May 1
2C and some blue sky, hopefully it sticks around.
Up again early to get ready to leave. Went for breakfast, same old fair – toast sandwich meat, fruit and a bit of coffee to get some caffeine in our system.
We are off to pick up our car and then off into the wilderness to explore Iceland.
A young guy picked us up and took us back to the rental agency, he really didn’t know how to drive a stick shift. We ended up with a Land Rover discovery, way bigger than what the car we said we wanted but oh well we don’t have to pay more for it.
We sat in the car a bit and got acclimatize and figured out where everything was and set up the GPS and then away we went, it seemed like around in circles but it was through an interchange to get back up onto the ring road which is Highway, #1. Then we drove and drove and drove with stops for a couple of times for waterfalls – just little ones. And then of course I had to stop for the Icelandic horses that were on the side of the road. I got out to take a few pictures and they decided they like me and came over to the fence so I had to go visit them and talk to them and take more pictures.
Along the way we went through snow and rain and sleet and sunshine. The weather couldn’t make up it’s mind. Temps between +1 and +4, with a big wind.
Then we’re off again toward wherever we were going, it’s a name I can’t pronounce. We ended up where we were supposed to be at the Vatnshellir lava caves and went down into the cave – 30 some odd steps down a circular staircase into the middle region and then another 56 steps down another circular staircase to the bottom. We were some 35 m underground. Once we were down there he had us turn off our lights it was really dark. Then back up to the surface.
From there we jumped back in the car and once we caught our breath from walking up all those stairs we headed off to find our hotel for the evening. It wasn’t hard to find, very small town maybe 15 buildings if that. We have an ocean view which means we have a window that looks out to the water. We set up a time for supper and then organized ourselves and off we went to take more pictures.