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Soongies' Great Adventure
A planned wakeup at midnight to see the northern lights was unsuccessful. The clouds were still hanging around and were getting bigger and thicker each hour. In the morning, the clouds were dense and looking quite mean. The first stop on the way to Grundarfjordur was the petrol station and it was here that the first flurries of snow started and the wind started whipping the flakes around. It was quite scary driving to the west as that clouds seemed very menacing in that direction! A while down the road, there was a minor road running to the north to a place called Hvítserkur. This 30 km stretch of road was a rough track with numerous potholes all over the place which was ******* the little Kia Picanto but it made it through to the end. Hvítserkur is an impressive basalt column standing 15 m high which used to serve as the plug of an old volcano. The legend around it involves a troll who was turned into stone because he forgot to hide from the sunlight during the day. The rest of the drive was almost as bad as that road to Hvítserkur. It was mostly gravel, full of potholes and plenty of blizzards and howling winds. The weather was strange - snow would suddenly start flying into the windscreen and then a minute later, the sun would be shining and it would seem like there was no snow at all a few minutes ago. At one stage, after passing over one of the many single lane bridges in Iceland, we stopped to take photos of a sparkling waterfall in the sunshine. In the 10 seconds it took to stop the car, get out and take a short walk to the waterfall, the weather changed and we got pummelled by wind and snowflakes - they sound nice but they feel like pins stinging the face! The last hour of the drive felt like we were in a prehistoric landscape with red and green moss covered hills with rivers of white snow, black crumbly rock covered with thick pale mosses along the road side and misty clouds descending all around. The only things missing were dinosaurs! One last stop before Grundarfjordur at Kolgrafafjördur to take in the view of the snow capped mountains. In 2012 and 2013, 50,000 tonnes of herring died in this fjord due to landfill and construction work around. Apparently, it is also a common spot to see whales and seals however none were sighted that day. Grundarfjordur is a cute little town next to Mt. Kirkjufell - a 463 m high free standing mountain. We settled into our accommodation at the hostel and stayed in for the afternoon since the weather was quite patchy! A pizzeria was a tempting alternative to cooking dinner so a little reconnaissance mission was carried out on the walk to the car (braving the storm of hailstones) and the drive to the supermarket. The situation report was not good - $30 for one pizza! Instead it was buttered vegetables (buttered because our travelling pantry does not include any cooking oil) and pasta. The vegetables were very colourful though - eggplant, orange capsicum, corn kernels, purple cabbage, mushrooms, leek - so it was appealing to see and tasty! As the Dutch might say, "Lekker!" And for dessert - an orange and a cheeky store bought pancake (with butter!).
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