Today started with about an hour turn around from the day before for rest we got assembled and headed over to the Hotel Holt to be picked up for our Vestmannaeyjar trip. The Holt is basically 2 houses away from where we are staying so it wasn't much of a hike to get there. The bus was perhaps a couple minutes late but we made it down and signed in for our trip and then our driver started the two plus hour trek over to the ferry to Vestmannaeyjar which means Westmann Isles. They are a 15 island archipelago of which really one is inhabited. The drive was basically uninteresting and a few of us nodded off during the ride. We did drive out of fog into the ferry port which was out in the sun basically when we got there.
The ferry ride over was quite easy and took about a half an hour or so to get there. From there we were brought into the Cafe Kro and set up for the first part of the trip which was a boat ride around the isles. The boat ride was fun and the sun stayed out but the wind really picked up as we went along. We got to see puffins and other birds as well as a lot of the interesting lava, basalt and other rock formations that made up the isles. We also pretty much passed right by the fish packing plants which smelled significant. As the wind picked up the water got rougher and it basically became impossible to stay topside on the boat without getting soaked. I get seasick on the inside of small boats so I had to stay out there and did literally get soaked top to bottom. Dee remained outside also. Fortunately some portions of the trip weren't so windy as the islands provided shelter but the final run into the harbor was insane and there were a few moments I felt I could easily get thrown out of the boat, and I am pretty steady on my feet in the boat. There was also a short stop into a sea cave where the captain played the saxophone for the excellent acoustics inside it. Overall the boat trip was fun but I was drenched by the time it was over.
The brought us back into the Cafe Kro where we were fed warm bread and cauliflower soup which was a touch salty. It was dry inside and Dee got lucky because the place noticed how drenched she was and the provided her some temporary clothes while they sent hers to someone's house to be dried. Some of us found the lone gift shop and bought some dry souvenir clothes which we changed into in the Kro bathrooms. They then took us on a bus tour around the island where we saw Heimaey which erupted in 73 amongst the main highlight. They also had a small excavation of some of the houses that were buried by the ash. To put it in perspective as we think about eruptions, this was basically a 4 month pouring of ash more than it was anything like we typically think of volcanoes. Most of the approximately 800 houses lost or damaged were basically buried in the ash. The other perspective item was realizing that we were standing on land that was younger than us as it was created in 1973. It isn't really something you can say often. That's kinda cool to think about. During the bus tour the wind really picked up which did help dry out my clothes a little bit but not really enough at least for my pants.
After the bus tour we found dinner at the Cafe Maria at the suggestion of our guide "Willy." Pete and I split a Special pizza which had ham, pepperoni, mushrooms and jalapenos and was really good. They even presliced it for us so we could eat it like Americans. I had a Tuborg Classic to accompany which is of course a Danish beer but they had the Egils Gull as their Icelandic offering and I had it the night before. After the pizza I had one of their ice cream dishes which had straciatella, caramel and whipped cream. It was also quite good. We apparently were a bit long in eating but did manage to get on the ferry before it left. The ferry ride was very rough as the winds were still very high. We did make it back in one piece however the guide left his keys on the island by accident in the process of loaning Dee his jacket. This meant a few extra minutes of wait when we boarded a standard bus which got us to a bus stop in Reykjavik where we were picked up by another bus guide from the tour company who got us to the Hotel Holt. He wouldn't listen to us when we asked him to stop in front of our house instead. From there it was basically wind down time. The two days felt like one giant combined day. It was very exhausting.
The pictures from today can be found here.
2 comments:
Actually, the eruption was not just ash, but also a long... I think they call it a slit eruption? The lava pours slowly out of a long crack in the ground. There was a lot of concern, at the time, that the eruption was going to close off the harbor, since the lava was all flowing that way. They talked, briefly, about how someone from the main island came in with fire boats and they sprayed ocean water along the lava flows, cooling it faster and causing it to harden closer to the "original" Heimaey rather than blocking the harbor. You can imagine, for a place whose primary industry is and was fishing, that losing their best harbor would have been crippling. The entrance is a little smaller than it was, but, as it turns out, that helped make the harbor a better shelter, though they have to dredge more now than previously. Anyway, they didn't lose the whole town because the lava was flowing the other direction, and they didn't lose the harbor because of some radical thinking. Cool stuff.
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