Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Ghosts and aliens (Part 2)

Here's the second part of my last weekend's trip. Sorry for not writing it after all yesterday. It's usually the worst day of the year for me so I wasn't up to writing anything.

After finally falling asleep to the initial nightmares I slept like a baby. I don't think I've had such a good night's rest during my whole stay here which is no surprise because the beds at home Reykjavík are not that great. The reason for me sleeping like a baby was as simple as that: IKEA. I noticed that all the furniture in the room was from that nice warehouse and saw that my mattress, blanket and pillow were the exact same ones as back at home in Finland, way to go globalisation! And it made me miss my bed at home...But I woke up to the sun shining into my face because a window was right next to my head and when I moved the curtain I only saw mountains right over us. The evening before we hadn't seen them since it already had been dark, but our guesthouse was actually situated by the food of a mountain! We had a quick breakfast, a short morning walk by the beautiful sea (only 100m away from our guesthouse) and after listening to the great tips of our host, we headed to the beach in Höfn. We were told that there were beautiful back beaches and we saw them and loved them but we also learned that we had been lied to here: There are mountain goats! We saw mountain goats on the mountain right next to us on the mountain! Our Icelandic Nature teachers only told us that only the arctic fox, mice, sheep, horses and reindeer live here. I still want an explanation for that. Though we came to the conclusion since a NATO station was by the beach those goats must have been some aliens they had made experiments on.
Vatnajökull glacier

We continued then to the center of Höfn to buy some food and were so lucky that the bakery in the supermarket had lots of free samples that day! So you can imagine you many pieces of cake and pastries I of course had. ;) And they were delicious. After this we were off to a quick short stop at Jökusárlón again, since we had to head back to Vík anyway. During bright day time and with many other tourists it had lost all of its magic and we didn't enjoy being there. The tourists kind of killed the mood and silence for it. We finally reached the Skaftafell Nationalpark way after our timetable. It's located right by the big Vatnajökull glacier (biggest one in Europe) in the South of Iceland. It's apparently one of the most beautiful places to hike but with our luck of course we found this message written in front of the visitor center: "WARNING! The paths are really icy and covered in snow, they are hard to pass." The guy in the center also advised us not to go except to the path leading to the glacier, what we had been wanting to do anyway. Plus I was the only one in the group without spikes... So we went towards the glacier and after some debating whether the field of ice contained underneath it water or sand (the answer is sand), we suddenly found ourselves on the tongue of the glacier. Oops. You are not supposed to go there. So we of course turned around and decided to head earlier than planned to Vík so we could enjoy its beautiful black beaches with the sunset. I don't know why but I find Vík and its beaches one of the most beautiful places here in Iceland. Maybe because of the ocean and nature being so raw there. We then went to pick up our keys for our rented cottage and headed again back to town to get some supper in a restaurant. The food was actually quite nice and not so expensive. I had a delicious lamb sandwich with french fries. In the darkness we then finally started returning to our cottage outside of the town. For that we had to drive in absolute darkness in the middle of nowhere on a small street with a few houses somewhere further away. Of course this atmosphere called for my friends to start talking about creepy little girls suddenly appearing on the street and other ghost stories. Everybody who knows me, knows how terrible I am at handling ghost stories. They just freak me out. Nothing on the street seemed nice anymore, even the lighted church at night seemed like the scariest thing in the world.
Vík
Statue by the beach
We finally got then after some trouble with parking our car (there were only huge junks of ice everywhere), I quickly enjoyed the most beautiful view of the starry night sky I had ever seen, and then we started bringing our stuff to the cottage in the absolute darkness. Of course still hearing stories about aliens etc. One of my friends asked in the middle of walking to the cottage: "Does anybody in Reykjavík know where we are?" Something you don't want to hear after ghost stories and being in the dark middle of nowhere! She meant it more like for safety reasons in case something happened with the car but we all were just freaked out. In the cottage curtains were quickly closed, we unpacked, did funny yoga exercises, had tea with chocolate and decided who slept where. When we then went to sleep and turned the lights off immediately one of my friends on the couch: "I can't sleep with the lights off! Now I'm too freaked out! We need some light for the night." We all were freaked out, truth be told. One of us then figured out a way to have a small light on because a group of 24-27 year olds was too scared to sleep in the dark. :D
And this is how we went to sleep, with the bathroom light on, the door only slightly opened, and my friend and I telling us cute stories about our animals so we wouldn't be scared anymore.

Last day tomorrow! :)

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