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.
No comments:
Post a Comment