Walking on Snow Cones

One of the must-dos while traveling in Iceland is getting up close and personal with a glacier. We wanted to get as close as possible, so we opted to do a glacier walk. For us, being inexperienced with equipment needed for walking on ice, it meant joining a guided tour that included crampons, ice picks, and training in how to use both. For our walk, we headed toward the glacier where the ice planet scenes from Interstellar were filmed. While one might expect a glacier to be snowy white, or icy blue, this one was mottled white and brown. As it turns out, a volcano erupted about seven hundred years ago, coating the glacier in a layer of black ash that is stuck visible today.

You're a nobody unless you have a waterfall in your back yard

The title of this post seems to be pretty accurate since we've notice that almost every little farm next to a cliff or downstream from a glacier has a waterfall its back yard. There are so many creeks here that stem from the massive snow pack up in the mountains or the national park's glacier that you can always be close to water.  Many of the properties have to dig moats around their homestead to divert the water around and hopefully prevent flooding.

Another thing we learned is that most people have warm water supplied by the district. It is centrally heated by geothermal means and pumped to most of the homes, where it circulates in all the home's radiators and can be used for showers, etc.  People only pay for the warm water they use.  It's such a stark contrast to California's drought.

Land of monster trucks

While driving around Iceland in a mid-sized SUV, and this being the largest car I have ever driven for more than a day, I thought at the beginning of our adventures that we might be one of the larger cars on the road. Well I was quite far off.  It seems like everyone has to have a gigantic truck here,and I am not talking about a large pickup truck that can haul up a mountain. I am talking about a pretty huge cab with monster truck wheels on it, wheels that could crush a small sheep without even a second thought. While you may think Icelanders just don't care about fuel economy, you should probably be aware that the roads here require that kind of vehicle. They have to be driven over fields of snow, through rivers which are unpredictability high and strong, and of course you'll need something to haul your 4 horses and perhaps 8 weeks of groceries from the store about 50 miles away. They have roads here that even our 4x4 can't deal with. You have to have a "super-jeep" to go there.

Westfjords

I haven't posted about the trip in 2 days so hopefully this covers it.  Most of the trip seemed to be driving, but the scenery is really amazing. The fjords are vast and high and the cliffs drop right into the sea, sometimes with waterfalls right into the ocean. Any humanity seem miniaturized when compared to this scenery.

Some highlights:
We went for a drive in search of a seal colony down some gravel road on the way to Drangsnes. Our plan was to have a little picnic while watching the seals. We found them but they didn't do much of anything exciting. We made our picnic lunch while sitting on a piece of driftwood and were almost blown away by the strong wind.

There was a seal museum where we learned a bit about why seals cry all the time. It's either because the seal you see crying is a transformed woman who had been the wife of a farmer and found a magical seal skin that would let her swim away into the sea. She cried because she missed her family and husband. The other explanation is that they constantly produce mucus to bathe their eyes when out of the water.

We stayed in a sweet little studio apartment guesthouse and had a good evening. We went to the ocean shore where there were 3 hot pots, natural jacuzzis for us to bathe in. We had the powerful and cold wind in our hair, the view of sea birds, and the warm water to relax in.

Today we drove to Isafjordur where we have another little studio airbnb. It's comfortable and we are getting ready for an all day kayaking trip tomorrow morning.

Today, we went to a witchcraft museum to learn about some of the magical practices in Iceland in the 17th century, as well as all the people prosecuted for witchcraft. Some of the stories were fun to hear. They basically boiled down to a systematic way to get rid of someone unpopular in town.  Accusations of witchcraft seemed easy enough to do.  The westfjords have a rich history of persecution and execution compared to the rest of Iceland.

For an afternoon snack, we got waffles for the first time in Iceland. We stopped in an old turf farmhouse where there are 3 ladies cooking up waffles, and that's all they have on the menu. It was pretty scrumptious.