Iceland 2.14: The end days, Part II

     The next morning was still windy, but it was not as strong.  Knowing that I had a four hour drive ahead of me, I decided to just go for it and begin the hike.  People online recommended going onto the route to Sjonarnipa and to going into a circle so you can stop at the Svartifoss waterfall.  The uphill part of the hike, to Sjonarnipa, was much easier than they indicated online.  The first half of it had me blocked from the wind by high ground and shrubbery to my side.  There was a great view behind me.

    The second half was in the open, and extremely windy.  There were two wonderful views, the second one being what they called Sjonarnipa, before the path turned west and the hike was downhill for the rest.

    Being bored of waterfalls, I took a quick picture of Svartifoss from a distance, and continued to the end.

    After the hike, I began the four hour drive back to Grindavik, the town nearest to the volcano and close to the airport.  While nearing Grindavik, the wind was blowing me off the road.  The next day's weather, however, was showing to be without precipitation and without much wind.  I decided to see the volcano again.

    

    Lava had gone over the trail that I used on my first hike, so they added a longer trail to reach the volcano.  Additionally, there was now a flat and short hike to see a freshly made lava field.  I had just missed it being a river by a few days.  I was excited to find parts with lava still coming through.

    After taking the shorter route, I took the longer route up the mountain.  Near the top, they had a long rope going through stakes, to help people pull themselves up.  This path brought me much closer to the volcano than the first time I had gone up.  Unfortunately, aside from smoke, the volcano was silent.  

    After returning to the van, changing, and driving to the supermarket, I went back to the cafe in town that I had visited with Stephanie.  Here they had a live view of the volcano, which was already starting to show activity again.  It turns out that the volcano had gone quiet for about twenty four hours before starting up again.  While I was lucky with the weather this time, I had been unfortunate that it coincided with the period in which the volcano stopped erupting lava.

    I flew home the next day.

Iceland 2.13: The end days, Part I

    This post will encapsulate everything that transpired during my final four days in Iceland.  

    I woke up the next morning and the snowing had stopped.  I drove back over to Djupivogur to check out two small lakes that were recommended for birding, Fyluvogur and Breidivogur.  There was no parking to be found nearby and once you do the short drive through the two, you end up at a tiny airport that obviously does not allow entry.  Like many of the other birding recommendations in Iceland, this one seems to just be for the local who is looking for some birds.  There were a handful of the most common birds here, so I simply decided to do a slow drive to my next location, Hofn.  Hofn was chosen simply because it was the closest town to the airport(5.5 hour drive away) along this clockwise route along the Ring Road that had covid testing.  I needed to have a test done on Tuesday morning in order to be eligible for my Friday flight home.

    What normally would have only taken an hour and a half was nearly doubled, as I drove slowly and stopped for occasional photos.

   

    Once I reached town, I stopped at a grocery store, filled up with gas, and paid the campground for the night.  Once the local cafe opened, Kaffi Hornid, I walked on over.  In reality, despite its name, it really wasn't a coffee house.  I asked them what cakes they had, and they had none.  I sat down and took a menu.  I ended up ordering coffee and vegetable pizza.  It was good enough.  The weather was quite miserable outside and I was sick of sitting in the van, so I took a while eating and then eventually had a brownie for dessert.

    The local medical facility was scheduled to only give covid tests between 8:30 and 9:00 AM, so I made sure to arrive as soon as it opened.  I prepaid, and so only had to wait on a short line of less than ten people.  The test was quick and I began my drive toward Skaftafell, now part of the Vatnajokull National Park.  While driving away from town, I took pictures of the glaciers that seemed to be on all sides of Hofn, across the lake from the peninsula.

    It was on this drive that I began to pass places that I visited during my first trip to Iceland.  It felt slightly odd to see them again.  Most of them could be easily seen from the road, such as the Diamond Beach at Jokulsarlon.  I considered stopping to have a look again, but it was raining and then it began to snow and become very windy.  I ran into another Iceland cafe that was in the middle of nowhere by itself, called Cafe Vatnajokull, and stopped to see if the weather would pass.

    I sat for quite a while, since the snow and wind was making it unpleasant to drive.  Others had begun to arrive, to escape the weather as well.  One such man was an older biker.  He was hesitant to continue on the road in such conditions on his motorbike.  I struck up a conversation with him.  He was German and we ended up having relatively heavy discussions on the state of the world and our respective countries.  He was very insistent, and repeated many times, that the problem with Germany was the Protestants in the north, who didn't like to have fun, while the Catholics in the south understood that your life shouldn't be all about work.  Of course, I have no such knowledge of the state of religions in Germany, so I could not comment on that.  I tried to explain a bit about the current state of the US.

    With nothing better to do, we continued to talk for quite a while.  He related his experiences working for many years with Japanese businessmen, temporarily in Germany, from Japan.  He had a lot of distaste for them and their robotic obsession with work and being unhealthily intertwined with the Japanese business culture.  He also commented on their racism in his presence, especially toward South Koreans.  

    Eventually we parted ways and I continued my journey to Skaftafell.  It had finally stopped snowing and so I only had to contend with the wind.  I passed a few more glaciers.

    I arrived at the camp and the wind was still absurdly strong.  The weather forecast said that there would be no precipitation the next day, and the wind will have died down a bit by then.  I used the night to take advantage of the washing machine and dryer, which was included in the price of the campground, to make my first wash of the trip.  It was desperately needed.

Iceland 2.12: A snowy day and some reindeer

     Today I woke up to snow and cold.  I gave it some time to clear up, but it didn't.  I hit the road for the short journey to Djupivogur.  I purposely drove slow and stayed along the outside route along the water.  It was a bit windy and there were not many stopovers in the snowier spots, but I grabbed these two pictures.

    I found many sheep near the road, so took yet another picture.

   

    I tried stopping at a farm run coffee shop named the Havari Farm, but there was a paper on the door stating that they would be closed all summer.  I had to come up with a new place to eat and so chose Vid Voginn at my intended destination.  On the last road to town, I spotted 3 deer.  Luckily, there was a pullover right there, so I shut off the car and took some pictures.

    I went back into the van and dried off my lens and camera.  I looked up and the deer were gone.  I turned the car back on and drove a few feet forward, and apparently these deer had crossed the road while my head was down, and were right in front of another fortuitous dirt pull over area.  This time I shut off the car there and took pictures from the window, as they were fairly close and I did not want to disturb them.

    I had "chicken bread" at the restaurant, which was a salad and chicken on top of a piece of toasted bread, and my daily coffee.  I asked the waitress if it was common to get snow here in June.  She said that it was very much not.  Some Icelanders were watching a football game.  I was looking up the campsite when a second campsite popped up, just 20 minutes back down the road that I had come from.  It rated higher than any other that I had seen in Iceland.  It also apparently had a guesthouse called Ferðaþjónustan Fossárdal, with a room available for about sixty dollars.  With the snow still raging, I decided to book my first hotel stay since the first night.

    I arrived at the guesthouse and had a long chat with the woman in charge.  Not many people would be staying here tonight and so I would have half of the house to myself and my own back entrance.  The place was supposed to have a washing machine, but she informed me that it was currently broken.  At least the shower works.

    While reviewing photos, I found two more pictures that I liked from the last puffin day.

Iceland 2.11: Two small towns, the scenery between them, and a non cave

     The night after the puffin extravaganza, I waited until the light was nice and walked around town.  Just next to the campsite, I walked to the top of the Alfaborg, where there were nice panoramic views.

    I walked down into camp to take a picture of an odd camper that was there two nights in a row.

        My next stop would be Seydisfjordur.  After cresting the mounting, heading back the way I came in, I was greeted with a beautiful view, this time without the clouds.  I stopped in a supermarket, refilled my gas, and grabbed my second hot dog of the trip in Egilsstadir.  From there, it was only a twenty five minute ride to the next town.  It is known for a small rainbow walkway leading up to a church.  The weather was poor so I went into the Kaffi Lara El Grillo Bar.  It was very nice inside and I had some coffee and apple cake.  

    

    The weather was still rainy and windy, so I sat in my camper for a while.  The wind pushed the camper back and forth.  Cold, I spent some time in the indoor part of the campgrounds, and then went for a last minute hot tub visit at the local swimming pool.

    I woke up the next day to sunshine, though it was still colder than it had been in northern Iceland.  This time I walked through town and behind it, on a path up the mountains, to see something called Tvisongur.  Like many towns in Iceland, the main tourist street was nicely maintained, but the farther away you got from it, the more ragged the buildings and surrounding area looked.

    Tvisongurwas a five sectioned "sounds structure." It has to do with five tone harmony.  I don't really understand it to be honest.  It was not well maintained, with glass on the floor.  Making noise when on the inside resulted in a strange echo.

        Leaving town, I traveled to Neskaupstadur, stopping at a coffee shop named Nesbaer.  I had an odd banana cake with different types of cream.  It was excellent.  Then, I parked at the end of town, near the cliffside.  Reviews wrote about a cave that you could walk to.  Other reviews pointed out that it was not a cave at all, rather just an area with a rock overhang.  It was a nice walk in sun, with strong winds.  After a short time, I found a rickety, rusty ladder that allowed me to climb down.  The beach area was made up of many loud rocks.  When the water pulled back to the ocean, it made the rocks clang against each other to make a sound like lightning.

    While driving to the camp at Faskrudsfjordur, there is a bright orange lighthouse.  A review online explains that this is on private property and they had an angry exchange with the person that lived there.  I took a picture by the road.

    I decided to have a dinner at a local restaurant that was open late, called Cafe Sumarlina.  I had a vegan pesto pasta dish that was fantastic.