Sarah and I awoke to our alarm going off at 07:00 today, which means I actually managed to sleep through the night. It’s nice to finally be on the local time zone. Usually, it takes me only a single night.
After breakfast, we were met by our guide from Mountain Taxi, Beggi, in his monster off-road jeep. This vehicle had 3 radio systems, a GPS computer, a GSM phone and a mounting for a laptop computer, which Heggi told us he uses only in winter. Apparently, the computer tracks his every movement when out on the snow. When he gets lost, he can retrace his journey, step by step.
Beggi and his wife are heavily involved with Iceland’s 4×4 Club. He told us that any jeep with fewer than 5 antennas is probably never driven outside of Reykjavík by its owner. It was pretty easy to tell that Beggi views these people with contempt. His souped up vehicle with 40″ tyres, enhanced suspension and all mod cons left many of these vehicles standing.
We began to drive to Iceland’s most active volcano, Hekla, driving along roads (Hah! Did I say roads?) that I would not have attempted, even if I’d had Beggi’s 12 gear monster at my disposal.
In the afternoon, we arrived at Landmannalaugar, where we experienced the highlight of the trip. At the end of some very rough roads and in the middle of nowhere, a natural hot spring billows steam into the icy air. We stripped into our swimming costume and dived in. Bliss! It was absolutely heavenly.
But, nothing is without its price, of course, and oh, what a bitch when we had to get out of the pool and the icy Icelandic air blasted our soaking wet bodies with Arctic wind. It’s hard to accurately describe how unpleasantly cold that felt.
It was a long trip. Beggi was with us for 11 hours, all told. I even managed to lose my phone in Beggi’s car, but he kindly brought it back to the hotel later in the evening. (Am I really going to lose an item every day during this holiday?)
We’re now at the end of a very long day. We had dinner at Hornið around the corner, then went for coffee and cake at a very pleasant café a couple of streets away.
Tomorrow afternoon, we’ll fly from Reykjavík city airport to Vágar in the Faroe Islands. I’m not sure how we’ll spend the morning yet. Once we arrive in Vágar, we’ll get on a bus to the capital, Tórshavn and then probably try to find some dinner.
By the way, you can send us an SMS message on our new phone while we’re here. The number is +1-650-861-9501.
wow! cool site