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.  Read the rest of the entry »

• 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! Read the rest of the entry »

• This morning we woke up late, cause we didn’t have to pack our stuff. We headed to the bus station, right after a quick breakfast. In the info center, near the bus station, I tried to surf the Internet for 15 minutes, well, apparently, 15 minutes pass so fast that you can’t manage to do one thing that you planned. We took the SBA3 tour, the bus looked very old and made noise like a tractor. After 10 minutes ride the front grill broken, so the driver had to stop and fix the grill. The driver fixed the grill, but after another 10 minutes it broke again, so he told us that people who want to go further than Húsavík will have to take another bus in Húsavík. And I’m thinking, why should people take another bus? Because of a front grill? By the way, on the grill was written the name of the bus company – “KUTTER”… which means in Hebrew something like “moan” but constantly. Is Iceland trying to tell me something?… Because of the stops, we were late on schedule, and of course we started to worry about our whale watching tour. We made it in the last second, the ship probably waited for us to arrive. When we were on board, we got big funny rain coats, one blue and one orange. I don’t know why we got them… Maybe to protect us from whales splashes?… Aha… The sailing wasn’t so cold or stormy as written in LP, and didn’t get even one splash during the entire sail. The sail took about 3 hours, during which we saw a back of a whale far enough from us, three or four times. Probably the most common whale in the bay. Each time the whale got up on surface of a water to take couple of breathes and then, went under the water for about 15 minutes or so. The captain of the boat tried each time to follow the direction in which the whale was spotted, but the closest distance we made I think was maybe ~30 meter, not less. As the brochure of the whale watching said, we got hot chocolate and cinnamon cookies, after which we returned to the town Húsavík. Read the rest of the entry »