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16.

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Category: Iceland

16.08.08 Akureyri – Reykjahlíð – Mývatn

by Garik and Lena

This morning when we woke up, it was extremely cold! At 5:20 AM I woke up suddenly and yelled at Lena, “It’s 6:20 AM now!!!” And when she woke up and looked at the time, she told me “Are you nuts? It’s 5:20 AM now”… I don’t know why it happened, all I know is that I was half a sleep, so I had no problem to fall a sleep again… Sorry Lena!

We packed our stuff in a new time record, it took us only one hour! Then, limping and cold we headed to the TREX bus office, to buy tickets to Reykjahlíð. In the office stood a free coffee machine and milk, unfortunately some lady that entered the office before me, finished all the milk. Two tickets cost us 5000 ISK, for a two hours ride. The view of a landscape was outstanding as more as we approached the lake. We step out of the bus near a big camping site along the lake shore with lots of ducks everywhere.

First thing first – we ordered the last places for the last Askja trip for this summer for 44000 ISK for two. For two nights in the camping site, we payed 5800 ISK including two tickets to the Mývatn Nature Baths, the second biggest on the island after the “Blue Lagoon” in Grindavík (near the Keflavík International Airport, located 50 km south-west of Reykjavík). The main difference is that the heat comes from natural geothermal resources and not from some power plant. The last thing was to rent a car in a local hotel, for Thursday (today is Saturday), it’s a bit expensive, but we’re more flexible with a car than with a bus.

After settling in the camping we headed to the spa, taking a marked path, about 3 Km long. On our way we passed a unique cave in which water are always 45C deg. We spent three hours at the spa, relaxing in hot baths, hot tubs and jacuzzi, feeling the chilly wind and the warming sun. It was a perfect day to relax! We laid down in a 37C deg bath for almost half an hour under the sun… Of course visiting an Icelandic pool is nothing without having problems with the lockers in the showers… Ehh… I will learn in the end!

When we came back, we tried to ask at the info center, whether we can send our backpacks with stuff we don’t need before taking the Landmannalaugar trek to the end point in Þórsmörk. The answer was not clear, it seems that it is possible, but no one does so, plus it cost money! The best answer we got is to ask tomorrow the SBA bus driver at 18:30, I only hope we’ll manage to come back from our, yet another heroically trip, we are planning for tomorrow… might be tomorrow we’ll have to hitchhike!

In the evening, Lena noticed an advertisement of a bus to Landmannalaugar, so we thought it worth asking about. We bought some food for the next days, including Askja. We went to a local cafe restaurant, we had a lamb soup, not as good as we had in Húsavík, but still is a lamb soup! This place is known for it’s special bread (hverabrauð, a delicious, one-of-a-kind molasses bread that is slow-baked for 24 hours underground by natural geothermal heat).

When we came to the tent, we had tea with chocolate, planned a tremendous plan for Thursday and went to sleep.

Some people outside scaring the ducks, I know this cause they fly over and over our tent and Lena having already her 8th dream… It’s not 22:00 and it’s still bright outside the tent, maybe tomorrow we’ll see the whole sunset.