We left Mývatn in blinding sunlight, pausing along the way to take a couple of the short walks we missed out on due to the snow and cold yesterday. More geological weirdness, and Lars finally got a nice close-up of an Oðinshani (OH-thins-han-ih), some kind of Phalarope, but I can’t check because we don’t have wi-fi tonight. It’s the smallest swimming bird we’ve ever seen…slightly bigger than a sparrow.
Then we watched some synchronized swimming, as performed by a pair of Barrow’s Goldeneyes:
Driving on, we took an inadvertent detour, caused at least partly by the fact that it’s often hard to tell Highway 1 from the secondary roads. Highway 1 took a sharp left, but the road with the line down the middle continued on….and so did we. Finally figured it out, turned back, made the turn 40 minutes later than we should have, and came to this:
Yes, it’s yet another gorgeous Icelandic waterfall, coming from the north side of the same monster glacier as all the others, Vatnajökull. This one’s called Goðafoss (GO-tha-foss), or “Waterfall of the Gods”. The story goes that the local chieftan threw all his pagan god-images into the falls when he converted to Christianity.
We had kind of a weird experience when we stopped at the Shell station in Akureyri (ACK-you-ray-ree). First, a guy came out of the station and asked us to move to a different pump. Then he watched and “helped” us run our card through the steps necessary to buy diesel. Note that there is no way we could have gotten here without filling up several times prior, but he seemed to think we needed help. (Side note: we saw an article on the Denver Post website whining about the cost of gas. You don’t have a clue what expensive fuel really is until you come here. We have yet to pay less than $75 for half a tank.) Since we seemed to be on the edge of town, Sheila asked if we should turn back into town to find lunch. He said going on, it would be at least an hour until we could get a burger or pizza. As we were about to pull out onto the road to turn back, we noticed an “Ak-Inn” (Drive-in)…on the OTHER END OF THE BUILDING!!! Where we ate. And then, we passed another café of some sort about 20 minutes away. What’s up with that?
We drove north from Akureyri towards Olafsfjörður (I bet you can figure this out by now…), along Eyjafjörður. First, you get some really great vistas:
…and then WHAM! A really long tunnel, 2.5 kilometers. A ONE-WAY tunnel! What a great idea! Not! There are pull-outs along the length of the tunnel, on the west-bound side. If you see headlights, pull over and wait. It might be a bus!
Thing is, we were expecting tunnels. Just not THIS tunnel. There are two, almost brand-spanking new (built in late 1990s), TWO-lane tunnels a bit farther on, which Lars knew all about because there is lots of stuff about them in Icelandic newspaper archives. Maybe we didn’t know about this one because it’s not so new. The tunnels go through the mountains between fjords, shortening the trip to Siglufjörður considerably. The newer tunnels are considerably longer—4k and 7k—replacing a 60k trip down the next fjord and the along the coast, a route that is often closed by snow. Even with two lanes, 7k is a long time to be in a tunnel. And there isn’t much of a break between them:
Maybe 200 meters from one to the other.
Many places in Iceland are ideal for tunnels because the landscape is a combination of huge ridges and valleys, with older roads built along steep slopes, often along the coast. Taking a direct, “through the ridge” route has lots of advantages, especially in northern, western and eastern Iceland where long winters, with lots of snow, can make for uncertain travel and huge expenses for snow removal.
We got to Siglufjörður at about 3:45, and went straight to the highly-recommended Herring Museum, figuring they would close by 5 (which was true). It was pretty interesting. One building was largely the house that fishing “teams” would live in…bunk beds in most of the rooms, some for men, some for women. There were lots of historical displays and the usual “olde tyme” stuff—the building was in use from the 1930s to the ‘50s. The next building had been the production center for fish oil and fish meal….and it sure smelled like it! The third building was the best, we thought. It had boats and boat models, and true-life stories of sinking ships and sea rescues. Very attractively laid-out.
We had some trouble finding our lodging—the GPS landed us in someone’s driveway and insisted we needed to make a hard right into a hillside. The Herring House is on a street that is broken into 3 sections. We finally found it, but it seemed to be locked. We called the owner, who came right over. It wasn’t locked, just hard to open the door. It’s by far the nicest room we’ve had yet, with a view out over the harbor. And…we’re the only guests here tonight! Time to take over the bathroom for some laundry! Everything here is very tasteful…we especially love the ceiling treatment in the kitchen. Iceland is well-known for forward-thinking design. Note that the “box” for TV is in the black border, just above the flat-screen TV on the wall.
No comments:
Post a Comment