south to the southwest

may 11th

on our last day of the ring road, we checked out some waterfalls - Barnafoss and Hraunfossar - the former meaning "children's waterfall" because two kids died there (made it a lil scarier to walk around and take photos....) and the latter meaning "lava falls" as the glacier water melter from Langjökull flows under the surrounding lava field and forces its way out between rocks and plants into the river below.

we also went to the Deildartunguhver, Europe's largest hot springs, where we thought we could take a dip until we got there and read a sign realizing that the water is 100°C - that's 212°F!  oh and it stunk like rotten eggs too.

Hvalfjörður was our last hurrah...and by hurrah i mean fjord.  we drove around the whole thing which woulda been much more cool had i not needed to go to the bathroom half the time.  some fun facts about this fjord (which i read while trying to get my mind off the aforementioned pain) - it was a naval base for the allied forces in WWII; it means "whale fjord" because there was a lot of whaling here back in the day; and this is where the black plague entered iceland and from there spread across the island.

 

we're now back in reykjavik - the big city where 2/3 of the country's population lives and where i finally have internet connection to upload all these photos.  the airport is back open but the flights to seattle were cancelled yesterday and today.  hopefully not tomorrow.  damn volcano. 

oh another fun fact - the volcano that has been shutting down all flight activity here, Eyjafjallajökull (btw - per wiki is pronounced ɛɪjaˌfjatlaˌjœkʏtl - say wha??), is supposed to be a prelude to Katla, the big volcano.  apparently this volcano erupted in the 1700s and all the crap messed up things back then too - including French farming...which led starving people...who got pissed at the aristocrats and monarchy and so came the French Revolution.   true story.