Wet Day

A very wet day indeed. They weather people warned us that we were in for rain all day long, with over an inch hitting the ground in some places. But no worries, this was a day where were mostly going to visit waterfalls and those are famous for getting people damp. The rain would serve as a warmup for the day's activities, a pre-dampening so to speak.

We managed our first good night of sleep and after a decent breakfast, we packed up, paid our bills, got in the car and thirty minutes later arrived at our first waterfall of the day, Seijalandsfoss. This one was big, and we could see it from the road several miles away. What made it special, though, was that the path around the waterfall actually went behind the water curtain, a new experience for me. It was loud, extremely damp, but still a thrill! I actually had to remove my glasses a couple of times, as the accumulated drops from the mist made it impossible for me to see.

Back into the car and another hour of traveling later and we arrived at our second waterfall, Skogafoss.  A straight 180 feet drop, majestic and beautiful. It did, however, have one inconvenient feature: stairs along the hillside leading to the top. Since I follow tourist rule number 14 (if there are stair at a tourist site you have to climb them)  I climbed them. All 210 feet of it. That's the equivalent of a 21 stories building!  But it was worth the climb. Not only did we get to see the vista of the whole plain from up there, we also got a glimpse of the canyon carved by the waterfall up there.

To take a break from the getting drenched looking at waterfalls, our next stop was at one of the black sand beaches at Dyrholaey. I had never seen black sand before, so I was rather thrilled by the experience. Black sand, black rocks, black caves and black clouds made me think that I had found the  perfect Goth beach. And we didn't even miss the waterfalls, as the pouring rain made us feel satisfactorily drenched.

After a break for lunch at Vik, Iceland's southernmost town,  we got on the road again and made our way to Kirkjubaejarklaustur, because it was marked on our map. There was nothing in the town, and the guidebook failed to interest us in any of its attractions. However, nearby was another waterfall, Foss der So-doh! Again tall and beautiful, and different from the others in that the drop was only half the hight of the hill, after that we had a very steep river running down its side. It was rainy, it was windy, but this time we avoided getting damp: the path to the waterfall was closed, so we got to enjoy the view from inside our toasty, dry car while it poured outside.

And that was it for the day. We headed to the hotel, had a nice meal and went to bed, to figure out what was coming next day. 

Impressions?48 Farenheit is way too low a temperature for a summer day, and rain doesn't make it more pleasant. There's a lot of emptiness in this part of Iceland, where we went miles without seeing another car, farm or any other signs of human presence other than the road we were on and power lines.  The few farms we saw seemed to actually be ranches, raising herds of big white cylinders; somebody told me those were bales of hay, but I'm not buying that story. And I'm still trying to figure out why two-lane highways have one--lane bridges.