A very long day in Iceland

The day after our car breakdown was very, very long and therefore this post describing it is going to be very, very long as well.

That morning, we woke up at 6 am in order to go to the police station and then go on with our trip to Olafsfjördur, more than 400 kilometres away, where we had to sleep that night. However, although 6 am is quite early in the morning, we were not the first ones, since a ferry was leaving nearby at 6:30 am and our guesthose was full of people taking that ferry.

We went then to the police station in Eskifjördur. We explained the policeman what had happened to us and that we would like to have some official document produced by him. It took him a while to understand it (I guess we were the first visitors with such a request in years). The policeman even mistook me for a British (he said that a "British guy" was there complaining about a rental car), what is not a positive sign for him (do I really look like British?) but very positive for my English (yiha!!!!!).

After two hours and two calls from the Spanish Embassy in Oslo, we left the police station with our official document (in Icelandic), driving towards Jökulsárgljúfur National Park, the visit we would have liked to do the previous day, but where we could only pay a short visit. The trip was quite tiring (I was driving) and an important part of it was on an unpaved path.

We visited then Dettifoss, the most powerful waterfall in Europe and we got impressed by it. Two days without a waterfall was something unbearable for us, je, je, je. It is not especially beautiful but it is so powerful, you can feel its strenght just right there. We drove five kilometres away from it and had lunch inside our rental car, looking directly at the waterfall from a hill nearby.

Then, we drove to Asbyrgi (see picture below), in order to get some information on the national park, as we still had two hours to walk around it. Asbyrgi was the place where we wanted to sleep the night before, in a campsite. However, our stay there was rather short, since when we left the Information Point with a lot of information, we discovered that our left rear wheel had a puncture...
It was the first time that we were facing such a problem in our own. We got a bit down and nervous, and we could not even find the jack in our Toyota Corolla Sedane. We asked a man who was parked close to us, he turned out to be Spaniard and not to have changed any wheel in his life... He wanted us to put the jack (finally, we found it) just under the fuel tank! Then, Sonia went inside the Information Point asking for some help there and I was left alone with my Gasol T-shirt. Suddenly a group of Spaniards from Bilbao appeared, started talking to me and in five minutes they took charge of the situation and changed the wheel for us (with a lot of smiles and fun, I must add).

Then, we had to drive about 80 kilometres to Húsavík, the closest important town, where we had a Toyota garage. Húsavík is also a very remarkable city because its whale watching (and hunting) industry. The views there were amazing, driving close to the ocean with the snowed peaks in the background. Thanks Lord, the puncture was not a very big deal and we solved it after thirty minutes and not much money.

After a short walk in Húsavík, we went to Lake Myvatn. We had planned to spend a whole day there, renting a bike. All we could do that day was driving around it, stopping our car and taking some pictures in thirty minutes. The place was very, very beautiful and we both enjoyed it, but we both would have liked to have more time to spend there... Maybe in our next visit to Iceland...It was getting dark and we still had to have dinner and arrive to our guesthouse in Olafsfjördur. As we were a bit tired of not having proper dinner the days before, we decided to have dinner in Akureyri, the second town in Iceland, just in our way to the guesthouse. We had to drive more than an hour and then arrive to Akureyri... I was surprised by the fact that the Big Four auditing firms have an office there, because the town is not that important, it really looks like a small fishing town. We had an amazing dinner in the only suitable place we found: I ate a burger and Sonia chose the most delicious rice I have ever tasted.

Once our stomachs were busy with food, we drove one more hour to Olafsfjördur. The last five kilometres were through a tunnel under a mountain and well, you know, I get very nervous when driving through tunnels. Anyway, we made it safe and entered our room at midnight: more than 16 hours and 400 kilometres after waking up. That was our last night in Iceland and all I can say is that we sleep like babies.

A new life in Breithdalsvík

As I wrote some days ago, we arrived quite late to Berunes the night before, so we decided to stay a bit longer than usual in bed, as we estimated that our plan for that day was not very tight. Then, we had breakfast, we checked our email and we started driving...

After ten minutes, the car started suddenly to lose power until it stops in a crossway. We realized that the engine was overheated although no indicator showed anything to us. We phoned the rental car company (Hertz) and after thirty minutes our car was taken to Breithdalsvík, a small village two kilometres away from that crossway.

We then phoned again Hertz in order to ask for a replacement car. They told us that the only available car was in Reikiavik (more than 500 kilometres away) and they were going to send it if we agreed to pay for the broken engine. That was a clear blackmail, but we had no better alternative, so we agreed with that. Eight hours later, around 8pm, we would meet someone from Hertz with our replacement car and some documents for us to sign.

I even considered the idea of settling down in Breithdalsvík if our replacement car could not arrive and start a new life as a fisherman (see the picture to the right). That idea did not looked like that bad to me. For Sonia, I guess, it was not so appealing...

In our time there, we had lunch in the only hotel and restaurant of the village, we planned to go to the swimming pool (but finally it was not possible since we were quite busy that afternoon), we found some accommodation nearby (it was not that easy because a ferry was leaving to Norway the next morning and everything was booked), we emailed the Spanish Consulates in Iceland and the Spanish Embassy in Norway asking for help and advice, we drafted a letter explaining what happened to us, we sent some postcards, we went for a walk under the rain in the fjord,... I must admit we did not get bored at all and I am sure that we were the greatest news ever in Breithdalsvík.

At eight, under a torrential rain, we met the employees from Hertz, who clearly said that withouth our agreement to pay for the broken engine, they were not going to give us the keys of the rental car, although they were breaking their own contract. Finally, we had to agree on that and sign all the documents and we took the replacement car to Eskifjördur (see picture below), the place where we had to sleep that night, about 50 kilometres away. Before we spoke with the owner of the hotel, which had seen us around town and wanted to help us (what I told you before, the greatest news ever in Breithdalsvík).
Again, we arrived quite late in the evening and I was extremely tired, but somehow Sonia and the owner of the guesthouse persuaded me to give some milk to two lambs before getting into our room (it should be around midnight and it was raining). They sucked the milk like crazy and it was, after all, an enjoyable thing to do after a day full of fights and problems. Somehow, though, I did not want to feed the lambs, I wanted to eat them!

Our next day was going to be very busy: we were going to get up at 6, go to the police station in Eskifjördur, then drive and visit a National Park, visit Lake Myvatn, have dinner in Akureyri and sleep in Olafsfjördur. That was the plan for our last full day in Iceland.

Abandonar el cine

Nunca había estado tan cerca de abandonar el cine durante la proyección de una película como ayer mientras veía "Malditos bastardos", de Quentin Tarantino. La película es por momentos desagradable y absurdamente violenta, pero, por motivos desconocidos, me quedé hasta al final a ver si Tarantino conseguía levantar eso de alguna forma. Iluso de mí, huelga decir que no lo consigue ni por asomo.

La película trata de ser una adaptación de "Pulp Fiction" a la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Este engendro es lento en sus estúpidos y vacíos diálogos, no tiene un mínimo de coherencia en su guión, es gratuitamente violento y disfruta mostrando sangre a la mínima ocasión, cuenta con unos actores desastrosos, se lanza al fango de los estereotipos y se arrastra por él, no respeta la historia,... Cualquier cosa que diga es poca. Sinceramente, no debería dejarse que películas como esta contaminen la mente de la sociedad, son basura cinematográfica que nunca debió producirse.

Lo que más me irrita es la falta de respeto con la que trata un conflicto aún reciente en Europa en el que murieron más de cincuenta millones de personas. Me resulta vomitivo el enfoque gratuito y superficial que le da Tarantino, olvidando que detrás de todos aquellos muertos había una vida humana, que importaba (y mucho) a alguien. No sólo los aliados sufrieron los horrores de esta guerra, también los alemanes, que no merecen ser reducidos al papel de "nazis a matar", sencillamente no lo merecen.

También me irritan las buenas críticas que había leído de esta película. Seguramente el productor o quien sea ya se habrá preocupado de que al crítico de turno no le falte de nada mientras visiona la película, pero decir, como leí en El País o en El Mundo, no lo recuerdo exactamente, que Tarantino nos presenta una metáfora de cómo el cine puede acabar con las tiranías me parece una broma de muy mal gusto, hecha probablemente bajo los efectos del alcohol (por pensar bien). Ahora que se ha presentado la película en el Festival de San Sebastián recibirá algún premio y algún espabilado la tildará de obra maestra, cuando no va a suponer más que una pérdida de tiempo y de dinero para el espectador.

Tarantino, ¡qué lástima: hacer Pulp Fiction y acabar así!

A waterfall, a glacier and a surprise

As I told you in the previous day, we decided to visit a second glacier in Skaftafell National Park, Morsárjökull, what implied a walk of around 6 hours. That day we also had to drive around 300 kilometers to arrive to our hostel, in Berunes, in the Eastern Fjords.

Therefore, we had to hurry up a little bit in our way to the glacier. We watched two waterfalls in our first hour walking, Hundafoss (where dogs were washed a long time ago) and Magnusarfoss. A bit further we found Svartifoss, an amazing waterfall surrounded by basaltic stones. I felt there like in a natural amphiteather. Well, to be honest, I felt a little bit like Gollum... Again, Iceland surprised us with a beautiful waterfall, somehow different to the others we had visited but similar in beauty.We started then to walk towards the glacier. We discarded climbing on top of Kristínartindar, with its two twin peaks, because it seemed to hard and difficult. So we walked through a forest of birches, so dense that sometimes it was difficult to walk, to the glacier. Suddenly, at a certain point, the forest disappeared and we were left alone with the wind coming from the glacier. I have never faced such a strong wind in my life: I could lean against it and did not fall. It was quite hard for me to reach the glacier (thanks Sonia), but finally, we arrived there. It was extremely windy and cold down there, but the landscape is difficult to forget. We were just alone in the middle of a glacier, where nature rules and where we were insignificant to the glacier.It was a bit late, so we hurried up in our way back to the main campsite in Skaftafell National Park. We arrived and got up the car immediately, since it was getting late...

After one hour driving and against my opinion, I have to admit, we stopped in the most amazing place I have ever been to. It is called Jökulsárlón and it is a place where a glacier meets a lake and the ocean. The icebergs down there are really breathtaking (see the different tones of blue) and we regretted not to have arranged a tour in advance, because it is worth of it. Besides, it seems that this place appears in some films, one of them of James Bond.We also had some problems while in Jökulsárlón, since it started raining cats and dogs and we got wet. Especially, my trousers showed me that they were fashionable but not very appropriate with rainy conditions and I had to take them out in the backseat of the car and use the pyjama, just like Superman, je, je, je.

One hour later, I took some trousers from my suitcase and I started driving to Berunes, where we had to sleep that night. It was not a very nice trip: it was dark, it was raining, it was very windy, we were driving very close to the ocean, the road was not always paved, we were late,... In the end, we arrived to our destination (our host was waiting for us with a smile in his face, I strongly recommend this place), had dinner in a hurry and went to sleep also in a hurry. The next day was going to be a very busy day, but not in the way we had planned...

Two waterfalls, a beach, a siesta and a glacier

After leaving our friend at the airport at half past five, we started driving towards Skaftafell National Park, where we should sleep that night. Our drive was around 500 kilometres so it was going to take us the whole day to arrive there. I decided to drive from the airport, with the help of some coffee and a CD with heavy rock music, while my friend was having some sweet dreams...

After two or three hours, we arrived to a place with a very nice waterfall, which we mistook by Skogarfoss, but which, according to our map, was Gljüfurärfoss. The waterfall, anyway, was beautiful and when we walked a bit closer to it, we started to feel all the water falling over us, like rain. It was a nice stop after two hours driving, although it was not Skogarfoss.

Skogarfoss was waiting for us approximately thirty minutes later. It is probably the most beautiful waterfall in Iceland, as it seems to be taken from a fairy tale. There is a campsite close to it and it must be an amazing experience to sleep under the waterfall (we preferred, though, to sleep on a bed). If you climb on top, you will be able to see the rainbow around it and if you walk further, you will discover a number of smaller waterfalls in the same river, in a breathtaking landscape.

The next stop in our drive was Vik, a town with a remarkable beach. The views from there are very nice, with the famous cliffs in the background. The sand is dark but it is very clean. The only problem this beach has is the water temperature: I just walked two steps into the Northern Atlantic and all I can say is that it was freezing cold, it was so cold that it hurt like a million stings. But the walk on the sand and the landscape was worth our stop, it was my first visit in summer to the beach (the other one was in Durban, South Africa).
We still had a long way to our destination, so we started driving again... After a short lunch break, we suddenly felt the need of having a siesta. We were only an hour away from our hostel, but that hour was like a century: we were very tired, it was difficult for the driver to concentrate in the road and we hardly spoke. Finally, we arrived at our hostel, took the keys of our room and ran for a siesta, which initially was scheduled to last one hour but that was subsequently extended until two hours. When you wake up at four in the morning and drive for seven hours, all you can think about is having a siesta, believe me.

In the evening, once we were refreshed again, we decided to make a short walk into Skaftafell National Park, and we went to a glacier: Skaftafellsjökull. We were hardly alone in that path, but for a couple of Germans, which were cycling around Iceland. Then, we witnessed how the girl told the boy it was dangerous for her to walk further because she was wearing flat shoes and how the boy just went on, without taking care of her girlfriend (je, je, je, these are the gossipoing advantages of speaking German). Even Torrente would not dare to do so... Going back to the glacier, the fact that it was dirty with dust surprised us, as we were expecting pure white ice and we found something brown or even black. By the way, it was like being in a huge fridge there: we took our gloves, our scarf, our hut,...The next day was also devoted to Skaftafell National Park and to the visit of a second glacier.

Boiled alive

Our next step in the Icelandic adventure took us to the Blue Lagoon, a huge complex where one can swim in very hot water coming directly from the Earth. The water is supposed to have healing properties (despite its colour, not transparent I would say), but all I can say is that it smells disgusting, since it contains significant amounts of sulphures. One can also apply a gel by silicium over its body, but it is not very advisable to do so, because, after five minutes, it dries up and it is hard then to remove it from the face, especially from the eyes.
By the way, do not try to find me in this picture, I am not there, believe me.

When entering the dressing room, one can read a lot of signs highlighting those parts in our bodies which we should wash carefully (yeah, including the ones all of you have in your heads). Afterwards, one leaves the building and it is outside, with a temperature of around 15º C, what makes that one runs into the water after 15 seconds. The water is very, very hot (around 35º C) but one feels amazingly comfortable there, once the initial feeling of being boiled alive proves to be false. We stayed more than three hours and, consequently, our skin got burned...

Again, as the previous day, we had lunch at 6 in the evening, out of Blue Lagoon. We decided then to look for the place where the European and the American tectonic plates meet, since it seemed to be quite an interesting place. In our search, we arrived by mistake to the most famous lighthouse in Iceland (see above). The place were very nice, with nice views of a small island and we could even spot the volcano we had visited on our first day in Iceland (more than 200 kilometres away from us).The tectonic plates themselves were so disappointing that I am not going to spend many words with them. I will just say that they are not worth the visit, despite their geologal importance.

That day we slept in a hostel close to the aiport because one of us was leaving the next day very early in the morning, what implied that we had to wake up at 4am. Yeah, I agree, I also think it is an stupid hour to be awake but...

Three days in Reikiavik

The next step of our trip in Iceland implied a stay of two nights in Reikiavik, the most northern capital city in the world, as every tourist brochure says.

Our stay in Reikiavik started with a whale-watching trip. We went for an hour into the ocean and the trip was not very nice: it was extremely windy, with high waves and very, very cold. While I was there, I could only imagine how hard life of fishermen is. Suddenly, I felt horribly happy for working in a bank. Finally, we did not spot many whales, just some small part of them, we could not help feeling a bit disappointed by that. Afterwards, we went to our guesthouse and prepare something for lunch at... 6pm.We went for a walk through the city center of Reikiavik and got ourselves ready for the active nightlife in Reikiavik (that was what our travel guide boasted)... It was the second disappointment of that day: it is not so active after all (we might be biased as we were coming from Spain). We decided to go to a music festival and we could only watch two bands: one of them was playing electric violins and the other one was too heavy for all of us. Three or four "natives" decided to dance and it then turned to be surrealistic.

The next day we drove through the Golden Circle. It is composed of Gullfoss waterfall, Geysir and Thingvellir. Gullfoss was the first one of the many waterfalls we visited in Iceland and it is impressive and very beautiful. When one approaches it, it suddently feels like raining.

Geysir is a valley not far from Gullfoss where hot water is sent into the air from holes in the ground. There is a horrible smell around, due to sulphur and other acids in the water, that makes the visit not so nice after all.

Thingvellir is supposed to be where the first Icelandic parlament took place, far in the Xth century. I find it a bit hard to believe that Icelandics were worrying about parlaments and politics at that time, but leaving this aside, the landscape is very nice, with a lot of water around curious stone shapes. We also learnt there how men and women were punished in Middle Ages: women were drowned in the sea and men were sent to the inner country.

Generally speaking, the Golden Circle is crowded with tourists. Anyway, both visits are a must when one is visiting Iceland. Our next step of the trip took us to Blue Lagoon and to Reykjanes peninsula.

Arriving to Iceland

As promised, here it comes the first of the entries on the trip I made more than one month ago (for God's sake, it seems so long ago) to Iceland. Let me tell you in advance that I enjoyed every second and minute I spent in this amazing and beautiful island.

The beginning of my trip was not easy. I had to make a stop in London Gatwick and there my plane was an hour delayed. I had never been in Gatwick before and I must admit I was a bit surprised by what I found there: total chaos, a lot of people queuing (for check-in and for security control) without much order and not many information. I had to queue at check-in after a group of boy-scouts and it was not very nice: they had so many bags and were so slow... Finally, when the plane was taxiing (right spelling?) at Reikiavik Airport, it had to go back 20 metres because it made a mistake when approaching the finger!

My two friends were already waiting for me, and we were soon driving out of there in our rental car: a Toyota Corolla (known as Toyota Avensis, in Spain). According to our plan, we had to drive around 200 kilometres to Snaefellsjökull National Park, where Julius Verne placed the volcano which took the reader to the centre of the Earth (see below).
After having dinner (a weird and horrible lasagne, where is the Italian Embassy when one really needs one?), we went to the sea cliffs to watch some birdlife. But, just after leaving the hostel, an Artic tern decided to attack us with quick and sudden flights over our heads... Later on, I learnt that they could travel as far as South Africa (upps!). Anyway, the sea cliffs were amazing and we could spot a lot of birds, although the weather was a bit cold and we seemed to be disguised as esquimos.The next day, we tried to go to the top of the volcano but the fog and the ice prevented us from doing so. On our way down, we stopped in Olasfvik, where we manage to buy fish for our dinner that day directly to a fisherman (I cooked it and it tasted very, very good). After lunch in Olafsvik, we decided to walk a little bit, to a cape with a nice lighthouse (that was, at least, what the tourist guide said). After more than two hours of walking through a desert of lava, we decided to go back to the car and to watch pictures of that lighthouse in Internet at home...We then drove to Grundarfjördur, where we spent the night in the very cosy room of a Polish student. The next day we were driving back to Reikiavik.

Mon coeur

Maintenant mon coeur seulement pompe le sang, l'amour qui était autour de lui s'est cassé en un million des morceaux, qui se sont cloué sur mon âme. Ils me font mal, la regarder me fait mal, la rappeler me fait mal, respirer me fait mal,...

The third canyon

Blyde River Canyon is the third largest canyon in the world, after the Great Canyon in Colorado and another one in Namibia. It is known as the "Green Canyon" because it is not so arid as the other two. Since we had been very successfull in spotting animals at Kruger Park, we decided to give it a try in our last day in South Africa.Our first stop there was at God's Window (see above), where on a clear day it is said that Maputo (Mozambique's capital, around 200 km away) can be seen. The name of God's Window comes from a geological formation that disappeared some years ago. I am sorry but my imagination is not enough as to imagine how it could looked like. Anyway, the view from there is impressive and it is easy to understand why this place was thought to be the end of the world in the film "Gods must be crazy".

Afterwards, a visit to Burke's Luck Potholes is almost compulsory. On the place were Blyde river meets another one, there is a very nice waterfall and amazing eroded stones, eroded through centuries in weird and amazing shapes. It is one of the most surprising places I have ever been to. Unfortunately, I could not get very good pictures of it, as the sun seemed to be on the wrong place. Yeah, maybe I should blame my lack of photographic talent but blaming the sun is easier, je, je, je.

Finally, the third stop in our visit was due in The Three Rondavels, just in the middle of the canyon itself. The name of this place comes from the hill in front of the panoramic point, where three parallel peaks resemble three typical African huts. The views are fantastic, although not those one can expect from a canyon. It may be that we think that all canyons are similar to Great Canyon, and somehow, one cannot help feeling a bit disappointed there.Once our visit to Blyde River Canyon was over, we drove all our way to Johannesbourg, through the inner country, with not much to highlight. It is quite similar to Spain, with a hilly landscape and dry yellow vegetation. The main difference were the coal mines that from time to time were found close to the highway. With this entry, I finish my great trip to South Africa. From now on, the Icelandic adventure will become the main topic in my blog.