South Shore

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To the South and it's Pouring!

Today's adventure started at 9am, sightseeing and touring around the south shore of Iceland.

An hour and a half from Reykjavík, our first stop was the Skógafoss
waterfall. Huge and stunning with a massive spray, neither of us have
ever seen a waterfall so big. It is 82 feet wide and has a 200 foot
drop. The skies are grey, lots of rain and wind, low clouds with
seabirds flying high and roosting in the cliffs. A great first stop!

We realized after our first stop that we were going to be totally
wet all day. Torrential arctic sheets of freezing rain that soaks you to
the bone in 30 seconds mixed with 30 mph winds made for a complicated
sightseeing tour.

Our next stop was a black sand beach near the town of Vík í Mýrdal.
The "sand" is made up of little black basalt stones made smooth by the
sea. We walked out to explore and the wind was so strong and so cold we
had to lean forward or walk backward! Under Reyinsfjall mountain are the
Stuðalberg basalt columns that are very similar to the Giant's Causeway
in Ireland, they are really amazing! Out in the sea are the
Reynisdrangar sea stacks. In folklore it is said they were trolls
dragging their three-masted ship to shore and got caught by the sun at
dawn and turned to stone. We only stayed out there for 20 minutes, the
wind was crazy.

Just down the road we stopped at a service station in Vík for drinks
and snacks and at a small tourist shop to buy postcard stamps.

Next on our journey is the Mýrdalsjökull glacier. Mýrdalsjökull is
Icelandic for the 'mire dale glacier'. It was raining so hard that we
didn't want to walk the half mile to see it so we just took pictures
from the parking lot. Supposedly the glacier used to reach all the way
to the parking lot but in the last decade it has receded approximately
half a mile due to the climate change. Wish we could have seen it under
better conditions, it looked so beautiful.

At this point we turned back towards Reykjavík and our last two stops.

In the very small town of Skógar (translates to forests) we stopped
at a folk museum for about an hour. The museum was started by one man,
Þórður Tómasson, when he was 14 as a way to document a way of life that
was becoming lost. He's still there, every day, showing people how to
hand spin wool and horsehair to make everyday items with tools his
family used when he was a boy. He also provided amazing personal insight
into many of the otherworldly items on display. The fishing culture is
everything to these people and really remained unchanged for hundreds of
years. Quite a few of the items were probably 50-75 years old, but
looked centuries older. They had a retired fishing boat named Pétursey
inside the museum, shaped in a unique way because the villagers had to
push it a mile down a beach to get it to sea! Insane! It really gives
you an appreciation for how rough life has been for our species until
pretty recently. It also makes you wonder why they didn't move!

Our favorite part was crawling around the buildings outside. Half a
dozen buildings making up a turf farm from the 1800s sat outside the
museum. They've obviously been maintained on the outside, but the
insides were a time capsule; dried fish and bones and herbs and tools
hanging everywhere, original beds, furniture, etc. Completely amazing,
built right into the hills.



Our last stop of the day is the Seljalandsfoss waterfall, it has a
drop of 200 feet and is one of the most famous in Iceland. We walked up
to it, took a few pictures and left. You can hike behind the waterfall
but obviously we didn't want to be even more wet than we already were.
Too much rain, too cold, we're too wet! I'm sure it's superbly
incredible in the summertime.

Hour and half back to Reykjavík. We are so wiped out and decide we
don't want to risk another bad meal so we walk back up the hill to the
Noodle Station for warm good food that we know we'll enjoy. And we did,
it was perfect!

Weather aside, Iceland is beautiful and really magical looking. The
low clouds and grey skies give it a grim dark beauty that is just the
type of thing we love. The lack of humans and complete isolation is
staggering, unique even compared to other islands. We feel pretty glad
to have overcome the weather and made the most out of this time.

Tomorrow to the spa.

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