Week 55- Part 2 We have Biscuits

Friday 3rd August, the sun was shining brightly when we woke at about 08:00. We left the tent to dry after breakfast and walked to buy a map of hiking trails and do our last food shop. When we returned, divided food, and packed up we walked to start hitchhiking to Borgarfjörður. On the way we saw an English man who was halfway through cycling around the country on his Penny Farthing.

2 Taiwanese ladies brought us to the turn off and then a Lithuanian couple who were doing seasonal hotel work drove us the rest of the way to where we wanted to start hiking. We were walking to Stórurð along what I will call ‘Horse poop Trail’. The tack itself took us up a glaciated valley with soft going and glorious weather. We stopped by a waterfall for ham sandwiches in the midday sun and read some more Agatha.

From here the Alpine-like trail continued to what was left of the glacier and revealed a stunning blue lake. We climbed up out of the valley and continued on our way to the fjord. We were quite high up but there were still plenty of sheep. We could tell we were going to the next valley over so tried to maintain our height as we went along. Filling the bottle in a glacial stream we were eventually forced off our rocky path by a patch of snow.

This meant we had another tough but rewarding climb over another ridge. This revealed a beautiful glacial meadow filled with almost luminous green moss, much like we had seen along the way. This opened up to the gorgeous fjord below.

Soon we could see the campsite we were headed for and decided to break from the tack and walk cross country to avoid road walking. The route was a bit wet under foot and we had to walk along a drain between fields, but we eventually made it to camp shortly after 18:00. We had tuna pasta for dinner, planned our route for the next day and went to bed.

Saturday 4th August, we again woke around 08:00, had breakfast, packed up and began walking down the road to see the puffins. The day was more overcast but the cloud was high enough not to ruin the view. We ended up walking for about an hour to get to the puffins and it was extremely worthwhile. At the site there are 10-15 thousand mating pairs so there were literally thousands of beautifully beaked puffins swarming the peninsula.

We took our time absorbing the beauty before beginning our hike. We were headed steeply up hill to start our 12km to Breiðavík. We got pretty tired and felt the miles in our legs but were still enjoying it. As we came over the ridge, we saw the orange emergency shelter and accompanying beach below us. It was quick walking downhill and by 12:30 we stuck our heads in the shelter but decided we’d much rather eat lunch on the beach.

Peanut butter wraps were the order of the day, plus some more Agatha to rest our legs before we continued up again to get to the campsite. The wind picked up, so we weren’t as warm and when we reached the junction of many paths we were unsure of the correct one so we climbed higher to try spot the campsite. We saw it below and headed straight for it. There is something quite satisfying about walking off the beaten track. It was still wet under foot which displeased Sam as he discovered both his boots have holes in the soles by his heels. We met a family when we arrived, and the father had his PhD in lithium batteries. There was a drying room for our boots and socks, and we had the cook shelter to ourselves once we pitched the tent. We played cards and cooked our couscous and lentils for dinner. After getting lonely we went into the cabin to say hello to an elderly touring group. There were four Americans (a couple from Wisconsin and sisters from Idaho), a Swiss couple, a Kiwi man and their female Icelandic guide. I had spoken to the kiwi earlier as he tried to light the bbq so they could cook their lamb. He was a cattle farmer for 20 years. He hadn’t taken any holidays before so now he is traveling the world. They invited us to sit and after some chat we were offered some Icelandic lamb, potato and a delicious sauce! Such a treat. The kiwi was very funny with many one liners and the Swiss lady was very intelligent, speaking 5 languages. The whole party was great company. A little while later the guide brought out song lyrics (in Icelandic) for us all to sing. She gave us her rendition, then we had a practice before struggling through in the end. Apparently, we sounded quite good. Around 21:30 we took our leave of them to read some more Agatha.

Sunday 5th August, we woke and had breakfast before saying goodbye to our new friends. After an initial directional blunder, we were on the right path and climbed steeply up 500m in the first hour. We were mainly walking along a dirt road, switch backing up the mountain. The fog was lower so we walked into the clouds and then headed steadily downhill. Once out of the clouds we spotted something black below us. As we got closer we saw that it was an abandoned snowmobile! We were warned we’d see strange things. We stopped for our morning snack at an art exhibition thing on the mountain and signed the guestbook in the little turf shed.

It was fairly easy walking back to town and after filling water bottles and buying a rock for Holly we waited about 20min to be collected. The Icelandic couple fed us minty sweets and brought us back to Egilsstaðir, stopping along the way to see where a famous Icelandic artist used to paint. We purchased some biscuits after eating our peanut butter wraps for lunch and began hitching again. There were two people there before us looking miserable having been waiting for 90min. We went further down the road to hitch and after about 45min we made a sign saying ‘We have biscuits’. It got plenty of smiles and 15min later we were picked up by Lizzy (a Software Engineer from California who used to work for YouTube and was born in China). We were collected before the other pair and Lizzy said it was because we looked happy and friendly.

We drove an hour before turning down a 28 km dirt road. She coped reasonably well in her little hire car and soon we reached Dettifoss (the most powerful waterfall in Europe). Thanks to the dirt road option, we were on the side with fewer tourists and no safety rope which made us feel pretty nervous. We walked a little way up stream to see a smaller nicer waterfall before returning to the car.

Here we tried some dried fish (a common Icelandic snack), but it just tasted like fishy cardboard, and ate a couple of biscuits. Lizzy then took us back down the dirt road and another hour to our campsite at Mývatn (a big lake). We stopped along the way to see the sulphur springs at the side of the road. It looked like a different planet but smelt like Rotorua in NZ. We found a duck poo-free spot four our tent and made pasta for dinner before reading Agatha.