Iceland day 3

Once again I managed to hijack someone else’s trip! Me and the three Spanish girls got invited along for a drive with this guy from San Fransisco, who, unlike our driver yesterday, only asked for fuel money. We left early to miss tourists and played some 90s R&B classics along the way.

We got to the black sand beach in the south coast just as the sun was coming up. One of the most surreal, beautiful places I have ever been to. There were these huge rock formations on the cliff side not dissimilar to the Giant’s Causeway. There were flocks of seagulls flying around and the sea was pretty wild. There were cavernous spaces in the cliff face that looked like the mouths of caves, and two crooked rock towers out in the sea to the left of the sun. I picked some volcanic rocks for people back home.

We then drove to another part of the beach that was home to the wreck of a WWII bomber plane (everyone survived the crash). It was about a 2 mile walk from the care but that made it more special. Anywhere else it might have been taken to a scrapyard decades ago, or become a tourist trap. The lighting was beautiful and there were a few professional photographers. I carved David’s name on the side of the plane and inside, it would have fascinated him. We took loads of pics, including one of me stood on top and frozen in terror! After the walk back to the car we ate some sandwiches and took some pics on the road.

After that we moved on to an amazing waterfall, covered in ice. It was less cold, and we had visibility problems in the car due to rain. There was still plenty of ice around, however. Lee, our driver, spoke some Spanish and was trying to improve, so I was mainly surrounded by Spanish speakers for most of the journey! It was fine, however, I learned a lot myself!

After that we moved onto a glacier, which was truly awe-inspiring. We had to walk over a fair bit of ice to get there but luckily no one fell. If my Mum had been there she would have had a heart attack! It was huge, a gorgeous blue colour, and sat amongst more mountains. There was a small blue lake coming off it with frozen patches and small bergs of blue ice, like a miniature Arctic sea. The banks were made up of black sand and shiny black pebbles. Iceland has to have one of the most surreal landscapes on the planet. There was a tiny little cafe where we could use the toilet and buy some food, I can’t imagine working somewhere so tiny and remote.

We managed to squeeze in one more waterfall before driving back to Reykjavik. It was getting dark and starting to rain, so we basically just ran out, took some pics, and ran back to the car! Although, I did squeeze in a quick visit to the gift shop, and two of the girls bought Lee a donut for his trouble.

I snoozed in the car for most of the journey home, and woke up with the rain and blizzard level snow covering the road. Poor Lee was having to go about 2 miles an hour, and his windscreen wipers only seem to make things worse! We pretty much just followed other cars. If Mum was there she would have freaked out. Luckily, we got back in one piece, and me being lazy, I went for a nap.

I got talking to other hostel guests at the bar. It was happy hour, so we were able to get pints cheaper than normal. They were all really nice, and a cool thing about hostels is getting together with people from all over the world. If I was staying in a hotel I wouldn’t have taken trips and I wouldn’t have anyone to hang out with in the evening. We spent a long time talking about the penis museum, and Icelandic witchcraft.

At around nine o’clock me and the same group went out to try and find the aurora. We got out to a spot near þingvellir. The lights we out, but once again it was very faint. It was still a nice night, however, the skies were clear and we spotted a few shooting stars. I t may have been purely imagination but the stars seemed twinklier out there, too. Lee took some long exposure pictures which showed the Northern Lights a lot brighter and more impressive than they were in person, so we always have the option to lie and say we saw them. We drove back and I pretty much went straight to bed.