Uncategorized | Iceland 2025

Dec 4. Here’s the breakfast buffet at Dyrholaey, pretty similar to the Center Hotel.

Merrianne’s knee is healing. She was still using poles to walk this morning, but on the last stop of the day, she was able to walk just by holding onto my arm for balance.

In the morning, our bus made a stop some Center to use the bathrooms, as the destination was about 2 hours away.

Much of the day was riding on the bus, past barren fields and glaciers. My modest phone didn’t take very good pictures from our moving bus.

Certain flat areas are simply unbuildable, because if there is an eruption under the glacier, the whole glacier can melt, sending a Tsunami of water, ice blocks, mud, sand, rocks, and lava that scours everything in its path. This happened about once every 100 years, according to our guide. We saw a rock that was 200m (600 feet) high, which is just a mesa in a field, but a few weeks a year, it’s an island. When the Tsunami hit, the debris came up to the top, that is, 600 feet.

Next, we went to the Ice Lagoon, a place where glacial melt from the Heklayokull, the largest glacier in Europe, sends rivers into a lagoon, and then the ocean. Icebergs calve off the glacier and make their way to the sea.

My thermometer read 5 ℃, but my pack might have been a bit warmer than the air.

Across the highway was Diamond Beach, where the tide washes up chunks of glacial ice, pebbles, and a few shells, onto the black sand.

Glacial ice has had the air compressed out of it, so is very clear. This piece was bigger than me.

We stopped at a gas station for at late lunch at 1:30.

Look at this electric charger: 800V, 400 kW.

Merrianne’s knee is still hurting. She had Mushroom Lentil Soup, which she thought was 400 KR due to a wonky sign, but was really 1400 KR. My Lamb Shank, with Au Gratin Potatoes and Salad, was 3500. Very substantial; enough for both of us.

After lunch, we went to a Moss Field. The Arctic Moss is slow -growing, and if people walk on it, it dies and takes 70 years to recover. We stayed on the walkway, of course, but could see the dead areas where people had left their footprints.

The final stop today was at a church overlooking Vik, the town where our hotel is located.

If you look carefully, you can see the 4 guardians of Iceland in the water: The Dragon, The Eagle, The Swinging Rocks (Trolls), and The Bull.

Thank goodness for the lighted fence leading up to our hotel. It would be so easy for any vehicle to slip off the mountain in the dark. No guardrails, of course.

Back at the hotel, I wheeled Merrianne down to dinner, then returned the wheelchair, as she had improved. The buffet was very similar to the previous night.

At 8 pm, we rode the bus out to the same spot to see if we could see auroras. The sky was not as clear, and besides, no aurora activity. We returned after about 90 minutes. So our score became 2 / 5, if the impromptu showing at dinner was counted as separate from the viewing at the parking lot later in that night.

Tomorrow, we need to set out our check-in bags again in the morning, as we’re headed back to Reykjavik, and the Blue Lagoon. The cruise that previously showed no auroras offered a free re-do, so the tour company arranged for us to do that Friday evening.