On the Tourist Loop

Taking advantage of our setting, we had a tradiational Icelandic breakfast with our hosts, a lovely old couple who ran the farm. Homemade jam, smoked lamb and yogurt, cunningly disguised as milk, which Steph poured in her coffee. The farmer´s hair and face reflected a life spent in the wild winds of northern Iceland, and perhaps his wife wasn't too keen on the climate either, remarking that she 'used to live by the sea, but he found me there and brought me here'.

We spent the morning visiting Dettifoss, billed as Europe's most powerful waterfall. The 28 km of dirt track to the falls would have been too slow-going on the tandem, so we tried our luck hitch-hiking. Being on the classic tourist loop, we were confident there would be plenty of traffic, and indeed we were picked up quickly. The falls were spectacular, and in glorious sunshine we scrambled along the rocky edges. Tourism in Iceland is sufficiently new that there are no safety barriers, though judging by the precarious perching of some visitors, they may not be far off. For our return to the tandem, our hitch-hiking was much less succesful, and we spent what seemed like a very long time walking through a driving dust storm before being picked up. We are still finding grit in unlikely places two days later.



In the afternoon we had a short cycle west, passing en route the mid-Atlantic ridge. In the overwhelming stench of sulphur, we marvelled at bubbling mud pits, hot fissures, and steam vents.



By evening we were in the tourist mecca of Lake Myvatn, and again finished the day in the hot tub of the local pool, like all cycling days should end.