Friday, April 14, 2023

Day 2 - Snæfellsnes Peninsula

well the road rolls out like a welcome mat
to a better place than the one we're at
and I ain't got no kinda plan
but I've had all of this town I can stand
Starting Over - Chris Stapleton

Day 2, I took a day trip to Snæfellsnes peninsula. Side note: please don't ask me to pronounce or spell all these places I visited - I googled them and copy-pasted the names here. In this trip I found out that Iceland population is not that many, less than 1 million which made think do they have enough people to do the all the jobs? It seems they have a lot of foreigners so I think most of everyone speak English more than Icelandic? At least that's my impression. The guide from the day before was not Icelandic and she said she didn't speak Icelandic and she also said the language is hard. For this day 2 trip, the guide was Icelandic but with a Russian wife, so he too mostly speaks English? I don't know. I started to not have many expectation anymore after the day before in which things didn't go according to plan. I've also stopped checking what the itinerary was of the things I booked, so I just went along with whatever it was to come. First stop was Mount. Kirkjufell. I don't know why but as we're approaching this mountain, I did get excited. Maybe because it looked cute, pointy and kinda alone. The landscape around it was pretty too. Upon walking a bit further, I found out there's a waterfall. Like the others the day before, some parts of it were frozen. I thought it's really beautiful there and I guess it kinda lifted the mood. By the way, apparently Kirkjufell was in Game of Thrones. I had to google to see which scene it was.

Then we were brought to Hellissandur which has a sign that says it's the street art capital of Iceland. It does have a lot of mural arts in the buildings, but no one was around. So I don't know if the buildings were abandoned or the locals are actually using them for something. We walked around a bit. I didn't walk until very far, so I think I may have missed some really good ones.

Moving on, the guide said I think you all might be interested to see lava fields, so let's stop there awhile. Again, I didn't register what the name of the place is, but when I googled map all the places we visited that day, I think it's likely the Saxhóll Crater. There's this long stairs to climb and it's quite a walk but I made it. I learned another thing being in Iceland, well "learn" may not be the correct word. It's just it's very interesting when a volcano erupts in Iceland because they have glaciers and if it happens during winter, the lava comes into contact with the cold air and ice and it just changes the way the lava behaves - I think. So that is very different compared to a volcano erupting in Indonesia. Also with the climate in Iceland, it really affects the type of vegetation that can grow. They don't have a lot of tall trees. The joke is, what do you do when you get lost in an Icelandic forest? The answer is, just stand up. I do think it will be interesting to see this country in the summer, see the landscape being green and their trees in full. Back in the crater and around it, the only vegetation is moss and these are very precious because they take like a hundred years to grow, so we're warned not to step on them. Maybe in another hundred years, we get bushes, then in another hundred we get trees? I don't know if that is how it works. I may sound so dumb saying all that.

Then it was the Djúpalónssandur beach. Again over here too, the sand is black. There were some interesting things over here. There were 4 stones with different weight which were used to measure the competence of the fishermen. The lightest one is around 23 kg, which I had difficulty to lift. It's very hard to hold. Even if you can lift the lightest, you would still be deemed useless. I think the fishermen would need to be able the lift the second stone after the lightest at least. On the beach, there's also the remains of a shipwreck. The walk around it was quite nice with not many people so it felt pretty calm.

Then it was off to Arnarstapi. The guide said he would drop us in one place and told us to walk to the other end where he would be waiting. The walk was pretty nice. The view is quite beautiful with many birds in the rocks around the beach. The second picture below of the arch rock is called Gatklettur and towards the end of our walk, there's the tall big statue of Bárður Snæfellsás - I also had to google that on writing this. Apparently it's the mythical protector of the Snæfellsnes peninsula.

Then we're supposed to make a stop to see the black church, Búðakirkja, but the guide was only in his second time doing his trip and he forgot and by then we have reached the last stop, Ytri-Tunga beach and I guess it's too much time to backtrack *sigh* That is the second time things not going according to plan and this would become a running theme for my time in Iceland. The apologetic guide gave us Icelandic chocolates to appease us :D The chocolate has licorice in it. It's not bad that I bought some for myself. Anyways in Ytri-Tunga beach, there's a colony of seals, but maybe because it's not summer we didn't see many of them. The ones I saw were quite in a distance, they looked cute and also smaller than usual I thought. In the information board, it was confirmed that the grey seals are smaller. They're so cute. Other than that, there is also a remain of a whale spine which once beached there.

So that was day 2. For more pictures, please go here. Back in Reykjavik, I straight away went for dinner. Dinner that day was arctic char which I never had before and didn't know what it's like. When it came, it looked like salmon which got me concerned. I don't eat a lot of salmon, because on the few occassions that I had it, I can't say that I am a big fan. Well maybe because I haven't had an excellent salmon dish. Anyways, the arctic char was not bad. Maybe because I was hungry :D

:) eKa @ 9:57:00 PM •