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27.

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Category: Iceland

27.08.08 – Þórsmörk – Skaftafell
By Garik and Lena

So sad… The end of the trip is getting closer every day and I can’t stop thinking of it. On one hand I’m tired and want to go home, on the other hand there is still so much to see! The tourism season is ending soon and you can feel it in the air. Last night the hut was almost empty, days are getting shorter really fast! When we came here at the beginning of the month, sun went down about 2300 if it went down at all, now at 2100 it’s already dark.

Last night I didn’t sleep well and my back ached, Lena says she slept well. I couldn’t sleep because it was very hot in the room and almost no air. The curtain fall down at night, but we didn’t hear it falling, so I guess I did sleep a bit. We took our time in the morning to get ready, to pack things and have breakfast. We left the hut at 0720 towards the other Þórsmörk hut. We were slightly short in time; our fear was the loss of our backpacks. We walked really fast and reached the hut in less than half an hour, so the info center was still close. But, we saw our backpacks inside through a window and felt a big relief! The info center opened in 0800 right on time. We took our backpacks and bought tickets to Skaftafell. “Thanks” to my memory; we bought all Reykjavik Excursion tickets, through Hvosvollur and not with bus changing to Netbus. It cost us a bit more but no harm was done! And the best part was that we didn’t pay for our backpacks delivery! So we took our seats in a 4×4 bus and started the intensive crossing of rivers towards Hvosvollur. On our way we passed some waterfall that we’ll see later today.

We reached Hvosvollur after an hour or so. We switched bus on 10:15 (still RE). We bough some food supply including noodles and popcorn for about 500 ISK, then I bough myself coffee and croissant for 320 ISK. The bus we took in Hvosvollur was brand new and we were only 4 people in; me, Lena and two young girls. Later in Skogar more people got in.

Our first stop was Seljalandsfoss, a waterfall that you can walk behind it. We took a couple of pictures and returned to the bus.

Next stop is Skogar; there we saw the mighty Skogafoss waterfall. We climbed up the first meters of the Skogar – Landmannalaugar trek (the opposite of the direction we did the trek), the climb was along the waterfall! There we managed to take a picture with a rainbow! We spent something like 40 minutes in the whole site, but I think it’s too touristy. In Skogar we also met the couple from the Netherlands; they took the bus with us to Skaftafell. Skogafoss has a nice Icelandic tail about some young guy who jumped into the waterfall, seeking for some chest with treasure, behind it.

Third stop was Vik. In Vik, there is a cool souvenir gift shop, where you can take a look at a wool factory called “Vik Wool” (how surprising!). It’s a bit expensive, but we started to have the feel that we must buy something! We do have a puffin now, but no Icelandic wool… We took a short walk along the beach, saw the cliffs comes out from the sea (like troll hand). The Blond Dutch girl hoped to see puffins here, but we disappointed her, telling her it’s probably not their season any more! On the way back to the gas station where our bus stood, we bought hot dogs. And the green delicious souse they put in their hot dogs called REMOLADI, also we bough ice cream for dessert for 600 ISK for all. Must mention those people from organized tours that traveled with us all the day from Hvosvollur till now… we saw them in every place we stop. We decided on our way back Reykjavik in two days from now, to go and take a look at the local church, the LP says it’s worth visiting.

Next stop was some place called Myrdalssandur, for half an hour. The only thing to see there was 400 meters from where we stopped, but we read about it on a tourist information board too late, so we decided to catch up the place on our way back, if we’ll take the RE bus. Netbus stops only in Vik. We thought also to buy a three day bus pass but eventually dropped the idea since we won’t earn much of it, it’s already evening, we just decided to take Netbus on our way back (now we are on RE) and, the bus driver mostly don’t have these with him. Later on, we slept in the bus all the way to Skaftafell.

Skaftafell has a huge camping place with dry grass. Every thing is new and well equipped! There is a nice informative info center with a movie that describes the flood disaster couple of years ago. But the opening hours are already got shortened as we approaching the end of the month. We bought a Skaftafell map for 200 ISK and then we discovered that we could have one for free, if we would pay for the camping first! So when we paid for the camping, we got 200 ISK discount! LOL! Two nights for two person cost us 2800 ISK.

We read in LP that we can have a nice dinner in Bolti restaurant. So we looked in the map for a place called Bolti and started going there. It appeared to be a farm, really high above the camping ground. When we reached the farm, it turned to be only a place to stay for the night. An old lady from the guest house there told us that the place we are looking is somewhere down the hill, in the opposite direction… We looked at the map again and discovered that there are two places called Bolti near Skaftafell… and it’s not the first time we come up with the same name for two different places! So we continued our walk to Les, a place that was abandoned in 1946. We spent some time there and turned back to make noodles. When we came back, the info was close. We wanted to see the movie, now we’ll have to wait till tomorrow. Our food supply got smaller and all we had left to eat was a piece of bread, butter, chocolate, jam and cookies. Tomorrow we’ll finish the cookies with jam and we’ll eat figs till we get back from the planned hike, to buy something in the info. We expect to have 6-7 hours of hike in the nature reserve. We’ll see the Svartifoss waterfall.

After we finished eating our beef tasted noodles, that have no difference from shrimps or mushrooms taste, we went to sleep. We saw today the young German couple with a baby (girl), actually we saw them all the time since 08/08/08… weird… So we’ll try to rest a bit, tomorrow is a new day, and we hope the weather will stay calm for another two – three days! Today was a really nice day! One of the nicest we experienced during our visit.

P.s
The ice cream we bought today was quite small, not like in Myvatn! Lena as usual had difficult time with it. We also asked for a dip in chocolate/caramel, caramel was bad idea I can tell you, and it’s color… wow…