Iceland, Day 5: The South Shore

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We got up early so we could catch breakfast in the hotel restaurant. There were lots of rude people in the buffet line, and many of them were touching the bread with their bare hands as they cut slices for themselves. Ew.

As with the previous day, we hopped on a bus to BSÍ, where we transferred to a smaller bus. It was like an oven in there, and it stayed that way all day. If you're A, that's not much of a problem, but if you're the Human Furnace, it gets to be a problem pretty quickly.

We zipped out of Reykjavík fairly quickly, and soon found ourselves in the lovely village of Eyrarbakki. We saw exactly no people in the town, as they were all working, either in the frying-pan factory or the fish processing plants, but most of them were working in the nearby prison. Not exactly a garden spot. When the volcano erupted in the Westman Islands in 1973, lots of the people displaced by the lava moved to Eyrarbakki and never went back to the island. Not much of a trade-off as far as I could tell.

Skyr rocks. Note the convenient folding spoon.

We stopped for coffee and I picked up a blueberry skyr. I haven't mentioned much about the food, mainly because it's not all that good overall. The Indian restaurant was great, but for the most part the food was pretty lackluster. I must rave a little about the skyr, though. Skyr is an exclusively Icelandic dairy product, and is kind of like a really, really thick yogurt. But it's better than yogurt, and it's actually a type of fresh cheese. It's good and gloppy, and makes for an excellent breakfast addition, or a mid-morning snack. The packages also come with a convenient spoon attached to the lid. But I digress...

We then made our first real stop at Seljalandsfoss, a waterfall. If you look carefully in the photo below, you may be able to make out the pouring rain we were experiencing. It was like this for most of the day. I have a down coat, which is great for cold, but not so great for wet. I had intended to Scotchgard it before I left for Reykjavík, but I ended just paving the road to Hell. My coat took on water every time we left the bus, and never really dried out the entire day, which made for a fairly uncomfortable day. However, the bus wasn't full, so I was able to at the very least take it off and hang it on a seat whenever we were in between stops.

Seljalandsfoss. Can you see the raindrops?

We then made an attempt to get onto the Sólheimjökull glacier, which would have been extremely cool. However, the bus we were in was not designed for any off-roading, and as a result we were stymied by road conditions. We were able to get out and about for 10 minutes or so, but we were about an hour's hike away from the glacier and didn't have any sort of equipment to make the trek. It was a little disappointing.

My kingdom for four-wheel drive...

Getting wetter by the second

From the near-glacier experience, it was off to the black sand beach near Vik. This was the best part of the trip, I think, for both A and me. The beach was incredible. I say this despite being soaked to the bone. Out from the beach there were some basalt columns that have been worn away by the constant pounding of the ocean. They're really cool and kind of otherworldly as they jut out of the sea.

There's basalt on the moon, too...

When Clint Eastwood was filming his recent Iwo Jima-centered movies, he filmed a lot of the landing scenes in Iceland on the black sand beaches. I couldn't picture a more non-tropical setting, but it seems to have worked for him...

We had lunch in Vik with a New Zealander who has a thing for Arctic climes. Prior to coming to Iceland, he had been exploring Svalbard in Norway. He told us of seeing fresh polar bear kills, but no actual polar bears.

From Vik we headed to Skógar to the Skógar Folk Museum. It's more a collection of old stuff that the locals used to use. High points included a pump organ, a fishing boat, pillow covers, butter churns, spindles for preparing horsehair and wool, and an Icelandic dulcimer. There is also an old sod farm with original buildings surrounding it. An eccentric old local man gave us a tour of the museum and church, and had us sing along with him as we sat in the uncomforatable pews. He had us sing a couple of hymns from the hymnal, and then "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," which I was able to sing along with (finally).

Sod house at Skógar

Once we left Skógar, we traveled along the coast, stopping at Skógafoss. We had the option to go behind the falls, but it was too misty and therefore too wet, and I had had enough wet for the day by that point. We could see the Westman Islands from the bus as we traveled, and A took a few photos.

The closest we got to the Westman Islands

Once we got back to the hotel and dried out completely, we had dinner in the hotel restaurant, the highly-touted Vox. Dinner was not bad, and the flounder course was fantastic.

We sat at the far end (circled, sort of...)

We were waited on by a "trainee" named Leifur. I asked him how long he had to be a trainee, and he answered "Three years." A and I were stunned. He was fun to watch, though, as he was very careful to hold himself correctly as he walked. I think he'll be quite good at whatever the restaurant has him do.