Un Domingo con Óskar: II

After Dettifoss, we were driving around the northeastern corner of Iceland and we stumbled upon a nice beach, lighthouse, and some other things.

Nice little island thing off the coast. Also, a lot of cool and noisy birds.

The beach.

Writing messages in the sand. Or maybe they are math formulas.

Skipping stones. Amélie Poulain would have had a great time here.

Nice and typical little "town" or farm, fully equipped with red roofs.

Nice looking "scare"crows.

What appeared to be a torn down barn. There was poop everywhere.

I surprised the girls while they were sitting a posing on the wall.

We found some ship stuff, and so we played with it. I think I was trying to be the Little Mermaid being stuck in a net.

Almost as fun as riding a horse.

At the lighthouse.

We found an empty bird's nest with eggshells. I guess that's why there were a lot of noisy birds.

I also found a buoy-esque thing.

All over Iceland you can find these rock stacks. I think back in the day it was a way of communication, for safety reasons perhaps. That small rock on top is mine. :)

Also in Iceland there are these houses in the middle of nowhere that are intended for hitchhikers or campers or just whoever needs a roof for the night while they are traveling around the country. It's a pretty good idea and there is an organization of people who maintains these houses.

Along the way, we had a near-death experience (no I was not driving). Something about the roads being bad and so the truck swerved and we went off the road. Luckily we were not by a cliff and we also did not flip over (but we almost did).

We then headed to this natural spring in a cave called Grjótagjá, with two separate caves, one for men (Karlagjá) and one for women (Kvennagjá). However, due to the Krafla volcanic activity in the 70s, the water temperature went up to like 60°C and is still cooling down so it is not safe to bathe here. At this location, there was a big crack in the ground, and some tourists are told that this is part of the Eurasian-North American tectonic ridge, but it's not. It is cool to imagine that it is though, then you can say "look I'm in American" then jump to the other side and say "now I'm in Europe." Or you can be in both tectonic plates at the same time.



The gap above the caves.

We climbed into the gap to explore. I was putting my Spiderman skills to the test.


There is a guy who works in the Mannvit office in Akureyri, Gísli, who has a tourist camp by Mývatn...and horses. So he had invited me to go one day if I ever wanted to go horseback riding. He is really nice and he let us all ride free of charge. We even galloped!

Here we are, assigned to our horses.

So we set up to ride into the sunset.

Learning about the horses as they show off their shoes.

There was a group of other tourists (maybe French) who took the horses to the lake for some fun times.

We also got a chance to go in and get wet with the horses. It was pretty cold, but so much fun.

Gísli's two sons and their other friend decided to go swimming in said cold water.

We went back to Húsavík for the festivities and the dancing, and some grub. Here we see some men with afro wigs singing songs from the 70s.

I went on stage to take a pic with this band member with a fro and a green shirt.

The drive back to Akureyri was nice and the scenery was nicer.

Colorful skies.

This is Óskar's dog, Kasper. We were sharing a romantic moment.


PHEWW. OK, so that was a lot of things and activities and stories, jam packed into one weekend.

More weekends and work life coming up in future posts.

Blessaður.