I know it has been a while since we posted, we left Panama at the end of May and visited family and friends for most of June. Last Thursday, June 26th, we took our leave from Chicago and boarded a flight to Iceland. We are taking 10 days of vacation to see Iceland and Svalbard, before setting up shop in Helsinki for most of the month of July.

Our flight to Reykjavik was delayed about 90 minutes, which wasn’t really a big deal to us as we were not getting a connection. We landed in Iceland at about 8 a.m.; Sue passed through EU immigration and I waited on the all others line of a little while. While I was waiting, Sue grabbed our luggage and was waiting for me once I got through. We rented a car and drove the 45 minutes or so to our AirBnB, which was right in the middle of the tourist part of Reykjavik.

Once we had settled in a bit, we took a quick nap and then headed out to explore. We wandered around for a while, shopping, or more accurately, looking in the stores without buying anything, which is our norm and ate at a food hall in the old part of town. After a couple of hours of walking, we headed back to the apartment and had a rest. We had booked a whale watching trip for 9 p.m. (21:00). Because Iceland is so far north and it is summer, the sun does not set until about midnight and even then, it doesn’t really get dark.

The whale watching was amazing; we saw humpback whales about 10 different times, and while the photos don’t really look like much, it was both amazing and very humbling to see such beautiful creatures in their own environment. We docked at about 11:30 p.m. (23:30) and it was still very light outside. Our AirBnB was just a few steps from the harbor and we were grateful for its location as we were both nearing exhaustion.

Back in the AirBnB, we set up our stuff for the next morning’s trip, set an alarm for 8 a.m. because we had a 9 a.m. pickup and went to sleep. At 8:15 Sue woke up to find that the alarm hadn’t gone off, but no big deal because we still had 45 minutes to get to the pick up point that was right outside our building. We cursed the alarm, and the idiot (me) who didn’t know how to set it and got moving. This is when Sue noticed the missed call from the tour company letting us know that we were late for the 8 a.m. pick up and were about to miss our tour! Oh shit! We moved into high gear; Sue called them back to ask/beg them if we could have a few minutes to get to the pickup point. I got dressed and packed up our stuff. The company—Artic Adventures—was very understanding and sent the driver back to our pickup point and we very sheepishly got on board. After careful review, we found that they had emailed us a change in time, but it had been routed to junk mail, so we never saw it.

Once we were on board, we headed off to the day’s activities. A two-hour drive along the south coast to the Katla Glacier for a shortish hike and a visit to an ice cave. We drove to a town called Vik, then transferred to a large 4-wheel-drive vehicle that took us to the base of the glacier. The company provided crampons for our boots and with those the hike was more of a easy walk than a real hike. The glacier contained lots of volcanic ash, which made it black and white speckled. The streams that were being created as the glacier melted were very cool to look at but the water was very dirty due to the ash. The ice cave was quite small, maybe 20 meters long and had a rushing stream running through the middle of it. The photos make it seem more majestic than it really is, but it was still very cool. Workers tend the paths every day and keep adjusting for ice melt and shifting earth. We learned that Iceland is in constant motion, but more on that in the next blog. After a short visit to the cave we hiked back to the 4 x4 and then back to the bus.

Our second stop was the Skógafoss waterfall. It is a very large (25 meters wide and 60 meters high—for you Americans that is 80 feet across and about 200 fee high) waterfall and has a stairway on one side where anyone who is truly foolish can climb the 483 steps and be at the top of the falls, so you can watch the water fall over the edge. Guess who qualifies as truly foolish? That is right dear readers, Sue and I have “dumb enough to do anything” tattooed on our foreheads—or maybe we should. Anyway, we, of course, climbed up the steps and Sue took lots of photos while I stood well away from the edge due to my fear of heights. We climbed back down the 483 steps and headed for our next destination, a couple of waterfalls called Seljalandsfoss and Gljúfrabúi. Please don’t ask us to pronounce them.

Gljúfrabúi is the smaller of the two falls and it is set into a canyon that you can walk into. It isn’t so much to look at from the outside, but once in the canyon, it is stupendous. We (of course) walked right up to the bottom of the falls and took photos, both with us and just of the falls. Seljalandsfoss is the larger one; I think it is about 60 meters high (Americans, refer to the above conversion to feet) and you can climb a bunch of steps and go behind it. Between the two large waterfalls, there is a very nice walk, with a bunch of smaller waterfalls. But truth be told, by the time we reached Seljalandsfoss, we were no hurry to climb any more steps. We walked over, took some photos and headed back to the bus. The tour ended about 8 p.m. back at our pickup point.

We had a quickish dinner at a bar/burger place that was playing Pepa Pig on the TV. Iceland had plenty of veggie options and I had a delicious shitake burger. We also tried one of the local liquors, brennivin, which was not nearly as bad as malort. In fact, Steven liked it , set out our stuff for the next day, and checked both the pickup time and the alarm multiple times (we also set a second alarm) and fell asleep.