21.08.08 – Around Reykjahlíð and more
By Garik and Lena

• We woke up today, and it was warm I must say. Nevertheless, our clothes were moist because of the dew. We got dressed quickly and went to take our rented car for today. We have lots of places to see today, and not much time! At the hotel, where we took the car, I filled my details and paid 17200 ISK for the car and 200km free of charge. We took the keys and off we go. We got Hyundai Tuscon 4WD. The baggage didn’t open for some reason, it worried me a bit but we had to leave now! Right after I started the engine, I’ve noticed that the baggage red light indicator is on, so I figured out that there is some kind of problem with the baggage and nothing more. 

• First stop – Pseudo Craters at Skútusstaðir, these were formed by steam explosions when lava flowed over wet ground. We walked by the marked path, took some pictures and moved on. Second stop – Hvellir; an active geothermic region with mud pots and steam holes. We walked around a bit, breath sulphur gases, and continued to our next station. On the way we ate our sandwiches and for desert we ate dried figs. Third stop – Stora Viti (Big Hell) – is a volcanic caldera of the Krafla volcano near Myvatn, in another words, another kind of a small crater with blue, hot water inside, reminded us the Viti crater in Askja. We walked around it, took some pictures and continued once again. We skipped the long walk in the area (about hour and a half) because we were short in time. On our way back to the main road, I heard a weird noise from the back of the car, like something had opened. I was afraid that it’s the baggage. I turned the distress signal, lowered the speed and drove till I could stop somewhere aside. It turned out that it’s only the window of the baggage door that has opened… Silly me. Our next stops (4th) are waterfalls. Detifoss was first. We hiked down from the parking area to the waterfall, tried to catch a picture moment of a rainbow over the waterfall without much of success. We continued up to the Sellfoss (another nice waterfall within 20 minutes walk) and went back to the car. We skipped the third waterfall in the area, again because we are short in time. Lena read somewhere in the LP book that there is some parking area near the third waterfall, so we might see it anyway… We drove ahead and missed that parking area, so we had to drive another 5 minutes till I managed to make a u-turn. We came to the parking area, took some pictures of the waterfall and went back to the car, hurry to the Asbyrgi, which is a sort of a canyon with a shape of horseshoe. What makes this canyon to be so unique is the fact that there is forest inside, yes, forest in Iceland, with high trees. Lena wasn’t excited much of the place; I was excited a little more. From there we continued to the Husavik museum, our sixth stop. It was a long way to go from Asbyrgi to Husavik, but I insisted. And yes I realized it will cost me more than 200km per day. After one hour drive, we reached the place. We paid 1000 ISK for the entrance. We toured the museum for some time and were disappointed that most of the exposition info is in Icelandic and is not translated to any other language. When we sat to drink coffee and tea, there was some guy who works in the museum; he told us that they are short in people to translate all and to show tourists the place. He asked us where are we from, and we answered Israel. So he told us that the museum holds about 100000 labels of beers around the globe (some local guy collected them and when he died he contributed his collection to the museum) but they don’t have any Israeli beer labels. So I knew what I have to do when I’ll come home… I’ll send them a couple. (I did send them when I came back, but never got a letter or email from them that verifies that they received the labels). The guy told us an interesting piece of information – they paint the stuffed fish all the time, otherwise they will become gray, all the time… He told us also that in sixties, the bay was so frozen that it was considered to move the population to Denmark. We asked him about some picture where many people are nude on a beach, so he told us that this is a first swimming lesson. When we leaved the place, I was glad we managed to visit there; the museum is definitely worth visiting. We wanted to go to eat the lamb soup that we ate in Husavik a week ago, but it turned out that the restaurant was opened only till 17:00 that day, they had some private event, we got there at 18:00. So we went to another restaurant, we saw that restaurant at our first visit at this town, and then it looked like a fancy place, today we decided to check whether we were right about it. Well we were wrong, it’s just an ordinary restaurant, where you can have pizza or puffin… So we ordered hamburger and pizza. When we came out of the restaurant we wanted to pass by in a supermarket, but it was closed, so we said no harm done, tomorrow before we leave, we’ll buy some stuff. So we reached Reykjahlíð sometime after 20:00 PM and the local store was closed at 20:00PM… man, no luck! I tried to fuel the car, it’s not an easy job, and I’ve read in the Internet about people who didn’t know what to do at the fuel station, now it was my turn. It cost us about 5000 ISK to fuel the car and when we returned the car to the hotel, we had to pay another 4000 ISK for extra mileage only for 69 extra km… So Lena turned it to another “This museum cost us too much! I lost in group dynamics again…”

• Sad a bit of the way the day was over, we went to sleep. We worried also that tomorrow we’ll have no place to fill our food reserves before the four day hike. We remembered that on our way here we stopped somewhere near the Godafoss, that we are probably going to pass tomorrow. Well, nothing much we can do now, isn’t it?

Pseudo Crater

Pseudo Craters area

Mud pot

Steam holes

Stora Viti

Detifoss

Selfoss

At Asbyrgi

Polar bear at Husavik museum