A Tale of Waterfalls, Hot Springs, and Iced Lightning
Tired of the letter R, we swapped in a C and made the hop from Ireland to Iceland.
Day 1: Arrival and Iced Lightning
What a difference a letter can make! The bus ride from the airport to Reykjavík took us through a foggy volcanic landscape that looked straight outta Mars: massive, jagged rocks strewn as far as the eye can see, with not a hint of humanity for miles on end. It took almost an hour to get to the city, and the bus dropped us off a few dew-drenched miles from the center.
Undaunted, we set off for the docks to pick up our mobile 5-star hotel. The lack of a butler (and bathroom) was somewhat disappointing, but otherwise our lodging setup was pretty awesome. Introducing: the Pimp Mobile, aka The Portable Paradise, aka Iced Lightning.
Apparently camper vans are quite a thing in Iceland, and for good reason. Iceland is gorgeous, and Iceland is BIG. Having a car let us tour the countryside on our own schedule, and having said car double up as our bed made for incredibly convenient camping. And saved us a lot of money, because Iceland, ladies and gentleman, is EXPENSIVE.
Anyways, we parked Iced Lightning in the nearest lot and set out to explore Reykjavík. First stop? Mikkeller. Because of course there's a Mikkeller in Iceland.
Remember how we said Iceland was expensive? Guess how much the beer above cost. A standard pint of danky Mikkeller IPA. No, really, guess.
...
We'll wait.
...
Got a number in your head? Good. Is that number SEVENTEEN DOLLARS? Because that, ladies and gentleman, is how much a (craft) beer costs in Iceland. If you're willing to go downmarket and settle for a dive-bar lager, you'd better have TWELVE DOLLARS on hand. Anyways. You get the point.
We hopped from bar to bar, slowly - slowly - sipping on tiny quantities of (admittedly delicious) beer. We discovered our favorite beer of the trip, a Icelandic brew called Ribbit, at Skúli Craft Bar. We also had a pretty dope moment sitting at Hverfisgata 12 (a restaurant right under Mikkeller), sipping on some tasty Mikkeller beer, when we noticed suddenly Deep Forest started playing. Good taste in music, Icelandic beer aficionados!
Day 2: Reykjavík Church, Waterfalls, and Hot Springs
Iced Lightning treated us right and we woke up righteously refreshed. We only had to pee on our front tire, like, twice in the middle of the night. Which is to say, in complete and utter daylight, because while the sun apparently "sets" in Iceland for about 3.5 hours, it doesn't actually get, you know, dark.
We made a quick pit stop at Hallgrimskirkja church (epic from the outside, epicly boring inside) and hit the road.
We stocked up on food and beer for the next few days a drove out to a volcano crater about an hour away.
Sidenote on beer in Iceland: drinking good beer in Iceland is a fairly new phenomenon. Up until 1989, you couldn't buy beer with an ABV above 2.25%.
Even today, you can't buy beer (to take home) anywhere except at designated liquor stores. We found out the hard way.
The crater Kerið had gorgeous blue water, the level of which apparently rises and falls according to ground water levels (as opposed to rain drain).
We posted up for a picnic at the top of the crater, where I had quite possibly the best lox of my life (it was even reasonably priced, relatively speaking).
Next we hit up a GIANT waterfall called Gullfoss. We're talking mongo: if you water-fall into this bad boy, you're water-f*cked. Thankfully I didn't water-fail when posing for this photo.
What a slimming shot, eh? You can also walk down to the middle level if you're cool with getting a bit drenched.
This selfie gives a better sense for how the two levels connect.
From here we migrated over to hot springs territory. First stop was the Geysir geyser.
Geysir geyser: yes, you read that right: this is the "first geyser described in a printed source and the first known to modern Europeans" (thanks wikipedia), so presumably the word "geyser" comes from this particular geyser.
The geyser (geysir?) erupts every few minutes, so of course we stood there for about five minutes, holding this selfie-pose, not looking like awkward tourists at all.
We followed a pretty hiking path with a ton of active hot springs. Things got pretty steamy.
I did some cool ninja kicks to cool off.
We eased our aching bodies at the Secret Lagoon Hot Springs, where we shared a crappy canned beer (only $12!) and pretty much chilled until closing time.
We then spent some time trying to find a hidden nook to park Iced Lightning for the night, but this part of Iceland is crazy flat, and there's pretty much nothing but private farms and non-drivable marshy roads as far as the eye can see.
We ended up caving and paid for a parking spot at Selfoss Camping. That actually turned out to be a win, as at this point it was raining and they had an indoor kitchen.
Day 3: Waterfall Hikes and Wet Shoes
The next day we drove down to Skógafoss Waterfall - another pretty epic sight.
While said waterfall is presumably the main attraction, you can also hike upstream. The hike was absolutely drop dead gorgeous...
... and was, in our opinion, the main attraction. We counted five epic bonus falls.
Our final destination was a collection waterfalls called Seljalandsfoss. You can walk right under the main one, which was pretty cool.
As you can see on the right, if you were willing to put it all on the line for the sake of an epic picture, you could also traverse up the river to get up close and personal with the cave waterfall.
Though if you were to do that, you might, ahem, accidentally fall in and have one of your shoes be soaking wet for the next two days. Hypothetically speaking, of course.
At this point it was getting late, so we dried off, hopped into Iced Lightning, and drove aaaall the way back to Reykjavík for one final meal.
Behold: Plokkfiskur, an Icelandic specialty. It best translates to "mashed fish," and it's quite lovely.
We'll miss you, Iced Lightning.