Iceland – Land of LIES (Day 2)

We woke up to the sound of hard rain. Early. Like 5 am early. We had to get to our super amazing ice cave tour under the glacier by 9am, which meant we had to hit the road super early if the driving was going to be anything like yesterday. That one-hour drive was likely to turn into three hours. We looked outside and most of the snow outside had either disappeared or turned to slush. The rain was coming down really hard. In fact, when I took the first of our bags out to the parking lot, our car was in about 6 inches of water. (wish I had a photo of that)

I went to the front desk to ask about a take-away breakfast (breakfast was included with the price of our hotel room). I overheard some people talking about leaving before breakfast and the desk guy said they put together a small bag of breakfast items for them to take if they had to leave before breakfast started. The front desk person told me it was possible, but I should really check on the status of our ice cave tour, since they shut it down when it rains really hard, since the caves flood. I hopped online and checked, and sure enough it was cancelled.

I tried to call the tour operator, but they said they don’t answer their phone until 8. Sigh. But what could we do? We did the only thing we COULD do. We had a VERY nice breakfast buffet at the hotel restaurant. The food was impressive, quality, quantity, and variety. All kinds of bread, meat slices, cheese, eggs, bacon, sausage, skyr (Icelandic yogurt), juices, and tons of other things. However, the hotel guests were crazy aggressive, since most were on tour busses and had to leave right away – lots of pushing and elbowing. This is a photo of how impressive their butter game is in Iceland.

I went back to the room and called the booking place at 8 and they said the tour was STILL ON, (WHAT?!?!?!?!?!) but we clearly weren’t going to make it. That didn’t go well. I assured them the website told me my tour was cancelled and they said it was incorrect. Apparently, there had been some merger of two tour companies and some of the systems were going haywire. Angrily, I said we would see them soon, since we were going to drive directly to the booking office. D.Rough and I had decided we were going to drive over to the Glacier Lagoon in Jokulsarlon, about an hour away, so we knew we could swing by their office and have a chat about getting a refund.

The rain made driving difficult in the slush, but we made it. The tour booking office is next to the visitor center which is a busy road. When I say “road”, I mean “2 inches of ice”. Literally. We actually got a good photo of it, since the sun came out briefly. You'll also notice, if you look closely, there's a car that slid off the road into crystal blue water up to the doors. It's insane driving here in the winter.

The people at the tour company were actually EXTREMELY nice and apologetic and told us that all of the cave tours had definitely been cancelled and this merger was causing all kinds of issues. She told us we’d get an email , but if we didn’t, we should email them and ask for the refund. Well, that went better than I expected, frankly. I actually felt a lot better about it.

Right next to the visitor center were two massive glaciers coming down the mountainside. We grabbed a few photos, since it was still sunny this particular moment. The glaciers are absolutely beautiful.

We continued the drive to Jokulsarlon and the glacier lagoon. It was very beautiful terrain, but the roads still weren’t awesome. See? This is a "road" in Iceland.

And this is a road, too!

And another road!

However, by the time we got there, the roads were pretty safe and drive-able. Basically, the glacier slides down the mountain and drops off massive chunks of ice into the lagoon. This is how some icebergs are born. Once the icebergs melt down a little bit, they can fit through this fast moving channel and float out to sea. We took a ton of photos at the Glacier Lagoon, but I’ll only show you a few.

We walked across the road and went to the black sand “diamond” beach. A lot of the icebergs wash up on to the shore of this volcanic black sand beach and look like diamonds in the sunlight. It’s fascinating. Again, we took a boatload of photos here, but I’ll only post a few.

We even stole a couple of tiny icebergs to throw in our cooler and keep our drinks cold – brilliant idea!

And another waterfall on the way to our new house!

But, we were cutting it close with our VRBO rental meet-up time, especially knowing how far we had to drive. Another 4 hours back the way we came. And by “four” hours, I mean “ten”. …back the way we came through the ice- and slush-covered roads and mountain passes, and through Vik. This is a photo from the beach at Vik.

Remember, I said the weather gets worse after dark? It now made sense why our VRBO owner wanted us to get to the rental house before dark. She had to drive back to her actual house in Reykjavik (and go through the mountain pass of doom), and wanted to make it there alive.  We got to our place, just after the time we told the lady we would. Her and her lovely husband walked through everything – kitchen, bathroom, sauna, and everything else, and then told us the hot tub wasn’t working. The reason we booked this place. DAMMMMIT. Not pleased. D.Rough sent her an email after they had left (and after she had calmed down a bit) and they offered to buy us a day at the Fontana spa. If that was all they could do, then fine, we’d take it.

For the record, the house we rented was quite amazing. Tons of glass to the outside world, granite countertops, geothermal heated floors, very modern and minimalist, and really just beautiful! (We took these in the daylight on a different day, since it was dark, but we wanted you to see how awesome the house was!)

Did I mention that now, since it was after sundown, the weather was throwing ice balls at us at 30-40 mph. Wonderful.

Even though it was dark out and dangerous conditions, we went to a grocery store in Selfoss (about a 20 minute drive, but only half way up the mountain this time) (maybe not our smartest move). We were tired, so shopping was difficult, especially with the language barrier. We spent a crap load on groceries (since everything is expensive in Iceland), but we had enough food to last us a few days. We came back to the house and made pasta with meat sauce and drank to calm my ragged nerves. The wind was really howling this night and you could hear it through the thick glass of the house. It sounded crazzzzzzy outside. But with the help of some Tylenol PM and earplugs, we managed to get some decent sleep!

Day 1   |   Day 3