Last weekend, Jó and I managed to get out of the city and hike on Esja. For those not in Iceland, Esja is the mountain north of Reykjavík. And luckily for us there's a bus stop at the base of the mountain, so off we went!
We hadn't hiked much lately, but we had gotten new equipment (mostly, hiking poles) so we were looking forward to this. We headed towards a summit at an altitude of almost 800 meters, but only made it to around 600 meters before heading back down. We had to catch a specific bus, otherwise it would be two more hours till the next one (We had to stop by relatives of Jó who were having a graduation party for one of their kids. Oh, and some guy at the party offered me a job selling Pylsur [hot dogs] at the van in Lækjargata at night. Tempting... but I'll stick with my job so far. Anyway...).
It was a nice hike, easy in parts and a bit more strenuous in others (though we didn't do the hardest part, at the top). The weather was overcast but warm by Icelandic standards (at least at the base). We later got a hiking map showing many different hikes on the mountain, so it will be fun to try some of those later.
And now, the pictures!
The view from sea level
Hiking Jó
Hiking me
Green
Purple
Cloudy
The shoreline from above
A self awarded victory cookie for reaching station #5
Little flowers
Rhyolite!
So... there should be a mountain right in front of us!
Near the top
The peak
Summit self portrait
Jó and the tabletop mountains behind her (you can even see a glacier from that spot, though not in this picture)
A snack on the way down
A cute waterfall with basalt columns
