After much snoring we all awoke, packed and went to breakfast. Now knowing how slow the toaster is, we had a system in place to maximise its usage while Keith inhaled all of the chocolate croissants.
Suitably full we jumped in the car and started the road trip. From here it's a tour of the island stopping at wherever is worth stopping at.
Leaving Reykjavik the car started its normal antics and told us that the 'tire pressure system needed servicing', we pressed ok and carried on.
We were soon surrounded by snow, white landscape, white sky and 20m visibility, we were getting aquaplaning in the turns so obviously Mark enjoyed himself driving!
Martin had found a great waterfall to go to so we spent 45 mins going there to find that it wasn't a waterfall but it was a town named after a waterfall. We decided to carry on.
After another 45 mins we arrived at our first waterfall of the day, it was a biggun too.
We got pretty close to the waterfall, in fact, we got soaked. This wasnt good enough for Mark who went behind the waterfall and was drenched.There were more smaller waterfalls too, so Mark got the drone out while the others took pics until some birds decided to take an interest in the drone!
Keith decided to go into one of the smaller waterfalls and got covered in mud, nearly slipping over in the process but he got some good pics so it was worth it!
We moved on towards, you guessed it, another waterfall. This one had some steps to the top, we ascended these which took a while and proved how unfit we were, only to find that the view was a bit rubbish, so we went back down again and took pics from the bottom instead.
We'd finally had enough of waterfalls for the day so moved on. The car was showing negative fuel now and we worked out that this may actually be genuine. So with the emergency fuel light on, we checked and was 30km from the nearest petrol station, uh oh. Mark gunned it to make sure we got there quickly so that we didn't run out of fuel and we made it, just. Fuel is expensive here, so much so that both of Keith's credit cards got flagged up by husband banks as potential fraud and he had to call them up to get them activated again!
We did however, find somewhere cheap for lunch, so we scoffed that pronto and moved on.
Next was a bit of a trek, we'd heard of a plane wreck on a beach, but you couldn't drive there, so it was a 3km walk to get to it. Cederic's knee was bad, so he stopped in the car and drank vodka. It started off rainy but soon cleared up and was really sunny by the time we arrived at the plane crash site, it was crazy windy though.
The wreckage was pretty good so we checked it out for a bit then walked back. This time though we were walking into the wind and it was much stronger, it was hard to stand up at times, at least it dried us off though. Great views mind, with the glacier in the background.
It was towards the end of the day now, but we wanted to stop on the black sand beach, and we were glad that we did. Not only was it a unique place, but the waves were crashing like crazy and it was so windy that a flock of geese that were flying into the wind were flapping away but not moving forward.
Cederic had brought a kite with him, just for this moment so we got it out and flew it, with the occasional crash, it was too windy for it really which sounds crazy, but he had fun while it lasted and the string got tangled. Mark opted to help at this point and while holding the strings, the wind caught and ripped the nylon strings which cut through his gloves and took a layer off his fingers. Luckily it was too cold to feel pain at this point.
Martin and Keith made a black sand castle, and whilst Martin was taking pics of the sea, a wave snuck up and soaked him up to his knees filling his boots with black sand and water.
We cracked on to our hotel in Vik, a tiny town but quite picturesque. After a quick shower we ate at a truck stop across the road to keep costs down and used the money saved to book what promises to be an awesome breakfast tomorrow.
After dinner, Martin and Cederic ventured our for some night photography, it's not northern lights tonight, but it is a clear sky. As they both have proper cameras though, they're shooting in raw format so it's not easy to transfer to the iPad to upload here, imagine what pics from Hubble are like though and it's practically the same...
No comments:
Post a Comment