Friday, June 26, 2009
Tired but with cider
I'm back on my sofa once more.
It's been a long few days, including over a thousand miles of driving. Thankfully not all on the same day. It's strange, although it's a long set of drives I'd forgotten that it would top the thousand when added together. That's the problem of living on a large island without any 'normal' trans-island roads. Such roads do exist, but they should only be attempted with a modified jeep, experience in off-road driving and plenty of driving chuztpah. It would work as a Top Gear race - one of them goes around the ring road, the other goes across the interior. :)
Here's the day-by-day breakdown:
Wednesday We had to get an early start as I expected it to be a rather long day - Egilsstaðir in the east to Eyrabakki in the south west, via the iceberg lake at Jókulsárlón. The lake was full to overflowing with icebergs, so much so that the amphibious tour of the lake kept its water-bourne segment to the edge of the lake rather than sailing in amongst the icebergs themselves, which was a little disappointing. There were, however, waffles and cream to make up for this, and E seemed to be quite enchanted by the whole thing.
Then it was back into the car to continue west, stopping only at Lanfskalavaroa to put another stone on one of the many piles of stones there. I successfully idenified the pile with the rock I'd placed last year; hint - bring an easily-identifiable rock, such as a water- (most likely glacier-) smoothed dark red one with white spots... I think it's a porphyritic rhyolite but I can't find my book on Icelandic rocks and minerals to confirm that. This year's rock was a larger chunk of scoria from near Dimmuborgir.
We finally made it to the hostel at Eyrarbakki about 9.5 hours after leaving Egilsstaðir, which wasn't bad at all given the two stops. The 'hostel' turned out to be a set of four apartments, each of which had a twin bedroom and a double sofa bed for a very reasonable fee. Sufficiently reasonable that if a group of us decide to do a planning weekend close to Þingvellir for one of our projects then a couple of these would be a definite possibility.
Thursday This was a much more relaxed start to the day, as we only had to get about 110km from Eyrarbakki to Keflavík. We did take the scenic route, via Kerið, Geysir, Gulfoss and Þingvellir. Yes, we did the classic Golden Circle tour, but added Álfubrúin, the bridge spanning the Álfagja rift in the far south west. This is the 'bridge between the continents', with one side on the North American plate and the other on the European plate. Except that the rift zone is actually about 30km wide... but that wouldn't play well with the tourists. :) The local authorities do seem to have improved the access though - it now has readable signage so it was fairly easy to find, unlike my last visit.
We stayed in the Njarðvík hostel where P and I had spent a couple of nights last year. E had been reading the description in the brochure and was looking forward to relaxing in the hostel's hot pot but unfortunately it wasn't working. It was also raining by that point, and E did admit that she wasn't too sure about the idea of hot-potting in the rain.
Friday Having done huge amounts of nature stuff over the past few days this morning left us just enough time to do the Saga Museum. They let me in there for free now, as this was my 6th visit, and most of the time I'm bringing other people in to visit the place. My interest is normally the shop where, as usual, I picked up some more beads to go the the hypothetical hangarok (although that might actually get done next weekend... not holding my breath on it just in case) and a bronze valkure to hang between the beads. Then there were Belgian waffles. We were at Perlan; Belgian waffles are obligatory. :)
Then it was back to the airport to drop E off to catch her flight. I think she had a pretty good time over here. I then took advantage of being in the capital to meet up with M for coffee and to pay a visit to the big blue shed in search of a new breadknife (we'd accidentally left mine in Eyrarbakki) and some more glasses to be engraved. The glasses were there but there were no breadknives, unfortunately. Instead I picked up some jars that will work nicely to store the component spices for garam masala.
The journey up north was looooong. Probably because I found myself stuck behind a series of tractors, tractors towing trailers, cars towing trailers, cars towing caravans, cars towing camper-trailers, and even camper-vans. It was well over an hour longer than anticipated, but I guess that's what you get for driving on a Friday afternoon.
Eventually I arrived home, extracted (and opened) one of my two remaining bottles of real cider from the fridge and crashed on the sofa. There seems to have been a death while I was away. I wonder if anything else happened on the planet?
It's been a long few days, including over a thousand miles of driving. Thankfully not all on the same day. It's strange, although it's a long set of drives I'd forgotten that it would top the thousand when added together. That's the problem of living on a large island without any 'normal' trans-island roads. Such roads do exist, but they should only be attempted with a modified jeep, experience in off-road driving and plenty of driving chuztpah. It would work as a Top Gear race - one of them goes around the ring road, the other goes across the interior. :)
Here's the day-by-day breakdown:
Wednesday We had to get an early start as I expected it to be a rather long day - Egilsstaðir in the east to Eyrabakki in the south west, via the iceberg lake at Jókulsárlón. The lake was full to overflowing with icebergs, so much so that the amphibious tour of the lake kept its water-bourne segment to the edge of the lake rather than sailing in amongst the icebergs themselves, which was a little disappointing. There were, however, waffles and cream to make up for this, and E seemed to be quite enchanted by the whole thing.
Then it was back into the car to continue west, stopping only at Lanfskalavaroa to put another stone on one of the many piles of stones there. I successfully idenified the pile with the rock I'd placed last year; hint - bring an easily-identifiable rock, such as a water- (most likely glacier-) smoothed dark red one with white spots... I think it's a porphyritic rhyolite but I can't find my book on Icelandic rocks and minerals to confirm that. This year's rock was a larger chunk of scoria from near Dimmuborgir.
We finally made it to the hostel at Eyrarbakki about 9.5 hours after leaving Egilsstaðir, which wasn't bad at all given the two stops. The 'hostel' turned out to be a set of four apartments, each of which had a twin bedroom and a double sofa bed for a very reasonable fee. Sufficiently reasonable that if a group of us decide to do a planning weekend close to Þingvellir for one of our projects then a couple of these would be a definite possibility.
Thursday This was a much more relaxed start to the day, as we only had to get about 110km from Eyrarbakki to Keflavík. We did take the scenic route, via Kerið, Geysir, Gulfoss and Þingvellir. Yes, we did the classic Golden Circle tour, but added Álfubrúin, the bridge spanning the Álfagja rift in the far south west. This is the 'bridge between the continents', with one side on the North American plate and the other on the European plate. Except that the rift zone is actually about 30km wide... but that wouldn't play well with the tourists. :) The local authorities do seem to have improved the access though - it now has readable signage so it was fairly easy to find, unlike my last visit.
We stayed in the Njarðvík hostel where P and I had spent a couple of nights last year. E had been reading the description in the brochure and was looking forward to relaxing in the hostel's hot pot but unfortunately it wasn't working. It was also raining by that point, and E did admit that she wasn't too sure about the idea of hot-potting in the rain.
Friday Having done huge amounts of nature stuff over the past few days this morning left us just enough time to do the Saga Museum. They let me in there for free now, as this was my 6th visit, and most of the time I'm bringing other people in to visit the place. My interest is normally the shop where, as usual, I picked up some more beads to go the the hypothetical hangarok (although that might actually get done next weekend... not holding my breath on it just in case) and a bronze valkure to hang between the beads. Then there were Belgian waffles. We were at Perlan; Belgian waffles are obligatory. :)
Then it was back to the airport to drop E off to catch her flight. I think she had a pretty good time over here. I then took advantage of being in the capital to meet up with M for coffee and to pay a visit to the big blue shed in search of a new breadknife (we'd accidentally left mine in Eyrarbakki) and some more glasses to be engraved. The glasses were there but there were no breadknives, unfortunately. Instead I picked up some jars that will work nicely to store the component spices for garam masala.
The journey up north was looooong. Probably because I found myself stuck behind a series of tractors, tractors towing trailers, cars towing trailers, cars towing caravans, cars towing camper-trailers, and even camper-vans. It was well over an hour longer than anticipated, but I guess that's what you get for driving on a Friday afternoon.
Eventually I arrived home, extracted (and opened) one of my two remaining bottles of real cider from the fridge and crashed on the sofa. There seems to have been a death while I was away. I wonder if anything else happened on the planet?