off the grid

Saturday morning started with some scrambled eggs and peanut butter toast before hitting the Fimmvörðuháls trail. And I don't have the slightest clue how to actually pronounce that. It is supposed to take 10 hours to complete the 25km trail but a book we read cut it into thirds so we decided we'd try to tackle the first; we'd know because before the second you reach 'the bridge.'

There were 22 waterfalls in all before reaching 'the bridge' and passing between the Eyjafjallajökull and Mýrdalsjökull ice caps. Again, the pronunciation... your guess is as good as mine! Each waterfall was more magnificent than the previous. The whole trail was one of the most amazing things I've ever seen.

After a while, we thought about turning back, retracing our steps, back to the camp ground but we'd hear another fall in the distance and decide to keep going. Almost three hours had passed since we started and we still hadn't seen 'the bridge.' We were a bit tired and hungry and we knew that we had to walk all the way back so we turned around.

The magnitude of the valley is really difficult via photos, but it was hundreds of feet to the river below from the top. Mark is looking down to the bottom (to the right of the waterfall, below) but it was usually difficult to see because of all the mist in the air.

After a couple "roads less traveled" we made it back to the camp and drove to Skaftafell for the night. We paid for showers - $4 for 5 minutes; they put the time on a card; you entered the card into a machine and the water started flowing. I completely exhausted my 5 minutes; when the time hit zero, the water shut off - and camping before firing up the grill and hot plate for dinner. I was a bit skeptical of the bathroom/shower accommodations at the campgrounds but those Icelandic know how to host! The bathrooms were heated and much cleaner than most French restaurant bathrooms.

The camper van was equipped with a small sink, hot plate and electric cooler; we rented the grill. Iceland has the cleanest water in the world so most campsites had a fresh water hose to fill the water tank in the van... or we used two water bottles and took turns filling and dumping from a sink. Obviously it wasn't ever hot water, but it was still convenient to have. Below was our view outside the "back porch" for Saturday night. Other than a few neighbor campers, we looked at Vatnajökull, the largest glacier in Iceland. This picture was taken a little before 11:00pm. Since it's mid-summer, it didn't really get "dark" - sunset was around 11:30pm and sunrise around 3:30am. I woke up around 2:30am and walked outside; there were very few clouds then so it was pretty bright!