Day 4

An early start from the Hotel Puffin. We were at the petrol station before 9:00 am. Unfortunately they don't open until 9:00 though. Fortunately they have credit card pump. The foreign gentleman in front of us had no credit card though, so he gave me Ikr5000 and I filled his tank on my card, then filled the Land Rover. Fuel is cheap here and the Land Rover very economical for such a big beast.

Quick look round the Vik Wool shop and then off to the mountains. It was very wet, very grey and very quiet. Today we planned to travel along the South Fjallaback Road and along the side of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano. It started very foggy and the road was very steep and wet. Yesterday we had seen vehicles in both directions regularly, but we drove for over an hour before we met our first vehicle.

Fortunately it arrived as I was surveying the first ford of the day and trying to decide if the fast moving grey water was deeper than a Land Rover. The Toyota Land Cruiser, complete with trailer dropped straight into the river and the water only came up to his sills. So I leapt into the Land Rover and followed him. Good job he was there as the 'road' was now just a series of yellow posts across several miles of glacial mud, sand and water. We followed the Land Cruiser for a while until they turned off, and we were on our own again.

Found a fantastic gorge with a cable transporter, and fortunately a very sturdy bridge over the deep fast moving water. Stopped to take pictures and had a walk down the side of the gorge to a waterfall then back into the Land Rover.

We came over a blind summit to be confronted by what appeared to be a piece of plasticine about 1000 ft high that had been moulded by a giant. Closer inspection showed it to be a huge piece of rock eroded by glaciers and wind. The road wound around the foot hills to the glacial moraine that had recently been washed by the volcanic eruptions. Here there were several routes across black sand and rocks with regular water crossings. After about 4 and a half hours of mountain tracks, climbs, descents and fords we returned to civilised gravel roads and found a spectacular waterfall, right next to route 1 and heaving with tourists.

I am sad the Land Rover has to go back tomorrow, I could have happily driven it across to Akureyi tomorrow, but instead it is onto the plane and into an ordinary 4x4. I will miss the beast, I have got quite attached to it. It is amazingly capable, fairly frugal, reasonably comfortable and looks the dogs. I think it would look excellent parked on my drive, might have to widen the drive and we would never be able to get the bins past it.

We got to the hotel about 5:00 pm. Bit posh this one, got its own geo thermal swimming pool, hot tubs and sauna. So we tried all those out and then took one look at the restaurant menu and decided to go and eat out. Found an excellent pizza place and we won't have to steal food at breakfast time as we have left over cold pizza for lunch tomorrow.

The wifi is rubbish here, so I will try and post this, but no hope of any pictures.