Stinkbot: September 2015

Iceland Bonus Post

Go home, Icelandic names...

... you're drunk.

September 5 - KEV -> YEG -> YYC

Gah. We picked Iceland because we thought it was relatively accessible from western Canada. Therefore, it was frustrating that it was a grueling 18-hour journey to get home.

After two weeks of Iceland prices, we found that during a layover in Edmonton we had the opposite reaction to airport prices than normal: "What do you mean it's only $23 for nachos and $13 for a beer? Are we ordering off the kids menu or something?"

And now we're home... where it is snowing and sleeting.

September 4 - Snæfellsnes Peninsula

For our last full day here we went on a driving tour of Snæfellsnes peninsula. We got through it pretty quick since a lot of what there is to do here (lava caves, glacier hikes, rugged scenery) we've got more than our fill of during the last two weeks in Iceland.

In the evening we ticked the box for one of the few things we haven't done here: get on a boat, boarding a dinner cruise out of Stykkishólmur on the northern side of Snæfellsnes. This late in the summer all the whales and most of the birds have moved on, but the real point of this cruise was "Viking Sushi": they trawl the bottom of the ocean for a few minutes and bring up a harvest of live scallops, anemones, crabs, starfish, etc. and then shucked the scallops on the deck for us to eat raw.

Heading home tomorrow.

September 3 - Reykholt and Hraunfossar

Today was our first and only "free day" on the trip, with no distance to cover and no tours booked. Good thing, because we woke up to pouring rain. We did a short driving tour around the area just to kill a few hours and get out of the hotel. First up was the small town of Reykholt, home of historian Snorri Sturluson. Really the only thing to see was "Snorri's Pool", where he he used to bathe in thermal hot waters a thousand years ago. Snorri was a good name... it was not very exciting.

Not yet exhausted of waterfalls, we visited nearby Hraunfossar. The unique aspect of this small waterfall is that the water flows under the nearby lava field and the result is a waterfall with no visible river feeding into it.

The highlight of the outing was getting in a minor squabble with a tour guide in the parking lot, which I won using a move we've dubbed "The Reverse Matrix". Ask me for a demonstration next time you see me.

Tired after a few weeks on the road, we just killed the rest of the day at our hotel, located on a functioning farm with horses, calves, pigs, and a domesticated sheep that likes ear scratches. We fly home the day after tomorrow and are just about ready for home.

September 2 - Goðafoss, Tröllaskagi, and (very nearly) the afterlife.

(Warning: This post contains some salty language. Reader discretion is advised.)

We hit the road early today for our longest day of driving, with nearly six hours to cover. In the rush to get out I forgot to even check our itinerary for what we could expect to see along the way, so it was lucky that Goðafoss ("Waterfall of the Gods") was right next to Rte 1 or else we would have forgotten about it entirely.

Late in the morning we stopped in a quaint seaside village for a coffee. Enjoying our coffee and cake in the sun on the patio, I noticed the sign on the front of the coffeehouse/bakery reading "Kaffihús Bakkabrædra" and joked that the Icelandic bakery reference reminded me of the "Italian in America" joke: "What do you do in a bakery? We bake-a the bread-a." Right as I was doing my most insulting stereotypical Italian accent, we heard a loud "Oh, hello! Good to see you again!" and turned to see a couple from Milan who had been on our ice cave tour the previous day. Just my luck: the only Italians I know in the entire country show up right as I'm being a racist jerk against Italians. (Doubly-funny since the husband spoke with exactly the accent I was mimicking.)

We left the Ring Road for a long-cut around Tröllaskagi peninsula, described in the Lonely Planet as a very scenic drive worth a diversion. It was pleasant enough, but nothing compared to the rugged geography of the East Fjords several days before. Unfortunately, right at the tip of the peninsula we found the road closed and had to back-track to find a dirt road through the highlands to cut across the other side.

After lunch we met back up with the main ring road, Rte 1, as it meandered into calmer inland geography. With no winding switchbacks like we dealt with along the coast, the final couple of hours wiled slowly away across gentle fields with very little traffic. I listened to podcasts while Jessica dozed off when HOLY FUCKING SHIT AN ONCOMING CAR JUST VEERED INTO OUR LANE FOR NO REASON!!! He was not overtaking anyone (no other cars around for miles), there were no sheep on the road to avoid, and the weather was clear and dry; he just merrily switched from his side of the two-lane highway to our side as we were about 200 meters apart, each travelling at 90 km/hr. Quite happy to lose my first-ever game of vehicular "chicken", I braked, flashed, and honked, but the driver of the other car appeared to be quite happy to continue to break Rule 2 from the previous day ("Don't be stupid"), promising to soon very violently break Rule 1b ("Don't break your equipment") and ultimately Rule 1b ("Don't break yourselves"). There are no shoulders on Icelandic roads (even Rte 1) and often there are lava rocks or precipitous drops right at the road's edge. Fortunately here there was a bit of a ditch with a moderate incline and I was able to get the car two-thirds of the way off the road as the oncoming car whistled by inches a way, still fully in our lane. I got a brief glimpse of him as he passed and he seemed completely nonplussed, and continued merrily on without so much as slowing down as we sat at the side of the road, catching our breath, checking our underwear for accidents, and feeling grateful to still be alive.

(Ironically, earlier in the drive we had been discussing whether we should spend a couple hundred bucks on a dashboard camera for our car when we get home. If we happened to have one in our rental car today, this blog entry would have had some very exciting video footage, complete with stereo audio of me swearing on the driver side and Jessica screaming on the right.)

In the unlikely chance that the driver of that car happens across this blog, I have a brief message for you. (Everyone else need not read any further.) I have no clue if you were suicidal, homicidal, drunk, or (most likely) distracted by your smart phone, but I'd just like to say, from the bottom of my heart and with all earnestness:

FUUUUUUUUUCK YOU

September 1 - Lofthellir Ice Cave

The Lonely Planet guidebook warned that the area around Lake Mývatn are overrun by "plague-like, maddening" swarms of midges in mid- to late-summer, and it did not exaggerate. As soon as you step outside thousands of the bastards descend on you, getting into your hair, eyes, nose, etc. Fortunately, they neither bite nor sting so really they are just a nuisance, but it put us off doing any of the numerous hikes or walks around the area. Instead, we escaped the midges on a tour underground into another lava tube, this time the Lofthellir cave for its unique "ice lava".

(An aside: as we drove to the cave our guide explained there were two rules:

Rule 1: Don't break anything: (a) yourself; (b) your equipment; or (c) anything in the cave.

Rule 2: Don't be stupid.

He explained that Rule 2 was universal and could be used anywhere, for our adventure today breaking Rule 1 would almost always result in also breaking Rule 1. Personally, I think Rule 2 should be reordered as Rule 1.)

Getting into the cave was a claustrophobic experience, reminiscent of the plughole cave tour many years ago in Australia's Blue Mountains.

Inside we were rewarded with a strange, spooky, and beautiful world of ice stalactites and stalagmites that take decades to form.

It was very cool.

Literally.

(And the real definition of "literally"; not the "we broke English" definition.)

The guide managed a unique effect by rigging all the spare headlamps up to chunks of ice and having us turn off our headlamps for an eerie Christmas light scene.

Finally, on the way out we got to try our hand at the newest extreme sport, "sideways repelling": we had to kick off the wall to the right while holding the rope then slide down the ice sheet until we were brought back against the wall. (Fun but hard to photograph in the darkness.)

The guide scored us all and I got 8/10; Jessica only got 7.5/10. Just sayin'.

August 31 - Northern Iceland

Before continuing our way around the Ring Road today, we decided to go to on a side-trip to the port village of Seyðisfjörður. While the town wasn't that exciting (mostly a port for ferries), the drive there yielded a few nameless waterfalls with apparently no safety guidelines whatsoever.

I recognized the valley into Seyðisfjörður as the one in the skateboard scene in "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty". (In fact, thanks to our wireless router we watched the scene in the car while parked at the waterfall visible at 1:18 in that clip.)

The theme of waterfalls and movie locales continued several hours' drive later when we arrived in Hólsfjallavegur. The opening scene for "Prometheus" was filmed at Dettifoss here, where the alien stood on top of the waterfall and killed himself rather than endure the embarrassment of being associated with the steaming turd of a movie that would play out over the next two hours.

For scale, see those tiny people on the other side of the waterfall. I'm fairly sure some of them were thinking about throwing themselves over the falls as well, rather than live in a world where pieces of crap like "Prometheus" get a sequel.

While Dettifoss is larger and more powerful, a few minutes walk brings you to Selfoss which was a much more picturesque and approachable, reminding us of a much smaller version of Iguassu Falls in South America.

Finally, just before arriving at our hotel near Lake Myvatn we happened upon Hverarönd, a hellscape of bubbling mud pools and steaming sulfurous vents.

Another long day of driving behind us, we were thankful that the weather cleared and our hotel has a nice patio over the lake to relax for the evening with a drink.

(P.S. I normally have a rule of no more than five photos per blog post (and preferably only three), but Iceland lets you do so much in a day (and has such good internet access for loading posts) that it's proving impossible to follow my own restrictions.)

August 30 - Kverkfjöll

An early start today as we had a private tour guide to help us attack Vatnajökull from the north by car, with glorious sunshine overhead making for a refreshing change from the cloud, wind, and rain of the last week.

We drove for many hours across the surface of the Moon (apparently) with the only other signs of civilization being a lonely park ranger who stumbled across us during a break to have some coffee. Luckily, our super-jeep on this journey behaved much better than the ones we had been riding in several days ago, as we were not driving in a convoy and it would have been a very long wait for help.

The terrain alternated between barren moonscape, gravel pits, rugged lava flows, and occasional green valleys. At one point we stopped for a walk to see where some outlaws had once lived in a cave in a lava flow, but after ten minutes walking we found that the rangers had already put a footbridge across a stream away for the season. Instead, we got to meet the local flies. Lots and lots of flies. My thinking is that the outlaws probably should have thought their plan through better, since there there's not likely much worse going on in the Icelandic penal system than having to put up with these goddamn flies 24 hours a day.

A few hours later and we were at the Kverkfjöll lodge at the base of the ice cap. The few other people there were much more active than we are: some were prepping crampons and ice picks for hikes up the glacier, and a support team was setting up the tents for the athletes in the 250 km Fire and Ice Ultra Marathon. (Maybe next year.) For us, the target was the Kverkfjöll ice caves at the foot of the glacier, formed by a geothermal spring located under the ice cap. Unfortunately it is not safe to go inside the caves in the summer due to falling ice (whereas in winter they can be used for hot baths) so we had to settle for some photos of the cave mouth from a distance.

On the long journey back out of the highlands, our guide took us as close as he could do the active lava flow still emanating from the Holuhraun eruption of 2014. We could only look at it from a distance through binoculars, though; not because it was dangerous (it is, but with a guide you're allowed to go close), but rather because between us and it was an existing lava field plus a river (both seen here in the foreground) so navigating the couple of kilometers would take several hours.

Several bumpy, off-road hours later and we found civilization again in the form of a rest stop in the back country. After a day of seeing almost no signs of life, we were treated to cuteness overload as a couple of semi-domesticated arctic fox pups had an extended round of playing at silly buggers, much to the chagrin of the local black lab.

Our guide explained that every year the rest stop takes in a couple of orphan cubs (whose mother has been shot by hunters) and lets them live there for the summer. He also said we don't want to know what happens to them when summer ends. :(

August 29 (PM) - Driving Photo Fail

After the awesome astronomy excitement of the morning, we had a nice leisurely drive up the Eastfjords of Iceland. We took a ton of photos on the way but mostly through the car windows and very few of them came out.

August 29 (AM) - Höfn, Nerd Heaven

We were all set to make an early start out of Höfn this morning when I noticed that HOLY CRAPOLA THE ENTIRE TOWN IS BUILT INTO A SCALE MODEL OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM!!!

As a result we left town late as I insisted we walk (Sun to Saturn) then drive (Saturn to Pluto, several kilometers away) the entire model to take photos along the way. (At each planet I'm trying to mimic its astronomical symbol.)

The Sun: