Myvatn rest day

I'm tired from lack of sleep - well, YOU try sleeping with the lights on all the time! Mario, on the other hand, is tired from all the long distance driving he's been doing - which I can't help with since we rented a manual vehicle. Mario proposes a "rest" day: We stay another night on Lake Myvatn, and explore the area further through several small excursions, given than this is a highly active volcanic region and there is lots to see. I agree.

A quick stop for postcards, money and hike information for later on, and we hit the road for nearby Viti crater lake, in the shadow of Krafla mountain. Brilliant blue from mineral content, and surrounded by sulfur gas vents, Viti is at the northern end of the Krafla power plant zone. A trail runs up and around the caldera, and then down inside, near the vents. We follow the path, gazing down into not one, but three separate pools of milky blue water, as the volcanic mud cakes our hiking boots. Next to us, large white pipes carry highly pressurized steam to the geothermal plant. This very image inspired the impromptu writing of a movie scene where the main character, a spy, injured and cornered, uses a nearby sharp rock to break the pipe, releasing the steam and burning his enemy in the process. I'll spare you the rest of the details here, but suffice it to say, we were cracking each other up all the way down.

Heading back down further cakes our boots with Krafla(our affectionate nickname for all this sticky mud)- so much so that it adds about an inch of height and several extra pounds of weight. And it's not easy to remove, either, forcing us to remove our boots upon returning to the Duster.

By now, the drizzle that has set in has turned to full on rain pelting us in our rain jackets, but we press on - aiming for the Leirhrjurur Solfatars, the lava fields just across the valley from us. Jackets on and hoods up, we venture forth, into the black, craggy landscape, riddles with sulfur vents and bubbling mud ponds. We climb above the valley into the hardened path of a once-erupting volcano, lava flow sometimes porous and light, sometimes smooth and ribboney, and hard as glass. We think the path is circular, but it seems to pull away from our starting point, and if we keep going, we could end up walking all the way back to our campsite...We instead turn around.

It's a quick hop down to the Krafla Geothermal Power Station, where we take a quick look around the information centre, indulge in a complimentary coffee (or two), and remove most of the Krafla from our boots, then another short jump back to the Ring Road towards Lake Myvatn.

We briefly stop at Grjotagja, a grotto hiding an underground hot spring, made famous in the television series Game of Thrones. This means that all the big bus tours stop here, and suddenly the rather small cave is flooded with people, climbing in and out and all over the place in the ultra-small cave. We manage to just squeeze in a grab a couple of shots, before hightailing back out again - just another check on the list, really.

As per the conditions of our "rest" day(which has not been super restful thus far!), Mario drives me back to the campsite, with the lake view, and the duckies. Not one to sit still for long, he heads back out to hike another crater, while I relax the afternoon away. I watch the ducks paddle by, I take a nice LONG hot shower(thank you, geothermal energy!), I do some laundry, and catch up on my blog. Oh, and I might have indulged in a glass or two of the Icelandic drink of choice, Brennivin, a bottle of which has followed us throughout the trip.

This evening found us, and just about everyone else in the campground, sitting on the grassy knolls by the water, eating supper and watching the most AMAZING sunset over Lake Myvatn. Two loons floated by, joining the families of quackers casting silhouettes in all my photographs.