We went for breakfast, and I finally took a photo of the breakfast we had every morning (except this place had fruit, too).
We were on the road by 9:30, and stopped in Grundarfjörður to load up on Icelandic candy to give to friends. We found a small grocery store/gas station, and bought about 30 assorted candy bars.
Just outside of town, we saw a nice spot we wanted to explore, so we pulled off the road. When we got out of the car, we found a couple with children, all hunched over. Turned out they were picking blueberries, which were growing everywhere.
At least, I think they were eating them. We tried a couple, but they weren't actually very tasty.
We decided to hike up the nearby waterfall a bit, just to see what was around. We didn't know the name of the small series of falls, or evern if it had a name, so I just called it Blueberry Falls.
There were a few 'tiers' to the waterfall, and the climb up the each level was pretty steep. We were hoping to get about the top waterfall (that we could see) but there was a pure vertical incline and a barbwire fence keeping us away. But we made it to the biggest waterfall, so we were happy.
We traveled out along the Snæfellsnes peninsula, and stopped a few times to run around in the jagged landscape.
Eventually we came to a sign that told us Vatnsborgarholl, Vatnsborg and Grasholl were near by. We had no idea what those things were, but a sign just pointed out from the road into the landscape, indicating whatever it was, was only a mere 2 km-3km away.
We were kind of in a hurry, but we decided to check it out. We had no idea what we were looking for. It soon because evident that, although 3 kilometers is not far if you're jogging on a paved road, it's a lot longer when you're stumbling over jagged terrain, avoiding pits and cracks big enough for a person to fall into.
I know now that Vatnsborgarholl, Vatnsborg and Grasholl are deep, volcanic craters, but we had no clue. Eventually we realized this land was so torn up and filled with fissures and holes that we must much be looking for a crater or something. But we weren't sure where or what exactly.
For instance, was the massive hole pictured below one of the sights? I don't think so... but maybe?
Eventually we found something that was unmistakable important. It had ropes warning you of the massive pit ahead. There were ferns growing up out of the crater, but I couldn't tell if the bottom was anywhere in sight. I'm pretty sure it was Vatnsborg.
The wind was whipping across the barren landscape, but the sun was intense, so it was a strange mix of getting really hot, then getting freezing cold. The walk back was quiet and fast. We both knew we had a car to return in Reykjavik that night, and this exursion had taken way longer than planned.
The car was a tiny dot in the distance, and we got back to the car pretty disheveled from the wind and trying to run over the rocky, unstable terrain.
We stopped at Dritvik, which had more bizarre rock formations thought to be trolls turned to stone.
We stopped at a restaurant near Arnarstapi, and somewhere near there, I think, we noticed a bit crack in a cliff wall. You could barely notice it from the road, but we decided to investigate.
Turns out the crevice had a stream running out of it, and we used rocks to step inside to find a large cave, deep cave. The cave went far back, and got narrower and narrower, and after a while we were just walking on stones poking out of the stream, and by the time we found a small waterfall at the back, I was using the cave walls to straddle my way across. The whole cave was amazing, magical and probably both of our favorite sights of the trip.
After that, we really had to get back to Reykjavik. We were racing the clock since we had to return the car at 10 PM at Baldursbra (where we began our trip) and we were still hoping to get to the Blue Lagoon, which is an hour or so past Reykjavik.
Despite having to go through the city in bad-ish traffic, we made it to the Blue Lagoon, and spent and hour or so in the hot springs.
We went back towards Reykjavik, and since we didn't have our GPS (that ran out of batteries on the first day) we were pretty worried about finding our way into town. We didn't know any street names, but we had an ok sense about the part of the city we were in.
With the help of a friendly gas station attendant (who spoke English amazingly well, so much so that I kind of thought she was from the Midwest), we got a good, free map and some general directions. They weren't perfect, but with some improvisation we pulled up to Baldursbra with a whopping 10 minutes to spare.
Exhausted, we checked in and went out on foot to grab some food. After one of the most frustrating dining experiences ever (and that's saying something, considering pretty much every dining experience we had in Iceland was strange or frustrating in one way or another. Although the food itself was almost always fantastic), we finally crashed for the last night.
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