Day Eleven – Lake Mývatn

After a disturbed night due to a room party that finished about 2.30am (and everyone else slept through!) We got up, destroyed another Fosshotel breakfast and got on the road. There were no weird food experiments today, so we just filled our bellies with goodness.

We backtracked a bit first of all as the weather had been shocking when we drove past Dettifoss yesterday and we were all a bit lacking in enthisiasm for getting soaked. Sadly, it wasn’t much better today, but like Yorkshire, Icelandic people have a saying: If you don’t like the weather, wait 20 minutes and it will have changed!

We headed for the west car park first where there were four cars and hardly any people. It is quite a walk to and along the falls and a lot of the path is wet and slippery from the spray. The views are worth it though and Keith was happy clicking away. Dettifoss is the biggest (by volume of water) waterfall in Europe and definitely gets the adjective angry. The water is bluey-green, but whipped up so much that it looks white.

We also walked up to Selfoss which is a horse shoe shaped falls.By the time we got back to the car park, there were lots of campervans, coaches and cars and the compost toilets were pretty busy. It was going to take an hour on mostly gravel roads to get around to the other side, but interestingly the sat nav wanted us to go north to cross a bridge near the start of the estuary instead of the route we had planned, which was back south to route 1 and along. Naturally we went with the sat navs more interesting route and as a result got to see a bit more of the country!

The road to the other side was a bit rough, but nothing the Santa fe couldn’t handle in Keith’s capable hands. The tourist facilities on the east of the falls are not quite as extensive and the parking was pretty full, but the views were way better. There was less spray as the wind was blowing it onto the other side and great visibility of the cliffs we had been standing on an hour earlier, showing layers of vertical, hexagonal pillars of slowly cooled lava and deep layers of gravel, rocks and ash. There were more people, but nowhere near as busy as the west side was by 12pm. Keith has been looking forward to today since we decided to come to Iceland and expressed his excitement by jumping in puddles all the way from the car park to the falls. Bless (which apparently means goodby in Icelandic!).

Mila has discovered a new talent: apparently she can identify a person’s nationality by their yawn.  She is particularly good at Uzbekistan and has identified a personal weakness in specifying the particular country in people from the African continent. It is good to have capacity for personal development. We had a while to chat about this as Keith was getting the perfect waterfall shot as per Prometheus (ask him…).

The road back to route 1 was officially the worst road we have been on so far, there was no way to pick a route as the whole thing was covered in pot holes. Keith discovered that he could achieve an impressive vibrato by singing as he drove over them. We have been travelling for a while now…

A supposedly quick trip to Leirhnjukur crater before getting lunch turned into a big hike over some impressive lava tunnels and flows. We spotted another golden plover walking from the car park and this time I think Keith managed to get a picture. She was calling but nothing was answering. On the way back we saw a chick doing the same thing. Clearly they hadn’t had the: “if you get lost stand still and I will come and find you” conversation!!

Our first lava flows. In places the ground is still hot and the path is signposted to tell you where you can go. That is the theory… in practice this site is a bit of a free for all, so it only your moral code keeping you from climbing on everything! It wasn’t as smelly as yesterday, but there were moments of sulphur stink. We saw some fascinating features that the vulcanologist taught us about at the lava show, particularly lots of collapsed lava tunnels and the wrinkling you get when the bottom of the flow has cooled more than the top so it scrunches up as it travels down. It was difficult to get a sense of scale until we climbed to the top, then you could see different lava flows overlaying each other. Fascinating… but we were very hungry so had to move on after an hour or so.

We saw another little bird in our travels but I have no idea what it is. Answers on a postcard please!! Edit: I had to look it up for the photograph naming police… I think it is a ringed plover chick.

We had driven up the hill from route 1 past a geothermal power station. Thor told us that hydro-electric is much more popular in Iceland as it can almost all be hidden under ground. Today I understood – so many pipes and buildings and steam outlets. Very unsightly – interesting to me, but I can see why locals would think it was ugly.

Dimmuborgir is a really strange place – like most places in Iceland it feels completely devoid of animal life, but you do occasionally get shouted at by a wren or glimpse a blackbird. The weird lava chimneys the area is famous for were formed when a lava pool formed over a marshy area, causing the water to boil. Steam rose through the lava, creating hollow pillars. Normally these only form underwater and then stay there so it is really rare to see them on land. The area has been colonised by stunted silver birch and blueberries. We also saw some crowberrys and used Google (and tonight’s restaurant’s collection of flavoured gins!) to work it out!

The children were really struggling by this point – we had walked about 14km in some pretty challenging conditions and terrain and their evil parents are getting them up for breakfast at 8am every day, so lie-ins are not on the cards. We cancelled our plan to climb a massive crater and just had a pootle about in and amongst the chimneys before heading back to the hotel for a little rest before dinner.

Mila wanted to try the sauna, so we went upstairs and sat in the hotness for about two and a half minutes. It was way too hot for us. We went outside onto a little sheltered balcony instead and sat in beautiful sunlight and snoozed for half an hour. Blissfully relaxing. Although apparently I twitched!!

We had denied ourselves the pleasure of eating in the Fosshotel again and went to abhighly recommended nearby cow farm. I don’t think vegetarians would enjoy the experience: you can drink their milk, eat their cheese (mozzarella and “salad cheese” which I think is trying to be feta) and eat beef burgers! Even better, one wall of the restaurant is glass and the cows are on the other side chilling and eating. The food was delicious – especially the mided started with dill pickled char and raw smoked lamb. There was also cottage cheese, one of their amazingly intense jams, some “salad cheese” and slifed tomato and mozzarella. For mains everyone except me had burgers (obviously!) with homemade mozzarella again. I went for a beef goulash with bread cooked in the heat of a geysir. Really tasty. We finished with the restaurant’s signature cake – pecans, chocolate and caramel yumminess! An early bed and much needed sleep.

Edit: I forgot to tell you the purple paint story. While we were checking in, an American lady came to talk to the gentleman working on reception. She told him that she had sat down on a chair on the balcony and got purple paint on her hands and clothes. She told him he should get it cleaned before someone got it on their clothes. He tried to respond but she interrupted him. He politely asked if he could finish and then told her that they clean everything at least every day a