day five: kirkjubæjarklaustur, fjarðrárgljúfur, mýrdal, skógafoss, and vestmannaeyjar

Try saying that post title five times fast. Also, sorry about the abundance of pictures. We just did a lot.

Thursday's drive was just retracing our steps back down the southern coast, but stopping at the places we had skipped along the way. In Kirkjubæjarklaustur (or just "Klaustur" works) we saw some cool basalt formations (that were once mistaken to be ancient church floors), taught Robbie to drive stick, ate more pylsa and some ice cream, and washed our filthy, filthy car. Near Klaustur is an amazing gorge called Fjarðrárgljúfur—Robbie's favorite stop during the whole trip. Someone I talked to called it the Grand Canyon of Iceland, but it's much smaller than that. There are cool lookout points over the gorge which really tested my fear of heights. It was a beautiful, sunny day so we took advantage of the warmth and hiked to the end of the gorge, which overlooks three waterfalls that feed into the river that carves out the gorge. Unfortunately, the sun made for difficult picture-taking. But at least I have the memory...

After the gorge we drove back through lava fields to the other side of Vík's beaches at Mýrdal, where there are some beautiful basalt columns (the ones Becca referred to in a comment that are in this Bon Iver video) and cool rock formations out in the water. I wish we could have spent more time here... there is supposed to be a great hike up there, but we were running behind because of all the time we spent at the gorge (I told you Robbie liked it...).

We then drove through Skókar to Skógafoss, a beautiful waterfall where I saw a legit double rainbow. Geez. It was amazing. There's a nice hike alongside the waterfall where you can overlook the river above the falls.

We literally ran from Skógafoss to our car and broke the Icelandic speeding laws (I found out later they have speed cameras on the Ring Road! Argh!) because in true Hamill fashion, we were running late to catch our ferry to Vestmannaeyjar, or the Westman Islands. We hopped onto the ferry literally two minutes before the ladder came up and the ferry moved out of the harbor. I think we would have planned that timing better, but we had just decided the night before that we should camp on Heimaey, the only inhabited island of the fifteen islands. I'm totally glad that we decided to make that trip—there are so many cool things about Heimaey. I mean, we camped in a CRATER. I think this was totally awesome but not as many people reacted with shock and awe like I did. Our campsite was right next to the Mormon monument—in the 1800s, when there were only 800 inhabitants on the island, 200 of them got baptized and left for Utah to join the pioneers. A monument was erected in their honor just a few years ago by their descendants. It's a cool idea, but a weird monument—it looks like a fairy girl holding out offerings to the ocean. After we stood baffled by the monument, we walked over to the cliffs by our campsite, and to our delight, we discovered PUFFINS!!! They were nesting up on the cliffs and swarming around like flies! It was amazing. (How many times have I used that word?) I seriously just wanted to see a puffin during this trip, and I got hundreds instead. So cool. We talked to some other people who went puffin-watching during the day and didn't see any, so I guess we timed it well by showing up at dusk. They were all over the place.

As it was getting dark we decided to explore the rest of the island on foot. The island has a crazy history. In 1973, a volcano erupted, forcing the inhabitants to evacuate for months and resulting in half of the island being obliterated. The island was barely saved when the lava stopped short of reaching the harbor (fishing = the island's livelihood). If the harbor had been destroyed, no one would have come back because there wouldn't have been a point without fishing. After the eruption, the island's size actually increased because of the hardened lava. Crazy. So now, they have an excavation site they refer to as the "Pompeii of the North" where they have begun to excavate some of the houses. They also have a house graveyard, which we walked around at night and really freaked me out. The houses were buried twenty meters below our feet and there were markers at each site saying what had stood on that spot before the volcano erupted. It was, well, eerie (to use another over-used word).

Heimaey was cool. I'm glad we got to go in the end, because it was like discovering another Iceland. Robbie's old roommate who lived in Iceland for a while referred to it as the Texas or Hawaii of Iceland—even though it is big by Icelandic standards (4,500 inhabitants), it is relatively remote and they just kind of have their own culture out there. It felt really different from the rest of the places we visited. Not rural at all, but not big enough to be as bustling as Reykjavík. The only complaint I have is that the whole island smells like fish and bird poop. No biggie though—you just learn to breathe through your mouth after a while.