Today, just for something different, we visited a waterfall. Waterfalls are a resource Iceland has in great supply. Today's waterfall had a small difference, you can walk behind this one.
Seljalandsfoss, as it is called, falls from a high lake plateau over a shallow cave, allowing people to walk all the way around the waterfall. Which is what we did. Even though we had waterproof jackets and pants we will got a little wet as we walked the slippery path.
Once we had done this we continued on our way to Thor's Wood, a green cliff valley with a dry river bed. On the way we stopped at a little grotto that required us to cross a stream to enter. Problem was that the bridge to cross said stream was only 2 planks of wood laid over rocks in the water. Amazingly the 2 old Japanese ladies were over this bridge in seconds, leaping like young gazelle bounding across a steam in Africa. We were next and made it across although not as gracefully as they did. Arms were out stretched and there were a few wobbles as we gingerly made our way across the boards. After a while we were all across, even the old Indian couple, although they got their mesh trainers soaking wet, which meant they did not participate in any of the other activities later on in the day, or the next.
Past the stream was a squeeze into a cave, with an open shaft that let the light in. From here we could see the stream we had crossed pouring out of the darkness of the mountain, from some underground lake. We made our way back into the sunlight and were soon back across the stream and in the bus continuing on to Thor's Wood.
Thorsmerk is the Icelandic name for Thor's Wood, a large region of what likely used to be a wooded mountain and valley system. Today there are no woods, but plants and moss cover everything but the dry river bed that was our path. Mick and I, along with the 2 Japanese women, lead the walk up the river bed, surrounded on either side by the tall green walls of the narrow canyon. At some point we decided to head back to the bus, and then had to wait for the Fab Five to come back. We then drove a few kilometres to our lunch stop at the camp for a hiking enthusiast group. There were a few toilets and some tables to eat lunch at. We also did a walk up the closest 'hill' which involved numerous steps, and sore knees, but also some great views of the valley.
This was our practice run as after lunch we had a longer hour long hike up a mountain. Thankfully there were next to no steps on this longer hike, and though it was hard going in places, it seemed relatively easy. The 2 old Japanese ladies did amazingly well, at times it appeared we were more out of breath than they were. We were hiking between two volcanoes - one we could see, Katla, peaked in snow - the other was Eyjafjallajökull, the volcano responsible for grounding aircraft across Europe in recent years. This volcano was so big that we couldn't see the top of it as it was covered in low lying cloud.
From the summit of peak we climbed you could see the valley below for miles, and in the distance more mountains off to the north-west.
We then headed further east by bus to our next hotel in Skaftafell, which would be our base for two nights. The following day we were due to climb a glacier and do a glacier lake cruise.
The hotel in Skaftafell was luxurious in terms of space compared with Reykjavik, as we had 3 beds in our room to choose from.
Medical update: Mick's neck, shoulders and back were still causing significant pain. The regular doses of neurofen and dencorub were barely working. The pain seemed to subside after a few beers, but at $16 a pop, this was expensive medication. We tried to book into a physiotherapist for when we got back to Reykjavik, but it seemed that one of the two therapy clinics was closed for holidays (?!?) and the second was booked out till August. Next challenge was to find a physiotherapist in Oslo (in 6 days time).
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