LJ and NJ

Norma and i, along with our friends Pattie and Sherry, are on vacation in Iceland.  Norma and i arrived 4 days ago (Wednesday, July 26th).  We have been staying in the capital city, Reykjavik, but will be leaving here tomorrow by car for the Westfjords.  While here we have had several outings, some in the city, and one a bus tour of the south coast of the island.  We took Gray Line Tours, which offers an all-day tour of the coast east of the city.  We would go to see three famous and towering waterfalls and spend time on two black sand beaches.  If that sounds leisurely, which is what we expected, including, of course having someone else drive us, it was not.  What we didn’t realize is (a) the distances we would cover were more extensive than we’d thought, so much time was spent driving; (b) crowds were everywhere we stopped.  This meant that the lines for bathrooms were intimidating.  In one place where we stopped (where we were also supposed to buy lunch), there was a line of about 30 for the women’s room.  There were, for reasons unclear to us, 4 sinks, but only one stall.  Needless to say, it was that or lunch.  Lines for lunch also more impressive than I’d have liked.

At one of the waterfalls the guide said, well, we have 20 minutes here and then must leave.  So, if you walk really really fast and don’t go to the bathroom and don’t try to buy coffee, you might get halfway up the path to the waterfall.

At a famous and beautiful black sand beach, with also boasted pretty spectacular basalt cliffs, we were told we had 1/2 hour available.  So we rushed to the beach, then back to the bus which, meanwhile, had gotten stranded in the black sand mud just outside the parking area.  We were delayed there for an hour waiting for bus rescue.  At that point we were 1 1/2 hours out of Reykjavik, with farmlands and waterfalls between us and the city.  The driver tried to prevail upon another Gray Line tour bus driver to pull us out.  He declined.  Eventually a local farmer came by with a vehicle that could do the trick, and did.  We couldn’t go back to the beach while awaiting bus rescue, because we never knew when we’d have to be back on the bus.  So we stood around and watched the proceedings.  It was all kind of funny, except it was also kind of frustrating.

We stopped at another spectacular waterfall on the way back to the city.  This one had a path which went behind the waterfall, and we climbed up to do that.  Pretty fun though of course also pretty wet!