Berunes-Fáskrúðsfjörður-Berunes

Foggy. Cloudy. I have to say I’m a bit disappointed with the weather. It hasn’t kept me from doing anything (or at least, not much), but I so wanted to see some of the iconic mountains, glaciers, volcanos and ice fields.  So far… Zero. Nada.  Zilch. I do still have 10 more days and one of them is, at the moment, forecast to be clear so perhaps I’ll yet see one of the spectacular mounts.

I spent the day exploring part of the East Fjörds a bit north of where I’m staying, walking along the coast for a while and then heading into the lowlands in search of some waterfalls. I had hoped to do some high country hiking today – the forecast was for clear skies – but figured that hiking in the fog would be a bit of a waste, at least in terms of having any panoramic vistas. One of the things I noticed as I walked along the beach is that the air here is briny, different from the Westfjörds and not simply a low tide kind of smell – tangy, sharp and clean but smelling nonetheless of life, like what one might imagine when listening to 19th Century whaling songs about the salt air and the briny deep…  The climate is milder here than in North Iceland, and there are still flowers blooming along the coast and in protected vales at higher elevations, so I grabbed a few photos during the brief monuments when the sun popped out for a visit. I also ticked off a couple of new birds for my life list, a Northern Wheatear and Gryllteiste. And if you’re thinking that bird name sounds neither English nor Icelandic, well, I discovered while trying to ID the Grylltieste that my recently purchased bird book isn’t entirely in English… About 20 pages, beginning with the Wellenläufer and ending with the Goldregenpfiefer, are in German! Speaking of birds, I stopped at one point to check out an oddly narrow, sod-covered hut on the beach. I thought maybe it was a sauna, but when I opened it I discovered it was actually a very well-camouflaged bird blind!

Lunch today was at Cafe Sumarlina in
Fáskrúðsfjörður, a town with such a strong French heritage that allthe street signs are in both Icelandic and French.  The meal was billed as “seafood soup” but was actually something like a lobster bisque – very, very good.

On my way back to the hostel, I stopped to see Petra’s Stone Collection – literally, all the rocks that a woman named Petra collected over decades, and almost all from right here in this region. She wasn’t a trained geologist, simply a woman who loved and had a knack for finding interesting stones. My mother would’ve loved this place – I could hear her sighing, ” Ooh, look at this one,” over and over, as I walked through the rock garden. It really was rather amazing – There were rocks of all dIfferent sizes, shapes and colors; in no particular order and with only maybe a dozen out of the thousands present that were identified in any fashion. You can read more about Petra and her collection at http://icelandictimes.com/petras-stone-and-mineral-collection/.

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Aðaldalur-Húsavík-Ásbyrgi-Aðaldalur

Foggy, cloudy, windy, rainy. Again. Apparently the north of Iceland has had day after day after day of this weather, all summer. It kept me mostly inside today, not because it was particularly awful but because it was raining enough that I couldn’t walk outside for more than five minutes before my glasses were so coated with water droplets that I couldn’t see.

When I first headed out this morning, I saw off in the dim, misty distance what looked like a bunch of warehouses on fire. As I got closer I dis covered the buildings were the Hveravellir Farm greenhouses, the glow was all the lights and the ‘smoke’ just the steam for the geothermal heating.

I spent about half the day in Husvik, a small fishing town and probably one of the earliest settlements in Iceland. I did a bit of shopping and wandered about the harbor, which had a large wooden sailing ship at dock, but spent most of my time in the Húsavík Whale Museum. Fascinating place… They had whole skeletons for 10-12 different species, almost all recovered from stranded whales that had died.  And I learned that Sperm Whales can dive to at least 3000 meters and can hold their breath up to 120minutes – the ultimate free-divers!

The rest of the day was spent in Jokulsargljufur National Park, primarily at Ásbyrgi Canyon. I saw a total of four other people during the hour I spent in the canyon – presumably the rain was keeping them away – and even though I had no great panoramic views of the horseshoe-shaped canyon, I had the distinct privilege of walking through one of Iceland’s few forests in almost complete silence, with only the patter of rain and the occasional bird call for company.

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Aðaldalur-Mývatn-Aðaldalur

I spent most of the day exploring the Lake Mývatn area. This area is all in or near the Krafla volcanic zone and has some fascinating geology including some bizarre lava formations that are found on land only in Mývatn. There are thousands of lava domes and “pseudo-craters” formed by steam from a lava-covered lake bursting through the overlying lava. The Kafla area is one of the nation’s biggest geothermal energy producers and its pretty trippy to drive through sulfur-laden steam and catch misty glimpses of steaming, bubbling ground; fields of lava; hills of red volcanic gravel and miles of steel pipe going all over the place.

Mývatn is also supposed to be a a real birding hotspot, at least in the spring and summer. I found mostly Tufted Ducks, Whooper Swans, Wigeons, Redwings, Ravens and a pair of Slavonian Grebes on or near the lakes, and noticed a lot of Greylag Geese flying in formation overhead. I was hoping I’d catch the fall migration here but I seem to have missed it.

It was, again, foggy, cloudy, windy and rainy today. It wasn’t too bad in the morning, but the rain stopped me only from my last hike of the day – along the rim of a caldera filled with steaming turquoise water – and I used the time instead to treat myself to a long, long soak at the Mývatn Nature Baths. My skin hasn’t felt this good in I don’t know how long! My day finished back at the farmhouse, where I had a dinner of roasted, grass-fed Icelandic beef, reared and butchered right here one the farm. The flavor and texture are markedly different from that of our sedentary, grain-fed,  feedlot cows in America!

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