Riding Through Our Final Days in Iceland

When we woke this morning, Chrissy still wasn't feeling well, but we had horseback riding reservations, so as the brave little trooper she is, she got up, and off we went to find breakfast.  Our first attempt was closed, but Cafe Loki, just on the corner by the church, was open for breakfast.  While eating, the riding stable called to confirm and make sure of our pickup location.  They don't have WhatsApp, so I'll be eating some international calling charges, not just the breakfast I ordered.  I usually don't answer calls  while traveling because my plan includes data and text, but not calls.  It wasn't long, though, should shouldn't be more than a dollar or two.

After breakfast, we went to the bus stop at the church to wait for the bus.  It started spitting a little rain again.  When we got to the stable, they had the big, heavy-duty waterproof outers, so I chose to put those over my waterproof things.  I'm so glad I did!  While riding, the rain picked up, often feeling like sleet hitting my face!  It was awesome, though!

The Icelandic horse is a unique creature and very well cared for and protected under Icelandic law.  They do not measure them in hands (1 hand = 4 inches), and there is a very good reason for that.  Where most breeds are concerned, the defining line between a horse and a pony is 14.2 hands.  Anything short of that is a pony and anything 14.2 or over is a horse.  According to our guides, the average height of the Icelandic horse is 130 cm, which converts to just under 13 hands.  But DO NOT under any circumstances call them a pony!  They are horses, just very short ones!  They live to be about 25-30 years old, just like other horses.  Since they have never experienced any predators, they are very loving and approachable.  A bunch of sweeties!  And these guys are spoiled rotten, which is not a bad thing!  The law limits the time an Icelandic horse can be worked, regardless of the work they are doing.  There are no exceptions to this law for horses that just live on a farm with maybe one or two friends or horses who live in large stables like these.  They can only work a maximum of 4 hours in any given day, and they must be given an annual four-month vacation, where they are taken to a "vacation resort", which is just a huge open field of multiple square kilometers, where they can just hang out and play.  Kind of like being taken to Montana in the US and set free for 4 months!  That's more vacation time than the people get!  

The blood line is so protected that no horses of any breed are allowed to be imported into Iceland, and if an Icelandic horse is taken out of the country, it can never return.  Apparently, at one time, there was an attempt to cross breed the Icelandic horse with another breed, and the results were less than stellar, resulting in the near decimation of the breed.  Therefore, parliament passed laws in 982 AD prohibiting the importation of any horse, including Icelandic horses that had been taken out of the country.  Those laws remain in full force and effect today.

The Icelandic horse has five gaits.  Like all horses, it has the walk, trot, and canter.  They also have the flying pace, which is just a normal pace in which both legs on the right side move together, then the legs on the left side move.  The fifth gait is called the tölt.  This has been described as similar to a saddlebred's rack, a paso fino's largo, or a Tennessee walker's runwalk.  I've never ridden a paso fino (I should probably do that the next time I'm in Peru!), but I have ridden saddlebreds and walkers, and between the two, the tölt felt very similar to the runwalk of the Tennessee walking horse.

The coat on these animals is incredible, too!  Our non-Icelandic horses developed an undercoat in winter to help insulate them, but these guys felt like they had a few coats!  We were out for a little over an hour in the pouring rain.  My waterproof gloves (that stayed dry under water for 10 minutes when I tested them to be sure they were waterproof and not just water resistent when I first got them) got soaked through in spots.  I was so happy to have had the stable's waterproof top layer on.  When I got off Piano, my horse, I rubbed my hands up on his neck, on the side that didn't have the mane flowing over, and he was bone dry under there!  Nice and toasty, too!  These guys don't go seeking shelter from a little rain!  The stable hands said they seem to prefer being out in the rain instead of inside.

Because of the rain, I didn't take my camera with me on the ride, so the only shots on the horse are with my crappy phone camera.  I got some shots and some video of them playing in the paddock after the ride was finished.  As you can see, none of these guys look like drowned rats or even like the rain is a problem at all!

After riding, we had some hot chocolate and coffee and warmed up by the radiators.  Then, they took us back to Reykjavik.  We had a nice late lunch of sandwich and soup from a cafe across from our AirBnB and caught the Hop On/Hop Off (HOHO) bus to look around at the sights in the dry.  Pictures from the bus aren't very clear, but I did get a couple of good ones through the rain-spattered glass.

The Hofdi House, where Reagan and Gorbachev met in 1986

Sun Voyager sculpture on the waterfront

After the HOHO bus, we walked around a little bit to do some trinket shopping and find a post box to mail a postcard to a special little girl we know.  (She gets a postcard from everywhere I go.)  We found ourselves on the famous Rainbow Road, which is only a couple of blocks down from our AirBnB, on the same street.  

With Chrissy still feeling poorly and a bunch of snacks and food at the AirBnB, we decided to just go home and finish the food we had there before leaving the next day.  I kept peeking out on the balcony to look for the aurora, but she never appeared.  It was a wonderful time in Iceland, even though we did not achieve the main purpose of the trip - seeing the aurora borealis or northern lights.  I guess I'll just have to keep trying!  Maybe Iceland again, maybe somewhere else, maybe even a last minute flight to Fairbanks when the skies are clear there and Lady A is dancing.  We shall see!

The Snaefellsnes Peninsula

After breakfast, our new guide, Gylwi, and new tour group picked us up.  A whole different vibe.  Not a bad one, but a different one.  Gylwi had spent significant time in the US, going to school in Arizona and Alabama.  Definitely got the SEC (Southeastern Conference) culture down while he was at Bama and made a few digs at my University of Kentucky Wildcat non-football team!  There was a lot more "bro energy" on this day than the last three.  Still a fun time, though.  We made an unscheduled stop at a roadside vista.  It was pretty, but not really anything to write home about compared to the other sights we had seen.

The wind was a bit brisker on this part of the island, so I put the liner back in my parka while we were driving to our next destination, Kirkjufell, or Church Mountain.  This is apparently the most photographed mountain in Iceland.  Those of you who watched may recognize it from Game of Thrones.  Of course, I don't know if it was used in the show in summer or winter, but they tell me it's green in the summer.  When we got there, there was a jerk that hopped the ropes and camped out just at the top of the waterfall, ruining everybody else's shot.  He was there when we got there and was still there when we left.  It was a good thing I put my liner in, too.  The winds by this mountain and its associated waterfall (Kirkjufellsfoss) was no joke!  It was at least as strong as the katabatic winds in Antarctica and may have been the northern equivalent.  I had difficulty standing upright in the gusts, and they blew water up over the falls instead of down them.  Chrissy pulled up wind information, and the winds were sustaned at 22 mph with gusts to 35 mph (about 35 kph with 56 kph gusts).  I got a few good shots anyway, being careful to try to keep the jerk just outside of the frame.  You can see him in the video showing the water blowing up the falls, though.

After we were blown back onto the bus, we headed to Snaefellsjokull National Park.  This is a huge lava field centered around the Snaefellsjokull volcano and glacier.  It was featured in Jules Verne's "Journey to the Center of the Earth" and is the source of much lore.  Like most beaches, there are trolls on this one, too.  One is the woman troll carrying fish on her back (Kerling).  There is also an elven church (the largest rock stack on the trail).  This was a fabled area of determining who was and was not worthy of becoming a seafarer by having a series of rocks of various weights and sizes.  I didn't get pictures of these rocks.  Remember that "bro energy" I was talking about?

Legend has it that this was the first place Bardar Snaefellsas came ashore from Norway and settled this peninsula.  Bardar was a half man/half troll magical being.  After an undescribed tragic ordeal, Bardar is said to have moved his family to the Snaefellsjokull volcano, where he continues to live and watch over the people of the peninsula that bears his name.  For about 300 years, until about 1950, this area was a thriving but seasonal fishing village.  Now it is a lovely park with mystical origins.

The tall one is Trollakirja, the troll church.

This basalt stack is the troll woman with fish

I thought these posts were adorable! 

Our next stop was Arnarstapi Village, which is a vacation village on the peninsular coast.  Apparently, no one lives in this village full time.  It's a beautiful place with resident gulls (and probably puffins and other migratory birds in season).  The waters come hit the shore and have drilled holes in the cliffs, where they splash up with a great spray!  By the parking lot, there is a life-sized statue of Bardar Snaefellsas.

Barder Snaefellsas' life-sized statue.  His legs alone are about the size of a one-story house.

The last two stops of the day were a little underwhelming.  First was a black church.  Nothing special about it other than it has been painted with pitch to help protect it from the elements.  People consistently asked the tour guides to stop to see it, so they added it into the tour.

Our last stop was at Ytri Tunga seal beach, home of resident harbor and grey seals.  We didn't see any that were hauled out, so there was no real way to tell if the few we saw in the water were harbor seals or grey seals, as they are very similar.  I got some blurry shots of them bobbing up and down in the water and a video of a couple of them.  But, that's all they did.  No real playing in the water like the harbor seals do in the Puget Sound.

After that, we drove on back to Reykjavik because it was, again, too cloudy for the northern lights.  Gylwi dropped us off at the bus stop by Hallgrímskirkja, the largest church in the country (Evangelical Lutheran Church of Iceland), which was only a couple of blocks from the Airbnb I had booked us for the rest of our stay.  Chrissy had been fighting a sore throat and some sniffles all day, so I just popped into the Thai restaurant downstairs and got some noodles for dinner.

Through the Crevass Field to the Top of the Glacier!

After another night without the aurora lights, we woke for a trip to another glacier.  This time, we were headed to the Solheimajokull Glacier, which sits atop the Katka volcano.  Unlike yesterday's glacier, this one has a frontal section of cravasses, large sections of ice that are splitting off the glacier.   Katka is an active volcano which erupts about every 100 years.  It is past due.  Geophysical authorities keep a very close eye on it, and in Iceland, they have tons of experience with earthquakes and volcanoes, so it felt safe to hike this glacier at this time.  Authorities believe that this glacier will completely melt with the next eruption of Katka.  

The glaciers in Patagonia are pristine and clear enough that tour operators will chip off pieces of the glaciers to use as ice in drinks.  That's not something you want to do here!  As we learned yesterday, the black seams in the glaciers here are volcanic ash that gets trapped in the snow.  The top layer of this ash is from an eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull stratovolcano's eruption in 2010.  In some places, that ash is at the very top of some peaks.  Nate, our glacier hike guide, explained that not only does the ash get trapped in the snow, but it can also act as an insulator, keeping the compacted snow beneath it cold, inhibiting melting.  We saw some spikes topped with ash as well as some ash that was mixed in with the compacted snow/ice.  We also saw several moulins, which are tunnels in the glacier.  I think these glaciers are more interesting than the Patagonian ones, though they are not as imposing, as they are melting faster.

This glacier showed significant evidence of climate change.  Like with the other one, the glacier previously extended out to the edge of the lagoon.  Nate told us that this glacier is receeding so quickly that the location of the glacier edge is visibly changed from week to week now.  Also, the last eruption of a close volcano which left ash on this glacier occured in 2010 - 13 years ago.  There are places on this glacier where the ash is still the uppermost layer, indicating that there has been little measurable lasting snowfall on this glacier for 13 years.

When we got to the parking lot of the glacier, they outfitted us with glacier-grade crampons (The ones we brought were not sufficient here.), a harness in case we needed to be fished out of a crevass or moulin, an ice ax, and a helmet.  Those who didn't have appropriate shoes, waterproof pants or coat, or other equipment that wasn't provided could rent them at this time.  The beautiful moon boots the two influencers in our group were wearing weren't appropriate.  I hated that for them, but they took it in stride.  Once we were all outfitted, we headed down to the glacier edge.  Nate took his time, making sure we weren't worn out before ever making it to the glacier.  When we reached the edge, he showed us how to lace our crampons onto our shoes.  He then put me in the front of the line (slowest setting the pace and keeping any eye on me and being handy for any help I might need), and we headed up into the crevass field on the edge of the glacier.  It was amazing!  A much better experience than the rushed push in Patagonia on the Perito Moreno.  Nate kept a close eye and was able to help me up anytime it was really steep and I needed help.  When he felt like I needed to catch my breath, he would stop us and announce that it's a really good place to take pictures.  Never once did I feel like I was a drain on the tour.  Even after one particularly steep climb, when I tried to lean on one of the pillars of the crevass and just slowly slid down until I was sitting on the glacier, it was never any big deal.  We just hung out there, taking pictures, until I was ready to be helped back up on my feet and heading further along.

Not as imposing as the Perito Moreno in Patagonia, but much more interesting.

A moulin with water

Ash from the 2010 eruption insulating the packed snow underneath

Isn't this beautiful?

That group of people looks so small on top of the glacier!  You can see where the crevass field ends and the top of the glacier becomes smooth.

Somebody looks happy!

Looking back from the top of the glacier, past the crevass field, over the lagoon, which used to be filled with the glacier itself.

Somebody else looks happy, too!

After we came back down off the glacier, Nate let everybody go back to the parking lot at their own pace.  Our group all took their time getting their gear off, going to the bathroom, and just hanging out in the area.  We were the last ones back to the parking lot, but not the last on the bus.  I'm glad we decided to go with Troll Expeditions.  They did a great job making sure we all got to enjoy all of the activities, including this, one of the more physical ones.  I felt especially good about this after not being able to complete the hike on the Perito Moreno.

When we all got back on the bus, we headed off to our last stop on the Golden Circle/South Coast part of the trip - Seljalandsfoss.  This waterfall sits under the glacier on the Eyjafjallajökull stratovolcano, the same one that erupted in 2010.  This eruption spewed so much ash that it disrupted air travel across Europe and beyond for quite some time.  The wind was such that there was very little disruption to Icelandic air travel, though.  The funny part of this is that the volcano name is so difficult to say for most non-Icelandic speakers that spoken media outlets shortened its name to E-15, meaning starts with E followed by 15 letters!  This waterfall area is another example of how the island has grown based on seismic activity.  The cliff from which the waterfall tumbles was once the coastal border here.  Because of volcanic eruptions, lava floes, and ground upheavals, there is now a relatively short patch of land between the falls and the new coast (part of which houses the parking lot, bathrooms, small gift shop and sandwich shop).  I didn't turn around and take the picture, but the ocean was visible from the falls.  This waterfall also has a path that goes around behind the waterfall with a small cave.  I would have liked to have done this, but I was tired and didn't want to get soaked in that cold water.  Plus the path was supposedly very icy.  So, I just admired this fall from a distance before going to the sandwich stand for a hot chocolate and hot panini.

Because our 4-day tour was a 3+1, and the 3-day portion was over, we returned to Reykjavik, and Halmit dropped Chrissy and I off at the Hotel Island, where Troll Expeditions booked us for the night, where a new guide will pick us up in the morning.

Deep Inside the Glacier for This Dane!

As we woke this morning, it was yet another foggy, cloudy day.  While describing what should be seen outside the bus windows, we were growing accustomed to hearing Hilmat start with, "You'll have to take my word for it..."

But everything was great when we reached Diamond Beach.  This beach is named after all of the small icebergs that have broken off the Breiðamerkurjökull Glacier, which is part of the Vatnajökull ice cap, Europe's largest.  The small icebergs calve off the glacier and into the Jökulsárlón glacier lagoon, where they wash out toward the Atlantic Ocean before being pushed back onto shore onto the Breiðamerkursandur black sand outwash plain.  (Look at me, copying and pasting those names with the Icelandic letters instead of converting them to the closest English version!  They're long words, and my memory is getting shorter!)  The plain was formed when the three nearby glaciers were pushed forward from volcanic activity, which is pretty common in Iceland!  In fact, we were there between active volcano eruptions around Grindavik, close to the Blue Lagoon.  The icebergs in the lagoon are amazing and have stripes in them from the volcanic ash that is trapped as the glacier is formed amid volcanic eruptions.  In case either I didn't explain it or you didn't read the Antarctica blogs, a glacier is formed from compressed snow, not frozen water.  A glacier grows when the annual snowfall is greater than the snow melt off.  It receeds, when more snow melts than falls.  It takes many years for the weight of the newer snow to be heavy enough to compress the lower snow into ice.  Unfortunately, the Icelandic glaciers are receeding, as are most of the world's glaciers.  The blue color is because when the sun shines on the ice, all of the colors of the spectrum except blue are absorbed into the ice, leaving only the blue to be seen.  When you get up close to them, they are, in fact, clear unless they contain air pockets or some snow that hasn't completely compacted into ice.  

While washing out of the lagoon and into the delta of the ocean, some melting occurs and much of the volcanic ash is released before the smaller iceberg washes back up onto shore in the glacier plain.  Those icebergs look like diamonds against the black sand of the beach, giving the plain its common name of Diamond Beach!

I've posted these pictures in the order the icebergs flow.  We saw the Diamond Beach first.  Then we went around to the glacier lagoon.

After spending some time at the lagoon, we boarded what they call a "super jeep" and headed up to the Vatnajokull ice cap to what has become known as the Crystal or Blue Ice Cave.  This is a natural hole made in the ice cap.  Because the glacier is constantly moving (like all glaciers), it changes frequently.  Our cave guide told us that he can sometimes see the difference from day to day.  The cave was beautiful!  While we were passing another group, we passed by a girl that I danced in the grocery store with the day before.  We did a little dance in the cave, too!  The pictures I got of the cave, including the frozen waterfall, don't do it justice.  It was a beauty!  Much larger and more interesting than the one that opened up last year in the Perito Moreno glacier in Patagonia, though for my first ice cave, that one was amazing, too!

When we got off the jeep and put on our crampons, we walked across this smooth sheet of the ice cap.

This is what the ice cave looks like from the top of the glacier.

Now we're down inside the ice cave and the first magnificent site is the frozen waterfall with the flowing waterfall beside it.

This is a look up from the cave toward the sky.  I believe it's where it looks like there are two holes from the top (above picture).

This is a second waterfall inside the ice cave, partially frozen with water flowing over the frozen part!

Chrissy taking a picture while our guide is waiting to help us over a tricky spot.

You can see how the glacier and ice cap has receeded.  It created this lake by being pushed out to the edge of it.  As the compressed snow ice has melted, this lake has formed.  You can see land at the edge of the glacier in the rear of the picture, so it has receeded all the way beyond the lake that it formed.

By the time we finished our ice cave hike and returned to the lagoon, it was starting to get dark, so we headed to dinner and our accommodations.  For some reason, Chrissy has decided she wants to learn Gaelic on this trip, so she has started working on DuoLingo during our down time.  While driving, Hilmat was telling us about the genetic ethnic makeup of the Icelanders.  Studies done have shown that there is no real surprise that most of the men are of Scandanavian descent.  But that ethnic background of the women was somewhat surprising.  It seems most of the women are of Irish descent.  This can be explained because of the Scandanavian settlements in Ireland and the islands around Great Britain, with many of the Viking men taking wives (some willing, some not) from those areas as they moved on.  Knowing that my maiden name is McDowell and that we always knew we were Scotts-Irish, she started doing some linguistic digging.  McDowell is the anglicized version of MacDougal, which accounts for my ancestors' migration from Scotland to Ireland.  In Gaelic, "mac" means "son of", and "dougal" means "dark-haired stranger or foreigner".  Apparently, the Scotts differentiated the Danes from the other Scandanavians by calling them "dark-haired".  So, my last name literally translates to "Son of Dane."  Well, that's good enough for me!  I now consider myself Danish.  I guess I need to put together a trip to Denmark!  And before anyone suggests it, I don't want to do a 23 and Me type of DNA test.  I kind of like the mystery surrounding my heritage!

It was, again, too cloudy to look for the aurora.  Since we were in individual cabins, I was able to step out the door and look to see if there were any changes the couple of times I woke during the night.  We were in such remote places that if there had been a break in the clouds and any auroral activity, we would have been able to get them, as there wasn't even the hint of light pollution around us.  But, another night of no lights for us.  Some really great lamb stew for dinner, though!

Heading to the South Coast of Iceland!

After an excellent night's sleep, we woke, and Chrissy had her first egg-scented shower.  During our trip, we learned that the ground is so porous that rainwater and snow melt doesn't run off in streams and rivers like we're used to.  Instead, it seeps into the ground and pops back up as springs.  All the time that it's underground, it hangs out with the magma, being heated and staying hot.  As with most thermal waters, there is a faint sulfur smell to it.  I just barely noticed it, but Chrissy apparently smelled it very strongly.  It was nice,  hot water, though!

After getting ready and packing up our bags, we walked across the street to the gas station and grabbed a couple of sandwiches before walking across the other street to catch our tour bus with Troll Expeditions.  Our guide, Hilmat, and most of the rest of the tour group (a total of 11 of us) gathered us around 8:15, and off we headed to Thingvellir National Park.  

Thingvellir National Park was the site of one of the earliest parliaments, originating in 930 AD, after settlement of the island began in 874.  The leaders of the various tribes of the island would meet on the plains to conduct governmental business.  They continued to do so until 1798, even while technically under the rule of various Scandanavian countries.  Parliament was reinstated in 1844, but it was moved to Reykjavik.  The declaration was that this parliament was a continuation of the same parliament that was founded in 930.  Iceland finally gained sovereignty in 1918 and became a fully independent republic in 1944.  Thingvellir translates to "assembly plains", and the parliament has always been officially called the Althingi in Icelandic.

Along with being one of the oldest originating sites of a continuous parliament, Thingvellir National Park is the site of the divergent plate boundary of the American and Eurasian tectonic plates.  Hilmat explained to us that the island grows in a couple of different ways.  One way is by these plates.  These plates do not collide with each other, like we often consider plates to interact.  Instead, when they shift, they tend to shift farther apart, widening the island, and creating multiple gorges, canyons, fissures, and other landscape marvels, which ultimately result in Lake Thingvallavatn, where people will dive and/or snorkle the Silfra fissure.  The water is supposedly crystal clear here, but I'll have to take their word for it for now.  We did not snorkle the fissure on this trip.

We arrived at the park around 9:30 a.m., which was still too dark for me to take pictures with my camera without the tripod and too dark for me to see to change the settings to the handheld dark automatic setting.  We hiked down a trail of one of the canyons created by a diverging movement of the plates followed by a release of lava to "fill in" the gap and the emergence of a spring ultimately leading to the lake.  Chrissy took these pictures for me while I picked my way through the icy path with the help of my crampons.  It is a beautiful park.  One could easily spend a day or two exploring all of the trails and snorkeling or diving the fissure (which occurs year round).

We finished our hike here at around 10:00 a.m.  It's still pretty dark out.

Once the hike was completed, we got back on the bus to our first waterfall, and what an amazing waterfall it was!  We went to the partially frozen Gullfoss (translated to Golden Waterfall).  There were multiple paths to see the different sections of this fall, and all of those sections were lovely!  There were spots on the path that were solid sheets of ice, so the crampons definitely came in handy.  It was fun watching people without them slip-sliding along!  We didn't see anybody fall badly.  The girls in their moon boots had some difficulty, but not nearly as much as the guy in dress shoes!  You can see all parts of the waterfall, including where pieces of it are frozen by Chrissy's right arm!

Our next stop was the Geysir geothermal area.  Geysir was the first geysir ever described in print, dating back to at least 1294.  This particular geysir is where all the other shooting hot waters got their names.  Until Old Faithful was discovered, Geysir was the largest and most famous geysir in the world.  While Geysir itself is mostly dormant, having last had an active period for a few years in the early 2000s, a sister geysir in the same thermal field is routinely active, spouting about every 6-10 minutes.  We watched Strokkur (the Churn) erupt a couple of times.  The video shows the water in the spout hole bubbling just before it erupts.  The next time, I took photos instead of trying to get it on video.  Since we had limited daylight, time to both get to and watch Strokkur and have lunch was limited, so we only stayed for two eruptions.  I did love the colors in the fields near where the original Great Geysir's location is.

After lunch and having completed the "Golden Circle" (Thingvellir National Park, Gullfoss, and Geysir), we continued along the South Coast to one of the largest waterfalls in Iceland, Skogafoss (waterfall from the Skoga River).  Another solid sheet of ice led up to it, but the fall itself wasn't frozen in any places and had a significant spray.  Some of you may recognize this waterfall, as it is used frequently in media.  In the US, you may have seen it in the following sources:  Justin Beiber's music video to "I'll Show You" and multiple movies and shows that have been released in the US.  Specifically:  "Thor: The Dark World", "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty", "Vikings" season 5 episode 2 (where Floki discovers Iceland), and the final season of "Game of Thrones".

Our last stop of the day was at what is considered one of the most beautiful non-tropical beaches in the world and was named in 2021 as the 6th best beach in the world overall, Reynisjara black sand beach.  This beach not only has lovely black sand and black volcanic rocks and pebbles, but is also home to these beautiful basalt cliffs and some rocky sea stacks just offshore.  Folklore has it that the stacks and basalt formations used to be trolls that would pull ships from the ocean, crashing them onto the shore.  One night, they were out searching for ships and stayed out too late, still being visible at daybreak, where the sunlight froze them forever.

This beach is also known for its sneaker waves.  This video doesn't give justice to the huge waves that were routine.  At one point, I was too close to the water, so for the first time in years, I had to run!  Thankfully, I didn't fall this time!

As we left the beach, it was getting dark, so we headed to our accommodations for the evening.  At dinner, Hilmat shared some more of his knowledge of the island and its culture, but wouldn't answer all of our questions, saying he had to leave some information for during the tour!  Far too many clouds to even consider looking for the aurora, so we just turned into bed for a good sleep.