Friday, August 14 - GSA tour day 6

We woke to a view of the falls from our window.  What more could a person ask to wake up to?  Add a good Icelandic breakfast to that and I was feeling very good.

Jóhann stayed nearby overnight - a place and people he knew.  After all the problems with the van plus dealing with us, I'm thinking he needed a break, so this was good.  He met us in the morning with renewed ideas of how to alter our trip so that the important things were still included.  The glacier walk that had to be cancelled a few days ago was rescheduled for today.  The morning's ferry trip to Vestmannaeyjar had been cancelled to accommodate the glacier walk.  Instead, we would walk onto the ferry in the afternoon.

Jóhann and Matt reworked our schedule so that all the important things were still going to happen, plus they arranged a special museum visit in Heimaey that had not been on the original plan.  It was great that we had a group that was laid back about the changes that were happening.  We were all simply enjoying everything we were doing.

Off to the glacier for our glacier walk.  First on the agenda was getting fitted for crampons.  These were tied together and slipped onto an ice ax for each of us to carry almost 2 kilometers to the Sólheimajökull glacier tongue which is one of two that extends from the Mýrdalsjökull glacier.  Matt remembers a few years ago when the tongue of the glacier was right where we started our walk today.  Glaciers are retreating in Iceland as well in the US.

At the tongue of the glacier, we were taught how to put on our crampons and how to walk on them.  Once everyone was geared up, we headed down the ice to cross over to the main section.  At first everything was black on top - ash and scoria from volcanic eruptions.  The main part had a lot of "white" as well as cracks and fissures.

Geared up and ready

A bit behind the rest, but happy

On the walk back, everything of the last year or more hit me.  Here I was.  Healthy and well.  Running around with the "gang."  Good balance.  Nothing slowing me down.  A time to feel blessed and thankful.

Dyrhólaey was our next stop.  Again, this was an example of erosion happening to the weak or soft parts of land.  There were a few small arches developing in the outcropping still in place.

Edges where we stood are constantly eroding

 

Now timing was a question.  We had to be aboard the ferry at a set time.  There was also a great movie in a little museum about the Eyjafjallajökull eruption in 2010.  We had just the right amount of time to see it if it started right after we arrived.  Perfection!  We walked in and sat down just as the movie was about to start.  It had been filmed by a local farmer who restored his farm after the eruption was over.  The personal narration was very special.  They cleared many tons of ash and the farm is once again alive.  Once the film completed, we dashed back to the van and headed to the ferry.

Here's a YouTube link in case you don't remember seeing the eruption back in 2010 - shorter than the farmer's story, but it gives you an idea of what it looked like.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGPD_0SCDp4

At the ferry, we only took small suitcases with the things we would need overnight.  The rest was stored in the van (rather than the trailer) for safety.  Then I remember a walk to the ferry, up some stairs, up a few more stairs I think, a place to drop the little suitcase, then up some more steps to the top deck where we found seats.  Shortly after, the ferry took off.

The interesting thing about this ferry is that the front of the ferry lifts up to allow vehicles to unload.  Then as it pulls out of the harbor, this slowly moves down into place, the ferry does a 180, and you are off to the island.

The waves were very strong thanks to the wind the day before and the boat dipped up and down with each of them.  Debbie was thinking she would like to be outside in the air, so I headed out with her.  Soon after we saw our first puffin madly flapping its wings over the water.  A few others joined us and we saw more puffins.  Soon we were entering the harbor at Heimaey, part of Vestmannaeyjar.  Vestmannaeyjar is an archipelago and Heimaey is the only island of the group that is populated.

The beauty of the harbor as we arrived was breathtaking.  I had read various accounts of the eruption in 1973, and it was exciting to be right where it had happened.

on-line photo for you to see the ferry

A cave in the cliff

There were sheeps up on top!

 

The ferry docked and we headed down to gather our suitcases, then headed down some more steps and gathered on land.  A small van with an open trailer was waiting for us.  We loaded our suitcases into the trailer, Matt got in to ride along to the hotel to protect our luggage once there, and Jóhann and the rest of us began the short, meandering walk to the hotel.  We turned a lot of corners, but the blocks were very short.

Found along the way - I belong - never figured out what boost was,

but ice cream and coffee?  Gotta love it.

 

This was a very nice hotel.  We settled in and then gathered to head to a restaurant for our dinner.  Another delightful walk.  Oh - I forgot to tell you that the sun came out as we were crossing on the ferry.  There was no rain which made the walking even nicer.

 

I was walking with Kathy who was working with her phone.  Of course I asked, and it's a game she plays and had hooked up with some places to capture(?) on the island.  She explained the concept just a bit as we walked.  The interesting thing is that within minutes of her first capture, someone wrote to her asking her to capture three other locations.  Of course, no idea where this message had come from - maybe Reykjavik?

 

Dinner was in a room all to ourselves at an enormous table - so big you almost had to shout at the person sitting across from you.  Another first for me - roe. And then a broth with mussels.  The main course was fish.  Dessert was special as well.  A very happy meal for me to eat, along with drinking peppermint tea.  We were having such a good time visiting that they finally asked us to leave because they needed the space.

 

I wandered back to the hotel with Kathy and we made minor detours to do some more capturing.  Back at the hotel, a few of us weren't ready to settle in for the night.  It was too early and too beautiful.  So we walked to the site of a cache that was missing and replaced it with permission from the owner of the cache.  This was just beyond the edge of where the lava flow had stopped and we were standing on top of buried homes about 40 meters under us.

 

We were wondering why there were signposts like street signs up there.  We later realized that they were marking the old roads that had been covered.

 

Location of replaced container

Then it was back to the hotel where we finally decided to settle in for the night.  Liz was already cozy, so I settled in as quickly as I could as well.

What a day.  I want to go back and do it all over again.