Eastern Coast

    Once again we had a delightful, sunny buffet breakfast.  Today's spread included two unusual choices:  baked beans - which actually seemed okay along with the bread, ham and cheese.  However, another choice was a shot glass of cod liver oil.  Uggggghhhhh.  My Great Aunt always tried to get me to drink some when I was home sick.  Nope!  I am in love with Iceland's yogurt called Skyr, though.  Breakfast, lunch or dessert, it's yummy.

     One of the biggest challenges in navigating here in Iceland is the place names.  They are long, unpronounceable by me, and take forever to type into the GPS.  Our first stop today was another national park: Skaftafell which is part of a larger park, Vatnajokull.  The park covers 13% of Iceland.  Much of which is covered with glaciers and there are lots of tours to go walking on them.  We have done this in Alaska and Banff in our younger years.  I read on the Internet that you could drive to the edge of the glacier without taking a tour and we found the very bumpy, rough road used by the tour company.  So we drove in, thanking our little 4 x 4 for being tough enough to get us right to the edge of one of the glaciers.  A fun little adventure for the old folks.

     Much of yesterday's drive was through horse country.  Green, rolling hills with hundreds of sturdy, little Icelandic horses.  They were brought over by the Vikings and have been such an isolated breed that no other horses can be imported.  Today's drive was past miles and miles of glacial river beds.  The road goes over lots of bridges here, many of which are one lane so we have to keep a good watch for cars coming the other way.  One road side sign talked about the problem of these bridges washing out during eruptions and all the traffic having to go all the way back around the island to get to towns on the other side of the bridge - many days of detour.   The roads are narrow, but there are pull-offs with picnic tables all along the way.  Many of these have mRkers which have information in English about the area.  If only they had a Porta-potty too.  Rest rooms are few and far between!

     Another part of Vatnajokull is a huge bay full of icebergs called Jokulsarlon.  Chunks of a glacier break off and get bunched up at the mouth of this bay.  It was amazing.  Lots of seals swimming between the icebergs.  There were warnings not to climb on the icebergs because they can flip and dump you in the water.  I didn't see anyone climbing on them, but lots of folks teetering on the rocks to get a picture.  I don't think you'd last long in that water!  The temperature had dropped 20 degrees and the clouds covered our spring sun so we had our picnic in the car again.

    The final portion of our drive was through reindeer country.  We saw lots of warning signs, but no Rudolf.  The Norwegians brought the reindeer here, but they aren't herded and managed like in northern Norway, they just roam free.  We did see a huge number of Whooper (Icelandic) swans out on the marshes.  

    We are staying in another guesthouse tonight.  It overlooks the Hoffell glacier and is often used by hikers.  We have a beautiful view of the glacier and many fields and farms.  Very quiet and serene.