Iceland Megatrip 2005 – Day 6

June 30, 2005.

This is a day without photos, as is half of Day 7. Somehow when I was transferring the photos from the memory cards to the storage device I messed up somehow. I lost 87 photos and Mum also lost her photos from that day.

We made 8 stops today, which can be seen on the map below.

1. Pausing to admire Esja, with meadows in the foreground filled with grazing sheep and Soley (butter cups)

2. Watching some Salmon fishing and observing the mighty flow of the Laxá river. (Laxá I think might be one of the most common names for a river/creek in Iceland, as it means Salmon River; just like in Australia we have quite a few “x mile creeks”)

3. Wild flower hunting, playing in old sheep pens and looking at waterfalls at Fossá. This was a fantastic place to explore, Mum and I traipsed around looking at various plants, taking photos and samples. Then as we were driving along we would identify them and mark them off in the book.

4. Full steam ahead to Glymur. This was a lovely walk that took us through lots of Lupins and heaps of Anjelica. Lupines whilst pretty are to Iceland what Lantana is to Australia. My dear brother Karl went up to Glymur a fortnight before we did and like all his trip reports he as written it up perfectly and includes heaps of photos 🙂 – Karl and Tanja visit Glymur.

5. Poked around some waterfalls near Geitaberg. Mum is a big waterfall person, which means that any trip we take will involve visiting local waterfalls.

6. Reykholt. This village is the home to one of the boarding schools where Pabbi went to school and also the home of Snorri Sturluson. Whilst we were in Reykholt we had a look at Snorri’s Bath and Pabbi entertained us with tales of his school life here including students long-jumping over Snorri’s Bath which is about 3.8m in diameter.

This was one of the great things about going round the place with Pabbi and later when we had two cars I would choose to drive with Pabbi to listen to the various folktales or his memories about the places we would drive past.

7.  Hraunfossar and Barnafoss. I will not say much about these waterfalls this time as we would revisit in a couple of days with Margaret and I have photos from that visit 🙂

We then drove over the back roads as Pabbi told us more tales about the area, such as I worked on that farm one Summer,  a boy I went to school with lived on that farm etc etc.

8. Borgarnes. Such a sweet place is Borgarnes. This was our final destination for the day and we would spend the night here with Pabbi’s sister Hjördís who greeted us with many hugs and laughs. She is so Pabbi’s sister, just hearing the tone and mannerisms she would use to say Pall was a laugh.  The night could only get better because for tea we had Fish Soup. I had never had Fish Soup before and have not since and I must say I went into it a bit wary but oh my, it was utter heaven!!!

Then after lots of chatting and looking at photos it was time for bed just like it is for me now. 🙂