Iceland - Part 5

30 Dec 2015 . category: Travel . Comments
#Iceland

Iceland Day 5: Lake Myvatn and Environs

We awoke the next morning and were thrilled to see the road open! I still have from my original travel notes: “If this is the last thing we write, Mom Dad we love you.” Thankfully, it didn’t come to that!

We arrived at our next destination, Elda Guesthouse in Myvatn, with a nice old lady at the front desk. There was evidently some miscommunication over my desire for a “double room” because they seemed to purposely push two twin beds together for us, oops!

We left the guesthouse and make our way to Hverir, a geothermal area with mudpools and stuff. Unfortunately, we weren’t really paying attention, and got our car stuck completely in the snow. Basically, driving a car with almost no clearance onto an unplowed road was a terrible idea. By the time we were stuck, the entire underside of our car was totally packed with snow. Thankfully, a group of travelers up ahead (driving a super hardcore offroad vehicle I might add) had some random table legs that we used to basically dig out all the snow underneath our car.

Embarassingly for us (from Washington and Vermont) they were from California! Combined with a fair amount of pushing, we were able extricate ourselves after around an hour. As a bonus, I also broke my glasses when the car suddenly moved when I was pushing on it and they fell off my face (thankfully I brought an extra pair). And we weren’t done yet, as there was a German couple stuck in the snow just like we were closer to the road, so we helped dig them out too. The worst part of all of this is that Hverir was on the whole disappointing, a muddy area with some pools and vents and stuff, but certainly not worth all this. On our way out, I noticed something weird about the car, but we decided to worry about it later…(to be continued).

Now significantly more cautious, we parked our car far away from Hverfjall (a dormant volcano) and walked to the base of the mountain, about a kilometer through the snow. When we arrived at the base, we couldn’t find the trail amidst the snow, so we just set off up the side of it basically…not the safest thing I’ve ever done:

Of course, as I’m writing this post I find the following directive all over the internet: “It is strictly forbidden to use other routes in ascent or descent.” The view from the top was unfortunately a bit disappointing as it was very snowy/cloudy that day. But, we did get to experience what we later realized were gale force winds! It felt like we would really get blown away without leaning severely into it.

Returning to our room the for night, we naively made plans for the next day while cooking a boring pasta dinner, and turned in.

Other sights: Grjotagja, Dimmuborgir, and Lake Myvatn.

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