Iceland, Day 4, Saturday, August 15, 2015
Off bright and early again the next morning, and our first stop was this incredible waterfall that you could walk behind. Although I did not think anything about this looked the least bit safe. We were expected to clamber up and down these tumbled piles of rocks, and everything was soaking wet and the ground was such sucking mud that my sneaker got stuck in it and came off my foot and I uttered this pathetic little cry and flailed at S. S helped me balance and I perched my foot on a rock and waved ineffectually at my shoe in the mud until L stopped laughing and taking photographs long enough to come and help. “This is a dangerous place,” I sniffed huffily. “You’re not on the path,” he pointed out. Which was apparently true but whatever, that path was very poorly marked.
When we were done taking pictures behind the waterfall, we were basically soaked. We walked along the path admiring all the other waterfalls on the same cliff and trying not to get too freaked out by how spongy the ground was. And we passed some people making a huge fuss over a simple garden hose. No idea what that was about.
Eventually, we reached this waterfall grotto thing that you could enter by stepping carefully on stones in the brook. I had no interest in doing that after the already-exciting foot day I’d had-and I did watch someone slip, their whole foot planting in the crystal-clear water-but L and S went in. I tried to get pictures of them but they’re all fuzzy because of the fine mist perpetually on my lens there.
We stopped to go to the bathroom there. There were two individual, self-contained toilets divided by gender, so we waited in a long line for the ladies’ room while the men’s room was empty. Why? Patriarchy!
Driving further along the road, we saw another huge waterfall, so we stopped to see it. It had something crazy like 500 steps leading up to the top, which of course L ran right up. S and I stayed on the ground like normal people. When he came back he said it was disappointing because nothing could ever exceed the waterfall grotto.
We got back on the road, and L proposed a side journey to see the site of an old plane crash. He had run the idea by me the night before and said I’d have to drive on a black sand beach. In my head, this was going to be like Top Gear.
It was not.
In fact, this was truly my Fury Road.
There were other people viewing the wreckage and I found it amusing that we were literally miles from any road, in the middle of a vast, deserted beach, and all of the cars still parked right next to each other like there was a parking lot.
I got out and did a Furiosa moment on my knees in the black pebbles, and since I’d already been on my knees, I sprawled out on my stomach to get the proper angle for a forced perspective picture N wanted to take with the airplane wreckage.
The airplane was apparently the remains of some U.S. Navy plane that had crashed in the 80s and was just left there like the shipwrecks off the road the first day. It’s been stripped bare, basically, but you can still climb up and around it. I found it creepy.
Airplane wreckage viewed, I Mad-Max’d my way back to the main road and we made our way to Vik.
Vik reminded me of those little towns you suddenly come across in the French Alps, nestled in a valley. It’s small, really, and there isn’t much around it. It struck me as the last bastion of civilization, like the town where you’d buy provisions if you were playing Oregon Trail.
For this reason, it was busily crowded and everyone seemed super-stressed by it. N asked at the Information Desk for some restaurant recommendations and the woman replied that she couldn’t afford to eat there, which wasn’t terribly helpful.
After a lunch of grilled ham and cheese that we tried to make quick, we stopped at the grocery store, which was so crowded there were no parking spaces, so I sat with the car and watched people invent crazy parking spaces all around me. They arrived back with the news that the cashier had been super-rude and probably he and the Information Desk lady had just broken up and that was why they were so unhappy.
After Vik, our next stop was the glacial lagoon. Which was so. Far. Away. The good news was the landscape was ever-changing. I can’t even describe it. Iceland is just a completely otherworldly place where you feel like you’ve visited multiple planets in the span of a few hours. We stopped at one point to test the springiness of the moss fuzzing its way over the lava rock. Moss is super-soft, everyone. Suddenly all sorts of medieval AUs make perfect sense! You really can use moss as a pillow.
Eventually we reached the point where we could see glaciers leaking out of mountains toward the land. I’d never seen a glacier before. That hard, crystallized blanket of white is quite something.
You couldn’t make reservations at the glacial lagoon, and when we got there the boat to you out to the icebergs was fully booked so we almost had to go home without setting foot on the glacial lagoon. But then we totally lucked out: They had a cancellation for the 5 pm boat, so we were on a boat ten minutes after we reached the lagoon, without having to wait hours like other people did.
The boat ride was amazing. We drifted right through the icebergs, even got to touch and taste one, it didn’t rain on us, and even the RELENTLESS ICELANDIC WIND TM gave us a break. And then when we got off the boat we saw seals in the water! So it was basically a perfect situation.
We started to head back toward Vik, the alien landscapes going in reverse now. I was by this time a pro at the one-lane bridges Iceland has everywhere. But I was also getting hungry, and there was basically nowhere to eat. Also, it was getting late, although it didn’t look that way.
We decided to stop and look at one last black beach-this one more genuinely sandy than the plane crash one had been-and I’m glad we did, because this one had puffins! They were so adorable. We stood for a while watching them catapult off the cliff they were living on, wings fluttering wildly, to do a circuit out over the water and then come back.
Feeling lucky, we eventually trudged up to the restaurant on the beach. Except their kitchen had closed, so I ended up with a chocolate croissant for dinner. At least we got to use the bathroom. The bathroom had a very careful sign explaining you couldn’t dry your shoes with the hand dryer. Not men’s business shoes or high heels. In case your plan is to wear high heels on the black sand beach, dash into the waves with them on, and then dry them in the restaurant bathroom.
With that, darkness fell and we started our drive back home. At one point, we caught a fireworks display off in the distance, and that was a pleasant diversion for a little while. The rest of the time I just watched my headlights in the reflectors on the side of the road to make sure I didn’t veer off into the wrong part of the darkness.
And then it started to rain.
Driving an empty road you don’t know in stormy darkness isn’t very fun. The only thing worse might be when the car that passes you to get in front of you turns out to have no back lights and then an ambulance comes roaring up behind you and the road has no shoulder.
We made it home, I untensed, and then I tumbled into bed with my alarm set for two hours later so I could drive us to the airport.
When we were done taking pictures behind the waterfall, we were basically soaked. We walked along the path admiring all the other waterfalls on the same cliff and trying not to get too freaked out by how spongy the ground was. And we passed some people making a huge fuss over a simple garden hose. No idea what that was about.
Eventually, we reached this waterfall grotto thing that you could enter by stepping carefully on stones in the brook. I had no interest in doing that after the already-exciting foot day I’d had-and I did watch someone slip, their whole foot planting in the crystal-clear water-but L and S went in. I tried to get pictures of them but they’re all fuzzy because of the fine mist perpetually on my lens there.
We stopped to go to the bathroom there. There were two individual, self-contained toilets divided by gender, so we waited in a long line for the ladies’ room while the men’s room was empty. Why? Patriarchy!
Driving further along the road, we saw another huge waterfall, so we stopped to see it. It had something crazy like 500 steps leading up to the top, which of course L ran right up. S and I stayed on the ground like normal people. When he came back he said it was disappointing because nothing could ever exceed the waterfall grotto.
We got back on the road, and L proposed a side journey to see the site of an old plane crash. He had run the idea by me the night before and said I’d have to drive on a black sand beach. In my head, this was going to be like Top Gear.
It was not.
In fact, this was truly my Fury Road.
There were other people viewing the wreckage and I found it amusing that we were literally miles from any road, in the middle of a vast, deserted beach, and all of the cars still parked right next to each other like there was a parking lot.
I got out and did a Furiosa moment on my knees in the black pebbles, and since I’d already been on my knees, I sprawled out on my stomach to get the proper angle for a forced perspective picture N wanted to take with the airplane wreckage.
The airplane was apparently the remains of some U.S. Navy plane that had crashed in the 80s and was just left there like the shipwrecks off the road the first day. It’s been stripped bare, basically, but you can still climb up and around it. I found it creepy.
Airplane wreckage viewed, I Mad-Max’d my way back to the main road and we made our way to Vik.
Vik reminded me of those little towns you suddenly come across in the French Alps, nestled in a valley. It’s small, really, and there isn’t much around it. It struck me as the last bastion of civilization, like the town where you’d buy provisions if you were playing Oregon Trail.
For this reason, it was busily crowded and everyone seemed super-stressed by it. N asked at the Information Desk for some restaurant recommendations and the woman replied that she couldn’t afford to eat there, which wasn’t terribly helpful.
After a lunch of grilled ham and cheese that we tried to make quick, we stopped at the grocery store, which was so crowded there were no parking spaces, so I sat with the car and watched people invent crazy parking spaces all around me. They arrived back with the news that the cashier had been super-rude and probably he and the Information Desk lady had just broken up and that was why they were so unhappy.
After Vik, our next stop was the glacial lagoon. Which was so. Far. Away. The good news was the landscape was ever-changing. I can’t even describe it. Iceland is just a completely otherworldly place where you feel like you’ve visited multiple planets in the span of a few hours. We stopped at one point to test the springiness of the moss fuzzing its way over the lava rock. Moss is super-soft, everyone. Suddenly all sorts of medieval AUs make perfect sense! You really can use moss as a pillow.
Eventually we reached the point where we could see glaciers leaking out of mountains toward the land. I’d never seen a glacier before. That hard, crystallized blanket of white is quite something.
You couldn’t make reservations at the glacial lagoon, and when we got there the boat to you out to the icebergs was fully booked so we almost had to go home without setting foot on the glacial lagoon. But then we totally lucked out: They had a cancellation for the 5 pm boat, so we were on a boat ten minutes after we reached the lagoon, without having to wait hours like other people did.
The boat ride was amazing. We drifted right through the icebergs, even got to touch and taste one, it didn’t rain on us, and even the RELENTLESS ICELANDIC WIND TM gave us a break. And then when we got off the boat we saw seals in the water! So it was basically a perfect situation.
We started to head back toward Vik, the alien landscapes going in reverse now. I was by this time a pro at the one-lane bridges Iceland has everywhere. But I was also getting hungry, and there was basically nowhere to eat. Also, it was getting late, although it didn’t look that way.
We decided to stop and look at one last black beach-this one more genuinely sandy than the plane crash one had been-and I’m glad we did, because this one had puffins! They were so adorable. We stood for a while watching them catapult off the cliff they were living on, wings fluttering wildly, to do a circuit out over the water and then come back.
Feeling lucky, we eventually trudged up to the restaurant on the beach. Except their kitchen had closed, so I ended up with a chocolate croissant for dinner. At least we got to use the bathroom. The bathroom had a very careful sign explaining you couldn’t dry your shoes with the hand dryer. Not men’s business shoes or high heels. In case your plan is to wear high heels on the black sand beach, dash into the waves with them on, and then dry them in the restaurant bathroom.
With that, darkness fell and we started our drive back home. At one point, we caught a fireworks display off in the distance, and that was a pleasant diversion for a little while. The rest of the time I just watched my headlights in the reflectors on the side of the road to make sure I didn’t veer off into the wrong part of the darkness.
And then it started to rain.
Driving an empty road you don’t know in stormy darkness isn’t very fun. The only thing worse might be when the car that passes you to get in front of you turns out to have no back lights and then an ambulance comes roaring up behind you and the road has no shoulder.
We made it home, I untensed, and then I tumbled into bed with my alarm set for two hours later so I could drive us to the airport.