Wednesday 9/7/16

Dave woke up not feeling real well this morning and in retrospect, he probably should have stayed behind in the hotel because we had a very busy day today.  Our first stop was at a wonderful waterfall at Seljalandsfoss.  Kelly and I climbed up some stairs (most of the way) to walk behind the falls.  It was very loud and as someone said, we got "mystified".  It was a good thing we were wearing raincoats.  The way down was a bit of a scramble over wet and slippery rocks, but we made it down eventually.  It was lovely to stand behind the falls and see the huge volume of water that was coming down.  Our next stop was to Eyja falls Jokull.  This is the site of the 2010 volcanic eruption that stopped air traffic worldwide.  The little museum showed a short film featuring the farm across the road that sits directly under the glacier of the volcano.  It was quite amazing that no one was killed.  The whole family was able to evacuate with the help of large vehicles that were sent by the authorities.  The plumes of ash ballooned into the air showering the whole area with tons of black ash.  When the danger was over, the community came together to help each other with the massive clean-up operation.  It was a very powerful film.  We then stopped at Skogar waterfall, which was also lovely.  We were traveling in the south of Iceland today.  They get 270 days/year of rain - we have been so lucky with the weather while we have been here.  We stopped at Dyraolaey (the southernmost tip of the island) and took some wonderful pictures of standing stones and arches in the water.  The long and broad beach here has black sand - awesome!  If you were to head due south from here, you would not hit land until you reached Antarctica.  We had a delicious lunch (char, potatoes, leeks with red pepper, wonderful homemade bread, and chocolate cake) at the Volcano Hotel.  It was formerly the elementary school for this small town, but the school aged population declined so they sold the school and the children go to the next town - and even combining the two, there are only 58 students in total.  Dave stayed on the bus for all of our stops except for lunch.  He managed to eat a little of it.  Our next adventure was to take a Super Jeep tour (think 16 passenger van on huge tires).  We went off road, fact, we drove on the shore (again black sand) before taking a rough path up into the valley between the mountains.  Our destination was Kotlujokull glacier.  When we got close, we got out of the jeep and walked right up to the face of the glacier.  Our local guide, Johann - the 29th generation descendant of one of the original Viking settlers, explained the different types of rocks that are formed when an eruption occurs.  He then put on his crampons and walked up the face of the glacier to throw down some ice from an upper layer.  The ice is full of bubbles and at one point I could see a small rainbow in the area that he chipped with his ice ax.  The glacier is quite dirty, but he assured us that the snows will turn it white again.  We finished our tour back where we started.  Loftur, meanwhile, had managed to get some drugs back in Selfoss for Dave.  He is fairly certain that it is bronchitis that has hit him - he is so prone to getting it.  We rode the bus back to our hotel and Loftur went with me to the pharmacy to pick up the Zithromax.  On the was back, we stopped to take a picture of some circles that were caused by exploding gas bubbles from an earlier eruption.  Once I have got Dave dosed up and into bed, John and I went across to the hot dog stand to get take-out for dinner.  Loftur has been raving about the Icelandic hot dogs so we had to try one.  Lana and Kelly were headed to a nearby restaurant for salmon.  The hot dogs were good, but the ones we serve at the library fair are just as good.  We will have an early night tonight and hope that Dave feels better after a good night's sleep.  Tomorrow we (Dave will stay on the bus) will go on a rafting trip before going back to Reykjavik.