t set up as we expected, so it looked like the only way to fit the bikes in would be to flip the mattress and lay the bikes on top. When we got the bike rental place and talked to the guy there, it became clear that it wasn’t going to work out. I won’t go into the gory details about the van, but as we’ve been touring around since picking it up, it’s apparent that the way they configured it isn’t typical. It’s a brand new van though; we’re the first to rent it, so apart from being bigger than we need, it’s certainly comfy. The mattress is huge, so it’s great for sleeping; just not great for hanging out the rest of the day!
The first afternoon/evening, we headed east along the coast, and took in our first waterfall about an hour outside of Reykjavik:
That spot actually contained an entire series of waterfalls, but that one is special because you can actually walk around behind it. About an hour further, after passing many other waterfalls, several of which we’ll probably hit on the way back west, we decided to stay in the little village of Vik. There’s a campground there, which we pulled into about 11:30 pm. Sunset is right about then, and it rises at around 2:30, so it basically never gets dark this time of year. (Another weakness of the van is that there are no curtains, even though it’s set up with little cords that they would hang from. Fortunately, we have plenty of stuff with which to make do.)
Right now we’re hanging in the Viking Café in Stokksnes, probably as far east as we’ll get on the south coast. When we pulled in around midnight last night, it appeared abandoned, but has been hopping all morning. They offer camping, including showers, which we enjoyed, and now we’ve been catching up on email (and this blog post) all morning.
Yesterday was spent getting used to the van life. It was a little challenging at first, but I think we settled into a good routine by yesterday afternoon, and are feeling much better about it today. The funny thing is that Mallory insists on driving, while I navigate a crazy combination of Iceland-specific apps, Google Maps, and brochures. Keeping track of all the recommended sightseeing spots is made more difficult by the challenges of the Icelandic language and alphabet, but we’re definitely getting better about it all the time.
Next up was Svartifoss, a spectacular basalt-column-lined waterfall in Vatnajökull National Park:
From there, it was off to the very popular Jökulsárlón, an iceberg filled lake below Iceland’s largest glacier. I will try to add one of the videos I captured there, since the sound the icebergs make while melting is fascinating. Hundreds of iceberg chunks line the beach near where the lake empties into the sea:
Since it’s light all night, we’ve been tending to eat really late, but upon arrival in Höfn, the town we expected to spend the night, we managed to find a restaurant open until 11! The campground in Höfn wasn’t very welcoming, but they did tell us about this place, so we drove here after dinner. Which brings me back around to now. It’s already early afternoon here, so we need to get moving on our (long) day. Talk to you all tomorrow!
