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.