In which I am a Dragon:

On the fourth day of our tour, we spent a lot of time marvelling at the changing landscapes, as we zoomed across the eastern side of the country.

We stopped briefly at a lookout:

Which was beautiful (as were we).

Sameer was very keen to walk as far away from the group as possible in the very short amount of time we had before re-boarding, but I was less keen on both the downhill direction he was heading in (losing all that potential energy!), and the general idea of being out for longer in the freezing cold:

We managed not to miss our ride.

The longer stop of the morning was to see a man about some rocks.

The house of an older gentleman who liked collecting all kinds of rocks, shells, bones and fossils.

He kept the more common ones out in his garden…..

… and some of the fancier ones inside.

Jumping back on the bus, we chowed down on what had become our standard Iceland food. Heavily seeded crackers with ham. Given the food at the stops was often insanely expensive, and given that bus-sitting goes hand-in-hand with idle snacking, we had decided fairly early in the journey to stock up on supplies each time we hit a supermarket.

We referred to it as ‘hammy crack’.

And we definitely got seeds all over the bus (sorry!).

This time around, I also tried a ‘high protein’ snack that is basically fish’s answer to beef jerkey.

Very very fishy, and kind of weirdly powdery. 2/10.

After trying one piece I carried it around for days and eventually threw it away.

Sorry fish.

We passed by some more beautiful landscapes…

….which just happened to have some seals in them:

(ok, but trust me, some of those lumps are not rocks).

And then hit the Stripey Mountains:

(shown here in order of increasing DRAMA)

I mean, that bird is just showing off for the art of it all:

Our main activity of the day, was to ride some horses.

(This guy would like to point out that there were also some sheep:)

The horse riding was an optional activity, and Sameer and I decided to opt ourselves out.

Instead, we headed off early to the thermal baths, to spend an extra couple of hours soaking ourselves.

Which.. I have no photos of, because I choose not to drown my phone.

But I do need to take a quick moment to mention that the baths- called VÖK baths were incredible!

And I say this as someone who generally thinks that taking a bath is gross and unhygienic, and who has historically found the whole ‘temperature differentiation bathing‘ thing not super fun.

I think it probably helped that it was pretty friggin’ cold outside.

Which meant that the main bath- near the building, set at about 38 degrees, was absolutely perfect to relax in.

As well as the 38 degree bath, you could do a cooling mist tunnel, or opt for slightly warmer baths of 30-40 degrees. All of these required a short strut along a jetty in the cold air to get to them.

We spent a good few hours moving slowly from pool to pool, chatting with our bus buddies, taking a drink, and generally chilling.

Oh, and also actually chill-ing, in the form of a cold plunge into the Urriðavatn lake itself that the baths jut out into.

Our group of early bathers included the very energetic young teenager, who was very excited about doing the cold plunge. It also included a man about our age who felt strongly that he had to prove his strength by plunging as many times as the teen did it. Just so we knew he was strong, manly and alpha.

Obviously, as the most alpha of all the men, I also made sure I plunged at least one more times than the alpha.

But I am a classy bish, and therefore did not show off about it.

In any case, after some bathing and relaxing, we headed back to the hotel, and rested some more.

The next morning, we were not supposed to go here:

But we did.

Because Sameer is a Very Special Person.

According to the itinerary, Studlagil Canyon is out of bounds in the winter months, because the roads in the east tend to ice up quite rapidly, making it dangerous for the bus to reach the viewpoint.

But I had happened to mention that I was really excited about seeing the pretty rocks, so Sameer took it upon himself to obsessively interrogate the weather and then mildly harass our tourguide about the fact that it looked like, actually, this October was pretty warm still.

So we went!

Thanks you weird man!

Studlagil Canyon is another amazing basalt rock formation. It’s kind of a weird one- emotion wise- because it was only “discovered” in 2009 when a hydroelectric project lowered the water level of the Jukulsa a Dal River.

So pretty, but also a bit of a ‘power of nature’ v. ‘power of man’ thinkers.

Ok, let’s head further north!

October 8th, October 9th, 2024