Vatnsnes

Over breakfast I discovered that my brother, Jonathan’s works boat had docked in Reykjavik the previous day. After breakfast, we packed up & drove out to Skarfabakki Dock, where we found Cable Ship, CS Durable. It is 140 metres long and can carry enough cable to lay between Iceland and Ireland in one go, about 1700 kilometres.

We then headed out of Reykjavik & picked up Route 1 & drove anti-clockwise back to Hveragerði to visit something I had missed first time round. We parked up at the town’s botanical gardens & walked down to the river to find waterfall, Reykjafoss. It wasn’t particularly big compared to some we have seen on this trip, but it was well formed & we get up close to it without getting wet.

From Hveragerði we drove south down the 38 to Þorlákshöfn, a small town made of mainly portacabins. We looked round, but couldn’t find anything going for it, so we drove away without taking a single photo.

We drove west along the 427 which was through an enormous lava field with the sea on our left & vast cliffs on our right. The next stop was Strandarkirkja church in Selvogur (Seal Cove), originally built in the 12th Century. We got out & found the little wooden church was open, so Jackie left a message in the visitors book. We also walked up onto the sea wall to unsurprisingly see seals lying on the rocks in the cove.

We continued to Grindavík, that again didn’t have much going for it, apart from being a local base to visit the Blue Lagoon. Due to it’s proximity to the Blue Lagoon, Jackie insisted on going for a recce, because we had booked to visit it at 6pm. We were able to sus it all out & we took the opportunity to walk around the walkways on the outside.

With Jackie now happy, we picked up the 425 to drive around the far south-west corner of Iceland. We stopped at a circular rock pool & blow hole. We got soaked, not by the sea but by the rain.

I also got out to visit the Bridge between Continents, which is a 15 meter (50 ft) footbridge spanning a rift between the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates. Jackie sat in the car whilst I got soaked again!

Next stop was Keflavik International Airport, where Jackie jumped out to reclaim her tax on her new rucksack purchase. I couldn’t stop & didn’t want to pay car parking fees, so I drove around the block & 15 minutes later returned to departures just as Jackie was walking out after a successful mission. About £15 would be credited to her bank card.

We then drove to Keflavik town for a look round & then checked into the Jazz Hotel. We had an hour to empty the car & repack our rucksacks, before driving back to the Blue Lagoon for our 6pm slot.

The photos probably paint a better picture of the Blue Lagoon than I can with words. The blue cloudy 9 million litres of geothermal seawater was a warm to hot 38 degrees having travelled up from a depth of 1981 metres. The lagoon totally renews it’s water every 40 hours.

The changing rooms were probably the most problematic, with signs requesting that everyone shower naked before entering the lagoon. Some showers were in cubicles but others were open plan. Not many men obeyed the rules, but I understand Jackie was surrounded by unabashed naked women.

In the lagoon we wallowed & applied the free mud mask that was going to nourish & soften our skin like never before. The girl handing out dollops of the white silica mud warned that we should avoid getting mud in our eyes. I immediately wiped the mud into my left eye & it stung like buggery for about 5 minutes whilst I frantically tried to douse it with fresh drinking water.

We stayed in the lagoon for about 70 minutes, which effectively equates to a pound a minute. It was definitely an overpriced attraction, but very glad that we had experienced ‘1 of the 25 wonders of the world’.

We returned to our hotel & refreshed with a couple of cold beers we had bought in a Vínbúðin two days earlier. We then rushed out to source some food. We had a choice of pizza, kebab or Thai. We chose pizza & against my better judgement Jackie ordered us the medium sized Volcano Pizza & a large Gull beer each. It was very nice & a pleasant end to our Iceland adventure.

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