It was rainy when I got up this morning and headed to the bathhouse to visit the restroom at about 8:00 AM. It was barely raining now, but it had obviously rai
ned harder earlier in the morning. Of course, we had put our washed clothes from last night out on our drying rack that hangs on the side view mirror, and all of our clothes were now getting an extra rinse in the rain.
We had stayed up too late last night, and now with the rain, we were not very motivated to get going this morning.
By the time Stephanie got up and we had some breakfast it was already about 9:30 AM. We headed over to the bathhouse to brush our teeth and fill our water bottles for the day.
Not many other people here were getting going early either, just a couple of campers were just now heading out.
We packed up our camper’s electric cord and got ready to leave. We headed into the small town we were in just to see what was there, and at the end of the road was a nice parking area to look out onto the harbor. Apparently, there was a trail along the coast about 2.5 Km long that you could walk from here. We took a few photos and then entered in our first destination into the navigation system. This first stop was the one we had skipped yesterday since it was so late. We had no idea that it was actually in the town near the hotel we visited yesterday to try and check in to the campground. We had seen a parking area and a couple of tour buses there, but had not known that was where the attraction, the Gatklettur Arch, was located.
I had thought we had just driven past it out on the main road yesterday as we headed to the campground. It would have been nicer to see it in the sunshine yesterday, now that we knew we were so close.
We parked and took a short walk on the pathway out to the beach area where there was an observation deck for the arch. It was pretty spectacular, it looked like it was made from square horizontal block formed by the lava a long time ago.
It was just barely drizzling rain, and we were glad it was not raining harder. Once we were done there, we put in the next location into the navigation system, Londrangar. There are two tall volcanic pinnacles next to the shore to see. We parked and took the fairly long trail to the observation point, and took some photos and also took some photos of us with the tripod. There were a lot of seagulls nesting along these beaches, and it was a little smelly from all of their poop. There were hiking trails to get closer to the pinnacles, but they were a lot farther away than it looked according to the trail marker distances, of course, we skipped the hiking, we could see them fine from here.
We headed back to the car and headed to the next location, Djupalonssandur. This is the location of the visitor’s center of the national park where all of the sights are located that we will see today.
This was the location of a large lighthouse and we walked out to it on the trails. We skipped the visitor’s center and gift shop, electing to go there on the way back out and use their restrooms. We also took some photos using the tripod setup, the shorelines are spectacular here and this was no exception.
We headed back to the parking lot and we started to notice there were a lot of people heading out to the lighthouse and they all were wearing stickers from a cruise line tour, which we eventually figured out was Holland America. Of course, by the time we got to the visitor’s center, it was packed with people, most of which were in a long line to use the two restrooms inside. It was too crowded and we did not need the restrooms that badly, so we skipped that and headed to the next site
On the access roadway out, right at the intersection to the main road, there were some outdoor bathrooms in the graveled parking area and then another gravel parking area a little farther down. We decided to pull into the second one and park to have some lunch. It was already 12:30 PM. We did not feel like we had done enough to burn over two hours, but we had.
Lunch was nice and the sun actually came out a little, at least it was not raining. After lunch, we used the outdoor restroom at our van driver’s door, we did not want to venture into what was probably outhouses in the next lot over.
Our next destination was Saxholl Volcano Crater, just a few kilometers down the road. We could easily see it as we arrived, it was a tall orangy-red hill out in the middle by itself. This is the remains of an extinct volcano that erupted thousands of years ago. Some steps have been added up one side, it is about a 500 ft. partial spiral from the bottom to the top, which is only about 130 feet high overall. The steps were not that tall individually, but there were a lot of them, which I actually counted on the way done, more on that later.
After arriving at the top, we could see the remains of the crater from the volcano in the middle of the hill. It was a great view of the surrounding area, which is mostly, go figure, a lava field, but it looks strange because about 80% of the surfaces are covered with a yellow-green moss growing on them, with sharp pointed black lava protruding out.
We rested a bit while taking photos and then started the climb down. It was more difficult to go downward for me, it made my old knees hurt, so I kept my mind off the discomfort by counting the steps, all 386 of them.
We got back in the campervan and drove back to the main road and headed to the next spot, the Skardsvik Lighthouse. We turned off the main road onto a gravel road which was about 5 Km long until we arrived at a fairly small and mostly full parking lot. We barely found a spot for the camper, which was by far the largest vehicle out there. We were worried about blocking in one car, but I was eventually able to pull forward far enough to make sure they could get out. In the end, it was ironic we never saw who the car owners were the whole time we were there, they were obviously on one of the many long hiking trails along the coastline that are accessible from here. We took some photos of the lighthouse and of the coastline and of some of the nesting seagulls on the cliffs, which like the other spot earlier, really stunk, too much bird doo. We then decided it would be another great place to use the tripod for some photos of us together.
By the time we went back to the van for the equipment, two tour small vans showed up with about 20 people total, and they basically took over the entire area, so we had to wait until they were through to get our photos. They were also blocking us in, but their drivers stayed in the vehicles, I guess in case we needed to leave. They left first and that gave us a small space to try and make about a four-point turn to get out. While we were making the turns, and obviously trying to get out, an Asian man just pulled in and blocked us, oblivious to the fact we were trying to leave. He was finally able to pull into a parking space after someone else left that we were not near to, and we were able to get out. People are just dumb…..
We drove back on the fairly rough road back to the main road, stopping at one point to see a yellow sand beach, and to take some photos of that.
Next on the list was the Hellissandur Campground, our camping spot for tonight. It was located outside of the national park of course, there were no private buildings in the park itself. We saw the N1 gas station that we knew was nearby to the campground and stopped there to fill up with Diesel Fuel. It was a self-serve station next to a small store with two pumps, one on each side. There was an automated pay machine next to the pumps, and it was odd, there was an old version and a new version that read the credit cards via a touchless pad.
We had read that all of the self-serve gas pumps required a PIN credit card, so we took the cards we always use in Europe that are PIN priority, basically, they require the usage of a PIN there. As a strange preface, we have used that same card here for several purchases in grocery stores, and other stores, and it has never required us to enter the PIN. This is also the first time we have had touchless versions of these cards too. We have had to electronically sign for all of our grocery purchases on the pin pad itself using that card.
So of course, we tried to use that card at the pump. I tried mine first in the new machine but used the card reader, not the touchless pad, it just gave us some wording not in English. However, the rest of the transaction requests were in English, it gave us the opportunity to select that at the beginning. In went the card, up came the message to type in the PIN, and then came the error message. We tried again, maybe I had input the PIN incorrectly, but nope, it did not work again. Then we tried the older machine, it asked for a PIN, we entered it and got nowhere.
Then we tried Stephanie’s version of the same card, different PIN, same result. Then we tried the old machine, but nothing.
A young man came out of the store to help us, and he could not get it to work either with any of our PIN The new machine, and lo and behold it worked, and we could get fuel finally after about 20 minutes of frustration. We filled up with about 42 liters of fuel I think, and there was a price when I finished, but the machines do not give receipts, so I do not know exactly what we paid, it is not clear like in the USA, the machine for payment is more like an ATM than a gas pump card reader.
We then headed to the campground, just a couple of blocks away, and headed to the building to check-in. The building was a kitchen, check-in was done at 8:00 PM and 10:00 PM via an attendant who patrols the campground.
We pulled into a nice grassy spot near electrical plug-ins and set up. However, we could not get the power to work no matter which socket we plugged into. We wandered over to another area where people were already plugged in and Stephanie talked to a lady there who said that not all of the plugs worked in her box either.
We tried to use a hairdryer we have that runs off 250V to check if we could find a powered socket in our bank that worked. We plugged the hairdryer into the part of the cord that usually had our small three-plug adapter cord for the van plugged into it. We tried all six sockets and none worked. Then Stephanie took it over to the power bank across the street and tried a few, but no luck there either. It was a little frustrating.
We then tried the bank next to the camper where the people had helped Stephanie earlier, and one worked there, so we moved the camper, and we were now set for the evening and had power. That was way too hard. We had initially thought that maybe we had to pay first before we could get electricity, but there was no way that they could control those outlets that precisely, so we were not sure what the problem had been.
Ironically, three more people plugged into that bank and we saw one have some issues, checking his plug at the camper, but eventually, all stayed, so maybe we just did not make a good connection with the large four-prong main plug. It did not matter, we were set, and I actually liked this spot better, it was quieter.
We set up the table and chairs outside and had a glass of wine, using our blanket on our lap to keep us warm.
A bit later, we decided to get showers before it got too crowded at the bathhouse. Unfortunately, when we got there, we heard people talking about there not being any hot water in the men’s shower, but people were using them and not coming out that quickly. Maybe one of the two showers had hot water and one did not. I eventually got into the shower I thought might have hot water, I had thought that someone was in there too for it to be cold water. I got undressed. Yeah, there was no hot water, but it was not ice cold either. I took a quick shower and then got dressed. Stephanie was in the ladies bathroom, and shortly after I came out, she came out, her hair dry, so I knew she had cold water too, and she said only some parts got washed really quickly, it was too cold.
We heard the manager saying that he had contacted his plumber, but cold showers just suck.
We both headed back to the camper van, I was a little chilly from the cold shower.
We cooked our dinner on the grill. We grilled some more of the Icelandic Hot Dogs, with beans and chips.
We did not stay up much longer afterward, we were tired and wanted to try and get an earlier start tomorrow morning. We made up the double bed and headed to sleep.
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