Iceland - Day 7

Busy day today, nearly forgot to write the blog!

We were staying on a farm, so for breakfast Martin took the opportunity to drink fresh cows milk. Little did he know that it was bulls 'milk' really. Breakfast mainly consisted of cake, no one was that concerned about that, but it did give the Japanese tourists something to take another selfie of.

We had a day of sight seeing today, so went to fill up at the petrol station only to find that it was broken. We had a choice, drive a little bit the other way and get fuel, or crack on anyway. We had half a tank so cracked on, see how rebellious and risk taking we are!

On the way to our first stop we came across a road closed sign which meant that we wouldn't be able to do a bunch of stuff we had planned. Sad face.

We could however, get to Dettifoss which is the most powerful waterfall in Europe and used in the film Prometheus. We rocked up here just as a couple of mini vans of tourists did and we started hiking across the snow covered lava fields to the falls. As well as dettifoss, there was another large waterfall here and all of the tourists went that way so we went the other. 

The falls are big, Mark got brace and flew the drone along the canyon to the falls and over it getting some good footage while the others hung over the cliff edge whilst stood on snow covered rocks. No Heath and safety here!

As we were leaving the other tourists turned up and Cederic greeted them all with a friendly hello as they went past. Most ignored him, some acknowledged but one guy looked like the grumpiest human ever, who gave a Cederic such a look with his stupid grumpy head that he was told to 'go away' or something similar.

We moved around to the rear of the waterfall to get a different angle. Martin set his tripod up as close to the edge as he dared, and when he looked through the lens, two tourists had stood in front of his camera some how! 

On to the next waterfall which wasn't as big but probably the prettiest of the lot so far, the drone was used again, and whilst flying, Mark saw the others on the edge of the cliff and thought it would be fun to pop up out of the ravine and buzz them. This would have been fine, but it turns out that it was the wrong people and he scared the life out of some randoms. Good footage though!

On the way back, Cederic decided that he'd slide down a slope on his bum, this didn't work though and he just ended up with a wet arse. Some guys went past on a snowmobile which Mark really really wanted a go on but he didn't stop.

We then left the waterfalls and replotted a route, one that would hopefully go via a petrol station as we were running pretty low at this point. Luckily we found one and spend the necessary £80 or whatever filling up. We stopped by a large frozen lake which Mark went out and stood on, the others were pretending to take pics of the scenery but really they were waiting for Mark to fall through the ice so that they could get a good snap.

About an hour later we reached our next stop, another waterfall! This one was roadside though so no treacherous treks were necessary, Mark again flew the drone and wanted to fly under the bridge and then on to the waterfall. Disaster struck though when the drone lost signal about 1km away. Mark had a slight panic and was running around waving the controller in the air when it came back to life. The drone had sensed the signal lost and opted to fly home itself. Clever drone.

We went to the local cafe, but immediately lost Cederic and Martin as they'd spotted a photo opp and had legged it so Keith and Mark stoke their drinks.

We reached our final destination, Akureyri, and checked into the hotel. We chilled for a few minutes and somehow Keith fell off his bed. Twice! Obviously we didn't Mick him too much about this.

Out in town we found an awesome burger joint as we hadn't had burgers for about a day. It turns out that this place is a favourite spot of Eric Clapton, which goes to show that even Eric Clapton can only afford to buy burgers in Iceland.

Later on in the evening Martin, Keith and Cederic went aurora hunting while Mark slept. They went to where our Viking waiter from the burger joint said was a good place to see the lights which was a car park in a forest. You couldn't see the lights at all from there but apparently it's a cracking dogging spot. Onwards to another spot and again no northern lights to be seen, however the car did start smelling of burning rubber and there was hideous amounts of heat spewing out. That's right, Mark had driven 1500 miles, no problem, Martin drives for just 5 minutes and he's broken it.

Ignoring the broken car, they returned to the hotel and we'll worry about fixing it tomorrow.