Since we were starving from the night before, we got to breakfast as soon as we possibly could. 9 am is pretty early for us when we vacation. We had already sat down with our plates when a man asked us our room number. He couldn't find our room number on the list, but we let him know that it was alright for us to be there. Not sure if it was our American assertiveness, or our Jedi mind-tricks, but he just kind of sheepishly agreed then walked away. In actuality, the dude at the front desk from the night before did tell us breakfast was included with our room. The guy who bugged us looked like the actor that plays Dexter. The way he meticulously organized the breakfast buffet was very... Dexter-ish. It was all we could talk about.
After breakfast we actually had time to go back to the hotel room. Kaylea got to nap while Aaron worked on the blog. Our schedued activity for the day was a geothermal bathhouse called Vok Baths, which was just down the street from our hotel, and our slot wasn't until 12pm. When the time got close, we put swim gear on under our clothes and drove on over.
As luck would have it, the baths were closed. We let the phone ring for about 5 minutes, but they were definitely closed. Google said they didn't open until 5pm. Our previous booking, before the Boston fiasco, had been for Sunday. They're totally open at noon on Sunday, but it wasn't Sunday anymore. It was Tuesday. We spent some time trying to get a hold of our travel agent. Our next move was a 3 hour drive to our next destination. Eventually, we just sent our travel agent an email and moved on. Farewell Vok baths. We hardly knew ye. In fact, we didn't know ye at all!
Before we got on the road, we decided to hit up a little local Icelandic sandwich shop called Subway. It was delicious. We had .30 meter toasted sandwiches with turkey. After that we went to a discount grocery store called Bonus to stock up on snacks. We had learned our lesson the night before. We didn't want to get stuck without food again. A quick fill up on gas, and we were back on the road.
About 20 minutes into the drive, Google told us to do a U-turn. Aaron had missed another turn that google had failed to mention 15 minutes back. Sure, we got to see a beautiful lake, but it was still pretty annoying. Google doesn't seem to know of too many places to turn around, so if you miss a turn, it could be a while.
We got back on the correct coarse and headed down highway 95, which quickly turned into a gravel road. Farther down, Google directed us to turn right on an even more gravelly road that passed through the mountains. Kaylea checked the Iceland Road Conditions website as saw that this new mountain pass was "easily passable". Plus, it would add extra hour to our trip to keep following 95 around the southeastern fjords. Remember a few days back when we white-knuckled our way through some highlands? Well those were foothills compared to this. Up and down through the mountains, twisting and turning. Kaylea had to close her eyes for part of it, because every drop appeared super steep. When we got to the top of the mountain, snow was blowing across the road, and visibility was low. It felt like the wind would pick us up at any second.
But we made it. Our little Kia Rio saw us through. As we got closer to the main highway, Kaylea noticed a waterfall down a hill from a small turn out. We parked the car and hiked down to check it out. The turquoise pool looked pretty deep. After tokyo drifting our way through the mountains for an hour, it was a nice be able to stand up and walk around.
We hit the main road, Highway 1, which is really just a paved two-way, single lane road that snakes around the southeastern fjords and around the huge glacier-capped volcano. We couldn't see any glaciers just yet, but the mountains against the sea looked liked something out of a King Kong movie.
After a few hours of driving, we finally swung around the mountains and headed toward the glaciers. Our first stop was glacier lagoon, which is a lagoon created by the melting glacier ice. Giant pieces have broken off and are now just floating in circles around the lagoon. The snow and ice melt pushes the icebergs out, and the tide from the sea pushes them back in. They're basically trapped until they become small enough for the tide to pull them out to sea. When this happens, they often break up and the pieces then land on Diamond Beach. This was our next stop. The beach consisted of back volcanic ash, a variety of rocks and pebbles, and chunks of ice. It must have been pretty early in the season when we visited, because the lagoon was full of icebergs and Diamond Beach only had a few small chunks of ice.
We got tired of being cold and headed to our hotel. While checking in, we saw a couple from breakfast at our previous hotel and we all joked about us following them. As soon as we checked our bags we got our swim suits back on and headed to the hot tubs. And wouldn't you know it, the same couple from check-in was there. We compared plans and realized they were doing the same trip we were. They pulled the itinerary from the guide's website, but booked everything on their own to save cost. They also had the same dinner reservation time as us.
With 30 minutes until dinner, we dashed to the room to get cleaned up. The food was incredible....and incredibly expensive. It is very costly to eat out in Iceland. We've been doing grocery store sandwiches, snacks, and gas station food to save a little bit of money. The gas station food is way better here, so it's been working out nicely.
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