September 11th: The day starts very cloudy. We sleep late and eat brunch. We say goodbye to Erik and Nicole who take from here the daily bus to Reykjavik. We decide to continue the trek till Skogar, 20 Km's away. For today we have only 5 Km, until Basar hut. At halfway, we meet two French girls peaking huge mushrooms, the big are about half a Kg each. They tell us that these mushrooms are excellent. We start to peak and after 20 minutes have 3 Kg. |
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The big mushrooms are about half a Kg each. |
We are now only 1 Km from Basar hut, but have one more river to cross. Normally the bridge over the river should do, but as the river is flooding, the bridge stops in the middle of it. We start to cross the river holding each other hands, and discover that the current is too strong. As we start to be swept away, we jump to the other bank. I lose my sandals. We get wet as well as our bags and the camera. We're overwhelmed as we think of what could have happened. In Basar hut we see a large group of locals preparing all kinds of stews from the mushrooms they have picked. We also make a stew from our mushrooms. We find two more tourists in the hut. We sit together for supper. We look at the locals who are sitting in our table and the tables around us. They are eating huge amounts of BBQ meat and freshly grilled potatoes while we eat pasta and mashed potatoes made out of dried potatoes powder. We look at them with eager eyes and then with surprise when we see the amount of leftovers they throw in the garbage cans. We don't understand why they ignore us. They are so many and we are only 4 "poor" tourists. They could have offered us some of their food... Only when they see our mashed potatoes powder they start to talk with us, and offer to us the remaining 3 pieces of the cake that they have eaten. What a pity they didn't talk with us before and offered to us the meat... We go to the (very luxurious and illuminated) toilets and go to sleep exhausted. After all we had a difficult long day today - 5 Km in 5 hours.
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September 12th: Good weather today. We leave early and climb to the 1,000 m' pass, crossing snow fields, seeing from close glaciers and seeing an ash cone which reminds us that we're walking on a snow covered volcano. We get one Km out of the path in order to sleep in a more comfortable hut than the one situated on the path. Not surprisingly we have the hut to ourselves. Looking at the other hut we see that somebody is there. The scenery is overwhelming. We can see the sea 1,000 m' beneath us. I take a panoramic photo. We have one more day, all going down, to finish our trek. Going to sleep, we hope for good weather. |
| The ash cone reminds us that we're walking on a snow covered volcano. |
Not surprisingly we have the hut to ourselves.
September 13th: Our wishes are fulfilled in the morning. We start very early and walk with caution on the frozen snow fields. We go along the Skoga river, seeing many waterfalls, all the way down until the big Skogafoss (Skoga waterfalls) where we take pictures. We've made it ! We walked all the way from Landmannalaugar to Skogar, against all odds. Here in Skogar village, the governmentally-run Edda hotel is closed until next summer. It is opened especially for us so we can make a phone call to our parents. We skip the folk museum as we get a lift with a group of tourists to the main road. Since the daily bus to Reykjavik will arrive only in two hours, we decide to try to hitch hike. We discover that the Icelandic people don't like to give a lift. Most of them slow down their luxurious new 4WD jeeps, look at us, crazy tourists, amazed, and steer up, leaving us to freeze in the cold Icelandic wind. Thus in 2 hours we succeed to get on one car of a local farmer who takes us for only 10 Km. When the bus arrives we practically block the road and force it to stop for us. We don't want to take the chance that he won't see us and leave us to the (non-existent) mercy of the Icelandic car drivers... Back in Reykjavik, we go to a supermarket and buy products for the BBQ of the evening, where we celebrate the completion of this beautiful trek. |
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Skogafoss. |
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Last modified: Wed May 30th 17:05:00 IST 2001
