Iceland Day 6

Excited to be in civilization again, we decided to explore the largest northern city, Akureyri, a little bit more. We walked around some cool bookstore with stories about the invisible elves and the "magic spells" they cast, haha one of them gave the recipe for getting "eyebrows on fleek". It was pretty funny. For breakfast we wandered over to Blaa Kannan cafe and munched on some food and coffee while journaling. I made it a point to journal every single day while in Iceland. I didn't want to forget anything from the trip and was really proud to have remained dedicated and consistent in my journaling every day. Then, even though it was between 30 and 40 degrees Fahrenheit, we heard about how amazing the ice cream at Brynja was so we couldn't leave the city without having a taste. The three flavors they had were vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry and the texture was kind of like soft serve. It was pretty delicious actually, and the cold didn't bother us anyways.

During our long drive to the next Airbnb in Skagaströnd, North Iceland, we took an off road detour through the 745 road to see some coastal views a pair of travelers we bumped into earlier in the trip had recommended. It was raining the whole way but the floor finally wasn't completely covered in snow! It was green and brown and sometimes it had an orange/red tint.

Wei also walked all the way out onto a thin rocky ledge (it was pretty high up check out the picture below) and gave us a mini heart attack by counting really loud starting at "ONE... GET READY TO TAKE MY PICTURE"! We shouted back "WEI DON'T DO IT"...... which he responded then with a "TWO....", so I got my camera ready, and on three he jumped and and I snapped it just at the right time. The guys were joking about being worried about the next steps we would've had to take if Wei fell because he was the one pocketing the car keys and we would've been stranded.. LOL but honestly we were a teeny bit worried. My dad, while dropping the five of us off at the airport before the trip, had instructed me to remind everyone to "never risk your life for fun".. well... sorry dad. Shrug. 

PC: Wei's Psick Pics

During the last stretch of the drive, we decided to take one last pit stop at a gas station to grab some food and take a bathroom break. We ended up choosing an awesome gas station to do it at because it was here that we met our new Icelandic friend Oscar. He was super chatty and such a jokester. He started asking us all about America, the TV show Impractical Jokesters, all the fried foods in Texas, and American politics of course. He really liked us and ended up telling us about this traditional Icelandic Christmas drink they had that was basically two sodas mixed together. He proceeded to take out a bottle of the malt extract soda drink and a bottle of the applesin soda from the fridge and poured us five FREE samples of this delicious mixed traditional drink and cheers-ed with us. He was such a homie. Also random fun fact, I learned that the "WC" that marked all the bathrooms stood for "water closets" today. I feel slow to learn but hey, better late than never!

PC: Wei's Psick Pics

PC: Wei's Psick Pics

PC: Wei's Psick Pics

PC: Wei's Psick Pics

Iceland Day 5

We all slept in and woke up late-ish. We sat together around the tablet and ate a big breakfast together. The restful peaceful morning was the perfect way to start the day before we headed out! Hverir was our first stop, and oh boy, it STANK. It smelled like one humungo fart. It's a sort of sulfur hot spring area, and the sulfur smell was a bit different than what we smelled in the faucets in Reykjavik. It was much much much stronger of a rotten egg smell. It was kinda cool though because there were some holes in some of the rocks where steam just shot out non-stop. Our shoes got super muddy walking through, but honestly it was so cool to look at and walk through. After holding our breath for a bit, we finally got to focus on how the mud floors and swamps were an amazing mix of red, yellow, green, silver, and blue. It felt like we were on another planet, like Mars or something. 

Eventually we had enough of the stink and we decided to wipe off our muddy boots and continue on trekking to the next location, the Myvatn Nature Baths. We got extremely excited since they voluntarily accepted our American UC Davis Student IDs which provided us with a good 1200 ISK (~$11.51 American dollar) discount. Woot woot! This was the first dip we've had in the amazing well known sulfur-filled aquamarine waters we had all been looking forward to. We first all had to shower naked (like take off your swim suit butt-naked kind of naked) in the showers before putting on our swim suits to head into the pool. The signs are very clear about which parts of your body you need to scrub clean first, and this is all to respect and preserve the cleanliness of their nature baths, so it's important to respect that. Janae and I just took turns to brave the being naked (because there was an Icelandic lady scolding a couple other travelers for keeping their swim suits on during the pre-shower). Then we slipped into the water, which had an amazingly silky and slippery feel. Felt soooo nice on my skin. Wei left his ring on and it turned it from silver to this cool sort of black. He actually really liked what it did to the jewelry so he contemplated slipping some back for our jewelry making friend to play with, but it didn't end up happening haha. 

The sulfur/silica water is apparently super good for your skin, but bad for your hair, so tie that hair up ladies! I waded around and was a bit in awe because I didn't realize that natural water could be that beautiful a color. I really enjoyed this nature bath because it wasn't too crowded. It was nice to have our space and to enjoy the mountain-filled scenery around us. Our bodies went from running across the freezing 30 degree wind to the warm water, so it felt crazy warm at first, but it started to feel a bit lukewarm after a while. This was when we realized there was a small heated tub on the side with hotter water, so we dipped into that for a while to warm up even more. We ventured into the steam rooms on the side and met another American couple from Vermont! We chatted for a bit before leaving to try and find Lake Myvatn.

PC: Wei's Psick Pics

We drove in circles and circles looking for Lake Myvatn. We were extremely confused and felt super lost because even though Google Maps told us we were at the vista point, we saw nothing but fields of snow. Then it clicked. We realized that we actually were standing right to the lake the entire time, but the entire lake was just frozen and covered in so much snow. LOL we felt like we were on a wild goose chase, but that's what we get for visiting the lake after a huge day of heavy snow I guess. It was slightly disappointing but pretty funny. 

Then on our drive back through to the Airbnb, Harry noticed on Google Maps that Goðafoss, another crazy amazing waterfall in Iceland, was only 1km away from where we were. We took a quick spontaneous detour (don't know how in the heck we missed placing that on our itinerary) and sprinted to the falls before the sun set. We all got so excited and it was definitely one of the top waterfalls we had seen all trip. It was empty of tourists because it was so late in the day. The water was huge, majestic, and again a gorgeous hue of aqua blue. Best detour ever!!

Even though we were all extremely tired, we had just driven in to Akureyri, one of the biggest northern cities in Iceland. We hadn't been in a big city for a good few days now, so Janae and I pulled our butts up from the couch, put on some cute lipstick, and we all headed over to Græni Hatturinn, a pub/bar area to watch and Icelandic rapper perform. Honestly, we loved the vibe because we felt like such locals. In fact, I'm pretty sure we were the only non-locals there. We all ordered a glass of Tuborg Lager and sat at a table right in front of the performers. He started off fully clothed, but started taking off one shoe... then the other shoe... then his shirt.. (don't worry that's all he took off) and revealed a bunch of drawings on his body (some inappropriate and some not). On his stomach he wrote a big arrow pointing down towards his stomach to the words "this machine kills falafels". He had a couple little phallic images drawn on his arm and sides, and a huge one on his back. We honestly didn't understand a word he said because the rap was 90% in Icelandic. All we could catch were the swear words because those were the only things he said in English heh. At one point, he even stood on the chair at our table right next to Janae and started dancing and rapping like crazy. Wei even tried to hand him  a beer when he was up there, but he didn't take it. The beats they dropped were pretty sick and we were diggin the feels of all his songs. It was a crazy fun local spot and did not regret mustering up the energy to explore that not one bit.