Hiking the Laugavegurinn trail

Well! We're already in August, and the summer is starting to slip by... And what a nice summer it's been. Plenty of beautiful weather, including the day with the highest recorded temperature ever in Reyjavík (26.2 degrees Celsius / 79 degrees Fahrenheit!). It's almost too good, for this place.

Don't be fooled by the lull in posting, we've been doing plenty of stuff this summer :). And there will be other posts after this one detailing our activities.

But this post is about hiking the Laugavegurinn trail. In mid-July, we decided, along with 4 friends of ours, to do this hike. It's a 3 day hike, 55 kms (34 miles) long , which takes you from the rhyolite mountains of Landmannalagar, through geothermal areas, to fields of obsidian rock, to a black sand wasteland, and finally through a real Icelandic forest (birch trees) with a great view of several glaciers. Oh and along the way, there are several unbridged glacial rivers, which we had to cross by foot. It was a seriously intense experience for me... As I'm sure Jó could tell you.

We camped for two nights, and carried all our stuff in our backpacks (which weighed close to 14 kilos / 30 pounds). The last day was particularly intense as we had to catch a bus by 3.30, and Jó had to soldier on through her 7-8 blisters to get there... But we made it! And as soon as we did, it started raining, after 3 days of great weather. That's luck.

Oh, the cabin at the end of the trail sells hot dogs. After three days of freeze-dried food and whatnot, those were the best hot dogs I've ever had.

And, now, the pictures. Many thanks to Jó for taking most of them! We had to do with the small camera, as the nicer one would have been to heavy to carry on the trip.

Pretty mountains in Landmannalaugar

Steam in a lava field

The erosion is taking out this mountain's burnt cover

Notice the almost bluish spots in some of the mountains

Rugged

The view of the first campsite, surrounded by shiny obsidian rocks

The snow looks like rivers between the mountains

A geothermal stream. Some spots even had boiling water!

The best view of the trip... Álftavatn lake viewed from a mountain 500 meters above it.

A mountain in the sunset, around 11pm.

Crossing the long black wasteland. People call it a desert though it's technically too wet to be a one, but it has almost no vegetation.

The glacier, always showing us the way

A (luckily) bridged river crossing

We had to go up and down so many mountains...

A very red field

The birch forests of Þórsmörk

On the way back, the bus had to cross some rivers too...

Glymur

Last weekend, we decided to go for a short hike and to take a look at the Glymur waterfall. It has the biggest vertical drop off of any waterfall in Iceland, however it is not as impressive as other waterfalls because the river itself is quite small.

The waterfall is found near the base of Hvalfjörður. Which meant that for the first time we drove on the edge of that fjord instead of taking the Akranes tunnel.

When we got to the end of the road, we started hiking. Unfortunately we had no map and no real idea of where the waterfall should be, so we wandered around aimlessly for a while until we found the right river. We were not able to see the waterfall since we ended up at a point quite downstream from it (it's a well hidden waterfall) and the sun was starting to set. So we'll have to go again later and find the damn thing next time :). But it was a nice little hike anyway, and the weather was quite nice. Here are some pics!

Uphill skiing?

Small stream

Jó sinking into the hay

The waterfall is somewhere along that ravine to the right

Looking down onto the river

Some basaltic columns

Hvalfjörður, before sunset

It's been a long time...

But I'm back :).

The last month or so has been a bit hectic, so I apologize for not posting more frequently. I have pictures from Norway and from some trips in Iceland too that I will be phasing in later. But for now, I will post the pictures from our most recent trip, to Italy (for our first wedding anniversary!).

We first went to an area called the Cinque Terre first, a group of 5 villages on the Northwest coast that seem to hang off the side of mountains. Very picturesque. The weather was great (we had our warmest temperatures in over a year, given the cool Icelandic summer). We even managed to swim in the sea! We had forgotten to bring our swimsuits, but thankfully we did not forget to bring underwear. So we used that.

We stayed in a room with a view of the harbour of one of the 5 villages, hiked on the path between the villages (there are no direct roads between them, only hiking paths), and took a cooking lesson. And just relaxed.

Here are some pictures from that trip.

The view from our room in Manarola

The view of the same town from the harbor, where we went for a dip

The hills looked a lot like Lebanon

Corniglia (that town on the left) from the South

Jó enjoying her seafood pasta there

Corniglia again, this time from the North

Vernazza

Narrow streets in Vernazza

The obligatory cat picture

Jó modeling for some mushroom pictures

Chopping onions

Fresh pasta with mushrooms... Mmm...

We wanted to hike, and went to Hveragerði...

But the weather looked like this.

So we stopped by the greenhouse / tourist trap that is Eden, and I got to hug a giant puffin.

Jó was able to make a friend too.

We'll have to come back another time for that hike, if the weather improves.