Venturing to Vik

After a good/bad night’s sleep, hence the waking up at 1:30AM to write the last post, we got up nice and early to make it out of town on a day trip that Sarah had planned and wanted to do since we started talking about this trip.

We wanted to venture our way out of the city and into the country side. Down to the small town of Vik on the south coast of the country. Some friends of ours had mentioned it, I believe they actually got engaged on the beach there (Sara K., I think?). And since we had heard about it and seen pictures, we wanted to experience it for ourselves.

I will say there is something rather odd about waking up at 8:30AM and having it still be dark outside. It does help with the sleeping, but it’s a little weird because we don’t really have any sense of what time it is. We’re so thrown off from the travel, and then to only have like 5-6 hours of daylight makes sleeping relatively easy. But we wake up at 8 in the morning and it feels like 3AM since there’s no gauge on the sun coming up or anything like that.

Anyway, we get up, pack a lunch (a new found pleasure of ours) and head out. Side note, if you’re traveling and you want to get away from the touristy spots, try to find a grocery store, it’s always a fun experience, and the further from the city center the better. Oh, and the kid that checked us out at the register had on an LA Kings hat?? He didn’t know really much about the team, he just liked the hat, but still, small world.

So, we’re on our way out of town, and we’re looking to get a cup of coffee to start the day off on the right foot and wake up a little bit. Sarah sees that there’s a coffee shop off to our right, so we pull off into a shopping center parking lot. It doesn’t look too open, but we figure what the hell we’ll try it. So we park our car, the only one in the lot and walk inside. It’s a little eerie to walk into a closed shopping mall in a foreign country, but we walk in and look around. And there I see it down the hallway, a coffee cup on a sign with a guy standing there. Heading that way, we realize what we’re walking towards, Dunkin Donuts. It’s funny, for a country that doesn’t have McDonald’s or BurgerKing, they have Subways everywhere and Dunkin Donuts and Quiznos. I mean we don’t even have easy access to Dunkin in California?? Well, we start talking to the girl there and she’s giving us some short lessons in Icelandic. I picked up on Takk, which is Thanks. Please I can’t remember, but I do know that she said she doesn’t say it in Icelandic since it’s too long, she just says please. She also taught us how to say, have a good day, which was somewhat similar to guten tag, but for the life of me, I can’t remember that either. This language sure is difficult.

Now we continue on our way out to the country side. It’s a nice trip and there’s something refreshing about listening to a radio station and having no idea what they are talking about. We’re passing through small towns, and passing over mountains and the landscape is pretty amazing. We decided it’s as if Austria and Hawaii had a love child. It’s pretty crazy, volcanic landscape covered in grass and snow. It’s gloomy and rainy still, but it’s beautiful nonetheless.

And we’re just cruising down the two lane road. Then off in the distance I can see a mountain, and it’s got to be about 30-40 miles off. But on the side of it you can see a white streak. I looked at Sarah and commented that I bet that’s a water fall. And sure enough, we get closer and we see the signs for Seljalandsfoss, a well known waterfall on the Golden Ring.

It was definitely colder here that it was in the city. The wind was whipping up, and as you get closer to the falls you get caught in the mist. And it’s started sleeting while we were standing there. It’s beautiful and there are a bunch of other falls running next to the main one. When we hop in the car and continue our trip, we see the falls coming down off the side of the mountain. And there are constant falls every where you look coming down behind the picturesque farm houses on the country side.

We’re starting to figure it out. Keep driving down the road and you’ll either see the falls themselves, or you’ll see the tour buses pulling off to go where you need to go. So we get to the next major water fall, skogafoss. Again, beautiful, but freezing cold. We wander down to the front of it to see and it starts sleeting again. Turns out, at least I think, that the mist from the waterfall is freezing and causing the sleet near the falls as you get closer.

There’s also a stairway up the side so that you can get a view from the top of the falls. It’s a pretty good hike up, and as you climb the wind starts whipping up. But the views from the top are pretty spectacular.

A little Rainy

And on the way back to the car, Sarah found a friend that was apparently enjoying watching all the tourists freeze.

Back in the car, trying to find the real reason we ventured all this way, the black sand beach with the same style basalt columns that we saw at the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland.

Pull off the road following some cars, and there we see the signs. (Name of the beach), I don’t know that I would have known to find that name, but the sign for the “Black Sand Restaurant” should have clued us in.

No sooner did we park before Sarah was running down to the beach. It really is a beautiful place. It’s not really like any beach that we usually go to. It’s cold and there is no way to lay out and catch some sun. It’s rocky and the waves are huge and violent. In fact, I guess it’s the deadliest beach in all of Iceland. A tourist was killed in February of this year. There are waves known as “sneaker waves” that come out of no where. The guy was about 50ft from where the waves were breaking taking a picture when one came in and swept him out to sea. Pretty crazy. We saw a smaller version when Sarah was out taking a picture and a wave just kept coming, she ran all the way up the beach to avoid it.

The sun broke through a little, and we were enjoying the day. But as they say here, if you don’t like the weather, wait 5 minutes. And sure enough, we were caught in the middle of a sleet and rain storm.

Once we make it all the way back to Reykjavik, it’s about a 2 and a half hour drive, we sat down for a minute then decided we wanted to go grab a bite to eat. So we wandered downtown. It really is funny. We can walk all over this town, but when we came back to it after our venture out, we both commented on how big of a city it is. I guess everything is relative. We walked back and forth across downtown about twice before we settled on Svarta Kiffa, which serves your choice of two soups in bread bowls. I was convinced it meant soup kitchen, but apparently it means Black Coffee same difference. It was pretty quality and just what we needed.

Then we decided that we wanted to find a local micro brewery so we headed to the other end of town and found Bryggin Brugghus. We tried some of their beer, a lager, a wheat and an IPA. All pretty tasty, although beer here is expensive. Three small tasters were $18. And the Micro bar, where we went next was $29 for 5 tasters. So $6 a taster, and about $15-$18 for a full pint, yeah, we aren’t getting sloppy here. WHOA.

Back to our place for the evening and attempting to get a decent night’s sleep. We’ve got a big day tomorrow. Never been dry suit diving, this should be interesting.