We grabbed our lunches off the bus - sandwiches of smoked lamb, shrimp and salmon creamed cheese, vegetable cheese spread on Wasa, sliced cheese, dried fish, raisins and nuts, apples, oranges, "German bread" - every day it was a variation of the above and some other goodies I'm not remembering right now. I always had plenty to eat and my taste buds were never bored.
Out we went on the whale-watching boat, loaded to the gills (but with enough life-preservers). There are 3 all wooden boats now in this local fleet, and since they are so quiet they don't disturb the whales as much as other types of boats. We saw lots of gulls and several puffins on the water, and finally straight ahead of us it looked like there were 2 logs floating in the water. This was kind of weird, seeing as there were no forests of huge trees to birth 2 logs of that size, and as we got closer we finally realized that they were 2 humpback whales - napping! The captain couldn't believe that we'd snuck up on them like this. Penny, the marine biologist in our group, was on Cloud 9 - and several of us joined her there because there was something incredible about watching such huge mammals -and asleep, at that! Soon the 2 other wooden boats joined us and we all just watched them in silence. There was a rhythmic "fwoo-fwap!" every 4 minutes or so when they breathed.
Suddenly, one of them woke up and rolled, and when it realized that they were surrounded by boats, woke the other one up and they disappeared under the water. After a few minutes of waiting, they resurfaced and one of them raised its nose out of the water to peer at one of the other boats - wow! It was slow-motion wonderment for all of us. Then they disappeared for good and we took off after some porpoises who were much too fast for our boat. What a neat find, though!
PUN ALERT -
"I knew there was a porpoise to this trip!" - Dave
"Well, there's no use blubbering about it." - Greg
We then drove to the natural hot springs pool near Mývatn - passed our first smoking hillside - and enjoyed a nice soak in the geothermal springs. The water is an amazing translucent blue, but the bottom of the springs is covered with little black beads of lava. There were a few well-signed areas that noted that the water at that point was 100C so be careful, and occasionally you'd feel a little extra warmth if you got too close to those areas. Soothing, though.
Afterwards was when the fun began. Sólla had told us to follow the path "it's only 15 minutes from the campsite" and we somehow took a deviation, ending up about an hour late for dinner. In the meantime, we located what seemed to be the only dense thicket in all of Iceland with nothing but dead-end paths. What to do next? Since we were already standing up, Valdi's joke wasn't helping us - but there was a large pile of rocks nearby that Sue and I climbed on top of. Now we could see The Digger (bulldozer) that we'd passed on the way to the hot springs, so we plotted a course that did not include making our way through the thicket. It was probably a good thing that there was still plenty of daylight! We eventually came to the white-picketed path and were soon within sight of the road.
But the adventure was not over yet! When we were about 50 yds from the road, a police car drove up to the gate, lights flashing. We all felt terrible and just knew that we'd caused Sólla so much distress that she'd had to call the police to look for us! However, they just wanted to put up a sign. Whew! Dinner that night was pýlsur with crunchy onions and pýlsursinnapur (Icelandic hotdogs and mustard - really good! I think Ian ate 4...) Baked bananas with melted Snickers inside for dessert. And then a little walking around the campsite to look at the ducks and other waterfowl. My tent looked right out over the lake. Great view!"It's only 15 minutes away" became a saying for the rest of the trip, and I have to say that Sólla was very good natured about it!
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