The word of the day/week/forever is: mjölk. ["myolk"] It is the Icelandic word for milk, and we are having a blast blurting it out whenever the spirit moves us.
[at breakfast]
Hayl: Oops!
Thayer: Don't cry over spilled mjölk.
LOL! See? See how fun that was? It makes me laugh just LOOKING at the word. Luckily, we get to see it every time we stop for gas station coffee. Mjölk mjölk mjölk.
Anyhoo... after we left the lava field yesterday, we drove until we arrived in Hof, and we stayed at a place called Frost og Funi aka Frost and Fire aka Hof II. Our room was in a tiny "summer cottage" that consisted of 2 tiny bedrooms with a bathroom in the middle. The other bedroom in the cottage wasn't booked, though, so we didn't have to share. Our tiny bedroom was cutely decorated in sparse Ikea, but the pièce de résistance was the giant window with the view of infinite sky and infinite fields and infinite sheep.
Speaking of sheep -- it's springtime in Iceland and you know what that means. No? Neither did we, but now we've learned that springtime in Iceland means MILLIONS OF BABY SHEEP. Lambs, everywhere! More lambs than mjölk! Scampering lambs, always in twos, running and jumping and snuggling their moms. My heart bursts with happiness every time we see them, which is, like, hundreds of times a day.
So, snugged in our Ikea beds at Frost og Funi, we realized the power went out. Apparently the power went out in the whole area. No matter, we simply went on reading our books by the light of the sunset. At midnight.
After a nommilicious breakfast, we were on our way to Skaftafell national park. From the road, you start to see mountains with lots of snow on top. As you get closer, the snow on top gets bigger and bigger until you realize that IT IS A GLACIER. It's overwhelming in its hugeness. It looks like a catastrophic waterfall was happening and then someone hit the pause button, as Thayer so brilliantly put it. You really do get the impression that as soon as someone presses play, it's sayonara because that thing will take you out so fast. We saw a sign for hiking at Svínafell glacier, so we parked and hiked around on the mountain right next to the ice. The terrain got a little advanced before we could actually get TO the ice, so we just stayed on the rock and gawked at the massive "tongue," as they call it.
Then it was off to Jökulsárlón, a glacial lagoon where you can take boat tours, which we did. It's a pool several kilometers wide with icebergs floating in it. Lots of icebergs. Blue and white and beautiful and cold, a brilliant sight to behold. (Poem not intended.) On our way back to shore, our tour boat passed another tour boat just heading out. As we were waving to the other boat's passengers, Thayer goes, "Oh my God, there's Diana!" Diana, you'll recall, is the med student from Boston that we met on our first day in Reykjavik. Three days and several hundred kilometers later, we're in the same place again.
By the time Thayer and I were done buying mittens and such at the visitors center, Diana's boat had returned and we chatted with her and her sister about the crazy coincidence and what we had been up to the last few days. Then we were on our way.
Next on the journey, the East Fjörds. On our way, we had to stop in Höfn (not to be confused with Hof, where we had been the night before) because they have a lot of lobsters there and Thayer needed to experience the noms. Food was a little difficult to find because the town is, well, kind of uggs, and it was hard to tell what buildings were restaurants. We did end up finding a cute cabin-y looking place called Kaffi Hornið. The server recommended the lobster soup, which Thayer ate and said was the best seafood soup he's ever had. I don't even like seafood, but I had many tastes of his soup and it was delish.
Then, on our way out of the restaurant, who should walk in but Diana and her sister. This was getting awesome. We laughed it up and wished them a safe trip back to the states tomorrow, then left them to their lobster soup. As we were leaving the parking lot, we decided to leave Thayer's business card with our email addresses on their windshield. Perhaps we haven't seen the last of Diana!
Continuing to the East Fjörds, our final destination for the evening was a town called Egilsstaðir. To get there, you must drive around the fjörds — finger-like chunks of land that jut into the ocean. You can imagine how long that would make a trip, non? However long, the trip was absolutely gorgeous. Eventually we came to a sign that said we could continue along the fjörds and get to Egilsstaðir in 120 kilometers, OR, take this turn here and get there in 60 kilometers. Shave off half the trip? We were in!
We soon found that the 'shortcut' was to take a gravel road directly up a mountain. It was stunning in both beauty and terror. Actually, I don't think I've ever been that scared in my life. Thayer was cool as a cucumber, but I was gasping for breath at every turn, heart pounding, seeing my life flash before my eyes. However, the times I was able to rein in the paralyzing fear, I was floored by the view. We were... extremely high up. It felt like we could see the whole world. We got so high up that it was snowing. You know when you look at the tippy top of a mountain and there's snow chunks up there that never melt? That's where we were.
Eventually we made our way down the mountain and to Egilsstaðir and now here we are in the most adorable room at Guesthouse Egilsstaðir with a view of a lake. Quaint and lovely.
Thanks for reading, and I'll update again next time we scrounge up some internet! Love to you all!
H
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