on a previous Thursday, i headed for the airport after kissing Alla and Mattanchuk goodbye for 10 days in Iceland.
1st flight from Cleveland to Philadelphia, i get the last row seat next to the bathroom, fun, i realized i forgot the book seats, but then i get a smoker next to me, while they cant smoke on the plane, the smoke smell remains, so stuck between nicotine and poop, i prefer the poop, lucky its a short flight.
next leg, to Boston, i get a middle seat and isle and window are a couple, so i get an upgrade to a window seat, perfect, this couple is also heading for Iceland.
leg 3, to Iceland, middle seat again, idiot me for not booking seats. this flight is on Icelandic Air and when boarding the plane, you get a bottle of Icelandic water and somehow the trip feels like it has already begun.
Landed 30 minutes early after 11 PM, so no views from the plane and waited for the rest. my luggage did not arrive, so has the bags of the other couple, bad connection. lucky i had most of the stuff in the carry on, after filling the forms, Shay arrived with his gigantic bag that can and perhaps does fit a corpse inside.My mom and Moti arrived a few minutes later, i passed through the red pass in customs for the 1st time ever, needed to declare that my missing bag contains nothing that shouldn't be there , got our car and headed out in short pants and a tee shirt to the Iceland night. not so bad I said, then 20 seconds later begun to shiver, till we reached the car. Shay the 'AppMan' found an offline map app and we reached our hostel an hour later where Amit was already waiting.
we set two clocks for wake up, both failed, no juice. Moti called from his hotel and had the hostel person give us a wake up knock on the door, probably a first in hostel history. we headed for their hotel to meet a son of their friend who works here, he arranged Sim cards for us and gave us a few tips and now it was time to head for the road.
before that, we stopped at a gas station for a quick breakfast. the gas stations are quite decent here and server as a tiny shop, like 7-11 but more fresh and very friendly. i tried a hot dog- and wow- i don't know what they do with the hot dogs here to make them so good, i got another one...
we headed north and east and I was pleasantly surprised by the hills, very black hill covered with green, the contrast was impressive and the drive fantastic. we reached our 1st national park at pingliver and parked 170 meters from the information center. we decided to go on a short hike, and now had to go back 170 meters to the car , get properly dressed, then go back 170 to the starting point. for an antsy guy like me, these delays drive me crazy, but eventually we began walking.
this park is on the connection of the tectonic plates, this is the line the crosses the Atlantic ocean and makes the continents drift and its the only place where you can see it, except the bottom of the ocean. Lava rocks all around and a nice green valley in between. this valley one day will grow and split Iceland in two, but for now it is still one island. the ocean reaches these parts and you can take a snorkel or dive just above the tectonic plates, we missed this tour, but you can still see the plates very clearly every where you look. we hike for a couple of hours , passed by an ancient farm, this terrain is hard to walk on and i have no idea what they grew here. pretty moss is everywhere. we reached a waterfall, one of many we will encounter in this land of water and headed back up the trail to the information center + 170 meters to the car. a nice hike to begin the day. after wards we drove to an explosion crater. this crater is former when a lava chamber underneath is emptied after an eruption and the mountain collapses inside, leaving a bowl like hole, called caldera.we hike around it, enjoying the pretty blue of the water in this crater pond and the many colors of the volcano itself. after hiking around the crater we hiked down and circled the pond then continued on our way for dinner. we stopped at a place called earth cooking where they use the natural steam for cooking without using electricity or natural gas. all but me tried the soups and like them and we had earth cooked fish which the rest like, and i found this cod fish a bit blend. we stoked up on groceries and headed east towards Vik. on the way we stopped at an impressive water fall. the track here leads behind the fall where you get a fun and refreshing fall spray in the face. this was close to sundown and we had some interesting photos. it was getting darker slowly and we passed by a movie production site where one traveler told us the tall guy from snatch is the star. assuming its Vini Jones, we stopped. my friends can recite this movie almost word for word.
ok. time to enjoy the last day... to be continued
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