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14.

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Category: Iceland

14.08.08 Isafjordur – Akureyri
by Garik and Lena

We woke up with heavy rain pouring on us. Our clothes that were hanging outside the tent to dry, didn’t make it. The tent was wet even from inside, the bottom of the tent was wet too. As we woke up, early in the morning, we started to pack our stuff without having a breakfast. One of the tent poles was broken, that’s not a good news. After hour and a half, we were packed, wearing all the clothes we had because it was so cold! It’s quite amazing that till now, except from Reykjavik, we had good weather all the time. So we had some spare time to eat some breakfast, waiting to a bus that should arrive and take us to the airport. Suddenly a minibus arrives, and we didn’t know that this is our bus. The minibus stood in the parking for a while, waiting for a group of tourists to put their bags inside, so Lena ask some woman from the group whether this is the bus to the airport, and she answered positively. It cost 500 ISK per person for a 5 minutes drive to the airport! Now this is a robbery!

We acted quickly in the airport, checking in first. They didn’t even checked our passports, saying we’re departing straight to Akireyri from Reykjavik airport. with no need to check in again. The take-off and the flight were a bit terrifying, specially for Lena. The plane rolled, yawed and pitch every single moment… it was a small plane, four seats in a row, two from each side. The flight to Reykjavik took about 30 minutes, during which we got tea with chocolate. The landing in Reykjavik was breath taking, literally! We had hour and a half to recover, and then, yet another flight, which this time lasted about 40 minutes. And yes we got tea with chocolate again. This time the landing was more pleasant, I would say only scary… LP book said that the campsite in the town might be closed, so we were unsure about taking a 3 Km walk to the city searching for a campsite… But we did walked, what other options did we have?

We walked on the road shoulders as we always do, limping. We stopped in the info center, we wanted to get information about tours in the near area. The girl in the info center was very kind. She helped us a lot in organizing our next days in the area. We were told that the camp site is open, but we got lost while walking there (using a map), as we probably always do at some point of the day. We were lucky when some old woman decided to help us though we didn’t ask her. The city is like Haifa, no matter where you look at, you see uphills. After settling in the campsite area and having problems finding suitable gas balloon, we decided to take a walk and have late lunch in some restaurant. Yes restaurant, we deserved it, specially Lena! Lena chose the Bautinn restaurant www.bautinn.is/index.html in one of the oldest buildings in the city. We ate two hamburgers, two soups, free salad and bread buffet, and for dessert we had an ice cream which is like tiramisu. Actually it was far from tiramisu, but it was hell of an ice cream with lots of fruits in it and a small flag of Iceland! Incredible how good the fruits are here in Iceland! We were so full that our brain didn’t think about taking a picture of that ice cream, it was worth a shot!

Although we were full, we couldn’t sit and do nothing, so we decided to take a walk around the town. The local church we’ve seen from outside, didn’t entered, and it’s a quite shame, LP mentioned it’s worth a visit. So we decided to walk to the preserved forest just outside Akureyri, about ~ 3Km… The direction is towards the airport, the opposite way we just came few hours ago! Haven’t we been there before?… This time we took a map with us, but still we couldn’t find our destination. We were looking for the playground in the forest, well there was a little forest there if you’d like to call it that way, but no playground for us.The path we took was unmarked so what we did was to get off the path to the main road, and walk to the city again the same way we did this noon when we came here. Lena did a short cut to the campsite, I was desperate to find a gas balloon and Internet. Neither was found! When I came back to the campsite, I booked the washing machine for tomorrow… Nothing more for today…. Going to sleep now!

The laundry machine cost 600 ISK. Earlier when I came back, I bought an pineapple can, cost me 85 ISK. By the way, if you’re asking, the lunch cost us about 4500 ISK…

Tomorrow we’re going to see whales (we hope)! We want to go to the pool here near the campsite, LP says it’s the best public pool in Iceland. The “whaling” tour cost 7500 ISK per person. Campsite cost 900 ISK for two persons per night.