Life on Mars

The Festival of the Worm involved carnival floats, fire-breathing and bizarre shadow puppetry late into the night so today was a late start. We spotted our first reindeer (in fact our first animal of any size) on our way out of town, then settled into a long, slow climb into the wind for much of the morning. Sadly the gas station, for which we'd been headed all morning, was of the variety that offers nothing but the pump itself.

We climbed steeply on a dirt road out of the valley leaving the farmland behind us. Up here was a whole new Martian landscape with nothing but barren rocks and a ferocious wind. The wind dominated the afternoon: first pushing us along for 20 km at a record-breaking average speed of over 40 km/hr, then reducing us to walking pace in the granny ring on the flat. With the wind this strong, even a cross-wind was hard to fight, blowing clouds of dust into our faces and leaving us veering wildly across the road, particularly in the wake of passing traffic.



Tonight we stopped in the hamlet of Grimstadir. No hot tub tonight but an inspiring picturesque, remote setting on the plains.