“Everything will be all right in the end and if it’s not all right, then it’s not yet the end.” (From : The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel)

Our final Touring Day in Iceland:
After the beautiful sunny but crisp day yesterday we are faced with the prospects of a cold and slushy day – nothing planned and all day to do it in…
We asked Andrew, the lovely manager/cook/general dog’s-body at our guest house for his suggestions:

1. He mentioned a crater – will that did not fly very far with Lyndell after our excursion yesterday when, despite the sunny blue skies, we nearly froze. Climbing a crater on a windy sleeting day was not even remotely attractive;….

Lyndell: Climbing another crater in  this weather….that was not even going to be considered…who was he kidding!  Neeexxxttt !

2. He mentioned a 3hour return hike to the second largest waterfall in Iceland and the largest ‘easily’ accessible without recourse to helicopters. Well, not only see Lyndell’s thoughts on suggestion no. 1 above, but read the guide books on the hike to Glymur Falls and it says that the walk definitely gets the adrenaline going since it includes balancing on rocks to cross a river, walking through a cave and finally, taking your boots and rolling your pant legs up to wade across the river ABOVE the falls – you guessed it, Lyndell definitely did not want to even let that suggestion see the light of a discussion forum;

Lyndell: That one did not even get off the table…one look at the picture in the guide book, a look outside at our falling snow and grey cold day…yeh right! I realy was going to wade across a river and balance on rocks in the water? Where did he get that idea from>?

3. There was the suggestion to take a slightly longer way to Keflavik and follow a fjord around rather than take the ‘short cut’ – a 6km tunnel under the fjord. Did I tell you that is was not only cold and sleeting but blowing a slight gale making driving difficult? From the driver’s perspective, the reprieve of driving for 6km’s without having to fight the wheel was very attractive even if the view would be just of concrete walls for all of those 6km’s;

Lyndell: Oh I sooooo loved the tunnel, dry, warm, strong, no winds…safe…secure…..except when I thought of all the thousands and thousands of litres of cold icy water on top of me….. but hey…I could handle that to be out of the buffeting winds in the car….

 4.  His final suggestion was to visit Hraunfossar – a set of falls where the water emerges through cracks in the lava strata over a 1 km length creating falls with no river above. The guidebook web-sites said that these falls were one of the 7 ‘forgotten’ waterfalls of Iceland’s most impressive waterfalls and well worth the visit even not on the usual tourist bucket-list of must-see sites. With the weather being what it was, the idea of getting cold and wet from the sky and from the spray was not appealing.

We decided to go to Borgarnes and visit the Settlement Centre there. It was indoors, had two well set out exhibitions, one chronicling Iceland’s settlement from Norway back in the 900’s AD and the other telling one of the Icelandic sagas using a combination of an audio guide and a sequence of wooden carved dioramas and other visual scenes. Both were very interesting and worth the 30minutes it took to walk through both. Towards the end of the saga exhibition, there was a sign saying that if the reader was interested in more Icelandic  history as related to the sagas, they would encourage us to go to the museum in Reykolt. The museum celebrated the life of Snorri Snorrison, a mid-1200’s Icelandic author who preserved many of the sagas by writing them out.

I suggested we go and see the museum since it was history and what else did we have to do. Lyndell agreed. What I did not tell Lyndell but secretly hoped for was that the weather might lighten up a little and I might be able to suggest considering the Hnaunfossa (falls). They were both in the same direction. After driving nearly 30km’s out of our way only to find the museum was not open on weekends, my optimism with respect to the weather paid off – the sleet had stopped, the temperature had dropped enough so that whatever did fall was only a light dusting of light fluffy snow and the wind, although still strong, up in the upper reaches of this valley no longer buffeted us around as it had on the flat plains below the mountains. Lyndell agreed to go and have a look at the falls.

The falls were spectacular. Blue water roaring and churning down a narrow crevasse in the lava complete with a natural arch through which the water squeezed and sped like shoppers through the Myers doors on Boxing Day. Apart from Gullfoss that we feel rival and surpassed Niagara Falls, these were the best falls in Iceland!

Lyndell: Marc was always so optimistic with the weather forecasts and what we should..would be…could do each day, it was so lovely to watch….and yes, he got the better of me there, and even though it was windy and icy cold, the falls were spectacular- worth driving in the sleet and winds and getting out of the warmth of the car to walk around these beautiful falls covered in snow….ice….and of course water…so much water…

But I guess that’s why they call it Iceland.

What a note to finish our Icelandic travels on……
The scenery, the waterfalls, the roads, the snow, the colourful houses, the vast stretches of land where there is nothing and then there is a church, the warmth friendliness and hospitality of the people….. the coloured fairy lights in this winter wonderland….the winter wonderland itself…..
An amazing place!
And to quote from the movie  SCULLY….“Is there anything different you would do….”
No- I would definitly not visit in Summer, Winter was breathtaking!

And our travels are far from finished yet………….!!!

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