We woke up in our plastic bubble with the forest all around us. Quite a special way to start the day!
Went out to breakfast… and damn, food is so expensive here! Club sandwich at a diner – $30. Brutal.
First thing on our agenda this morning was to go to this geothermal river, Reykjadalur. I’ve heard of many hot springs, but have never heard of a whole river with warm water to bathe in, so this sounded super interesting. unfortunately, i hadnt done a ton of research on this beforehand, so as i was reading about it in the morning, i realized that this was literally just a river out in the middle of nowhere. No amenities at all. Which meant we’d need our own towels. But… we had no towels. This lead to a bunch of frantic googling for stores that sell towels in the tiny “town” (village?) we were in, with zero luck.
Finally, it turned out that there was one single store that sold towels and would be open that day (on a Sunday), but it didn’t open until noon. Ugh… this really would fuck up our day, since we had a bunch of things on our itinerary, and waiting until noon would mess everything up. Maybe we should just skip it? I ask Lucy how badly she wants to go to the geothermal river and she says “very badly”. I do some thinking and figure out a “solution”., we would just bring some extra shirts with us and use them as towels. That should work… i think?
We drive out to the river, and head out on the trail…. it’s a 45 minute hike to the river. It’s basically freezing outside. Actually, scratch that, it is *literally* freezing outside. Wind is blowing so hard that we are being blown back and forth across the trail as we walk and it’s hard to even take steps sometimes. Not a perfect day for a swim, lol. After 20 minutes of slogging, Lucy looks defeated, and i ask if she wants to turn back. She does, and we give up. We head back and buy yet more warm clothes.
The next two things on the agenda were two of Iceland’d most famous waterfalls. As we drive to the first one, it starts raining. Dammit. We get to the falls and step out of the car. It’s full on storming. According to the weather report its 34 degrees Fahrenheit. But due to the wind etc, in the “feels like” section, it says that it’s “fucking freezing as hell”. Ok fine, it actually said it feels like 5 degrees Fahrenheit, but that’s basically the same thing. So, we walk to the falls, being blown all over the place and being absolutely pummeled w/ rain. Within minutes, my pants are sopping wet and my sneakers are soaked.
The falls themselves (Seljalandsfoss) are amazing. Really stupendous. And, one of the cool things about these falls is that you can walk behind the falls and look at them from the other side.
We drive on to the next falls (Skogafoss). Another really spectacular set of falls. But afterwards, we’re just spent. We get back to the car, totally drenched and shellshocked from the rough weather. We had one more thing to do on our itinerary for the day, but we just can’t muster the energy for it. We decide to skip it and just drive onward to the hotel in Vik.
As we get close to Vik, the scenery gets more and more snowy. Due to the weather, visibility is murky in the distance, and it’s just white everywhere, with giant snowy mountains coming out of the fog as you get closer to them. It’s really ethereal and beautiful out here… a totally different landscape than the forests of Tahoe back home. This is more desolate, almost haunting in some way, yet mesmerizing. It was really a beautiful drive.
We finally arrive in Vik. It’s a winter wonderland. We gratefully change out of our wet clothes, and eat some delicious burgers at a brewery nearby. It was definitely an adventure of a day. I kept reading before the trip that everyone should expect Iceland to be unpredictable and extreme, and I can definitely see why.
