So, some house keeping to get things started. One, the title of this trip is Iceland Réttsælis which is a reference to the direction we are traveling, ‘rèttsælis’ is clockwise in Icelandic—or so the Googles say, and we are traveling that way from Reykjavik. It is not the typical direction, but we have spent time on the south on previous trips and has worked for us. It is opposite of a lot of the travelers and most of the larger tours and buses which has been nice.
Our vehicle is a Renault of some type, looks like a delivery van, but has been modified for use as a camper. It has a back seat that folds out into a bed and an upper loft. The space behind the front seat a d the back has been turned into a shelf with storage boxes and a cooler/fridge. Also stashed away there is a water source and a couple of batteries. It is cozy and we enjoy watching the child struggle to climb up into the loft every night. While camping you make your own fun.
The camp grounds are pretty ubiquitous off the main high way. Though they are pretty minimal by US standards, which is nice. No hellish tourist trap paved RV parks. Most are grass fields with access to toilets, many have showers and shared cooking spaces. Most have electrical, but we are not setup to use that this trip.
For our second day we had a trip out to see a rock, another rock, and then some seals. Then a hot spring. The first rock was a rock fort, but to get out to it we had to traverse a regular road.
In Iceland there are three types of roads: paved, regular, and F roads. Paved are, well, paved roads. Usually two lanes with little or no shoulder. Regular roads are gravel roads, anything from almost paved gravel, hard packed dirt, wash-board-filling-shakers, or tractor paths. Having never seen one, but having seen what a “regular” road includes I assume F roads have water hazards and vertical cliffs.
Anyway, our camper is a beast. A French beast on tiny wheels, but a beast none the less. It had no problems driving the regular roads and other than a couple of lights coming on (“hill start check”, sure I will get right on that,) it was great.
Our first stop was Borgarvirki, a rock fort built into basalt columns. Now I have a long history with basalt columns, Giants Causeway in Ireland coming to mind. This fort supposedly had been built as a fort though someone had tried to make an argument it was used for livestock. That would only make sense if the early islanders were herding Rancor or some other 10 foot tall beast. The fort was one of the most defensible positions I think I have ever seen. It was a blast to see and there was a marker placed up on the walls that you had to climb up to see. Which was all the excuse I needed to scamper around the walls. (Making sure to it disturb anything, it was a beautiful site. And I wanted to leave it that way.)
The second rock was a formation over the water that looked like a troll to someone. I kind of saw the troll, but it was just a pretty amazing rock formation with three openings through the bottom to the sea beyond.
Then we walked out to see some seals. It was a beautiful walk where we also got to watch seaduck’s dive for their lunch. The seals were a bit out and like most seals were pretty lazy, but fun to watch as they jostled for position. Either in hope of mating or because they were pregnant. It was hard to tell and some seals are very tubby.
Iceland can be a bit spendy for food especially. Hard to hold it against the place, it is an island nation where it is pretty hard to grow much of anything. But, two separate books call out the place we had lunch as worth the trip out on dirt roads for over an hour. And they were not wrong. The house specialty was a curry influenced sea food soup, which was simply divine. Well balanced, not too spicy, but with a great flavor and fish so fresh they might have been caught that day. Even if the rocks or the seal had been a bust that lunch would have made up for it. Geitafell was totally with it and I recommend.
After Geitafell we went on to a thermal pool. There are many, many thermal pools, hot pools, etc. all over Iceland. The pool called Grettislaug was not as built up as something like The Blue Lagoon or even the community pool we did last trip. It is a set of two pools, one smaller, one larger. Both fed by a hot spring and cooled a bit for human enjoyment by sea water. They had showers and changing rooms. They were amazing and very relaxing. Well, were relaxing. Too soon after we got to soaking a bus load of very loud, and obnoxious tourists arrived. The polite convention as baths in Iceland is to fully bathe before getting into the hot baths, and to share the changing space so all can use it. You can guess what the tour bus did. So, we moved on a bit quicker than we might have liked.
In a recurring event, it was much later than we thought. This time of year it always feels like it is 3 o’clock in the afternoon. From dawn until dusk. Always 3 pm. We had a few other things we wanted to do, but they had closed. So we just moved on to the camping site for the night.