Day 89-Keflavík

   April 2-We woke to the bluest skies yet for my family's visit.  The views from the guesthouse were incredible, so we took some snapshots.

The kids rush back from petting the horses next door.  The lighthouse Garðskagaviti is in the background

View to the northeast across the Faxaflói bay.  This stretch of mountainous coastline encompasses the entire drive from Borgarnes to Reykjavík. After crossing the bridge at the mouth of Borgarfjörður, you drive between the sea and Hafnarfjall, which is the mountain on the left side of the picture.  You then drive behind Akranesfjall, which lies on the Akranes peninsula in the middle of the picture.  Finally, you skirt between the ocean and Mt. Esja, on the right side of the picture, to enter the Reykjavík metropolitan area.   

It was so clear that we could see up the valley from Borgarnes towards Bifröst!  Mt. Baula, the 3000 foot tall, conical mountain ten miles north of Bifröst, can be made out to the left of Hafnarfjall in this picture. 

We could even see Snæfellsjökull, which crowns the tip of the Snæfellnes peninsula, some 100 miles away!  It has been shrouded in clouds every other time we have had the chance to see it.



Indoor play area at Vatnaveröld.

    We had identified a number of activities that we had wanted to do in Keflavík the day before, but
we had run out of time to do them.  So, we checked out of the guesthouse and headed to Vatnaveröld (Water World) in
Keflavík.  How is that for a connection to the Front Range of Colorado?  It had something
for everyone (hot pots, lap pool, big slide, and indoor water play area), so even my folks joined us this time. 


   We then went out for dinner at a restaurant at Keflavík's sheltered harbor.  Across the harbor was the Black Cave of the Giantess, who is a character in a series of children's books by an Icelandic author.  She was asleep in her chair, so she did not give the kids any trouble as they wandered through her house and even walked all over her bed!

Spencer, Alex, Stacia, and Joslyn.

   After dinner, I took Greg and
Dad over to Viking World, while everyone else went shopping.
Viking World has two exhibits.  One is an audio tour of a series of displays that explains the
Norse gods and mythology.  The other exhibit is the Islendiga Viking ship, which was built in the 1990s and was sailed from Iceland to Greenland to Newfoundland to New York City as part of the millennial celebration of Leifur Eiriksson's
exploration of North America. 

The characteristics of the Viking ships were explained very well by a couple multimedia exhibits.  The advancements that the Norse made in their ships allowed them to sail beyond sight of land.  This is one of the biggest reasons that the Norse were able to expand across Europe and the North Atlantic during the Viking Era.  

Diane, Misty, and Norm ponder entering the cave.



   By the time the ladies and Spencer were done shopping and we were done learning about the Vikings, it was mid-afternoon.  We still had a drive ahead of us to get to the next guesthouse we had reserved, so we hit the road.  We drove back south to Grindavík and then east along the southern coast.  We turned inland at Þorlákshöfn to get to

the Raufarhólshellir lava tube. 

We were not particularly well-outfitted to explore a cave and there was snow and ice at the entrance.  However, there were holes in the roof of the cave and it was well-travelled, so there was a path for us to follow.  In the end, everyone, except Mom, headed in.  We made our way in a few hundred feet when we came to the last hole in the roof.  So much snow had fallen into the cave at this location (and not

melted because it was out of the Sun) that it reached to the edge of the hole.  I climbed up the snow pile and found that other people had made a path to the edge, where they had climbed out.  So, I helped everyone out, except for Greg and Dad, who walked back out the way we had come in.

Norm and Diane are thankful that the roof did not cave in here underneath all of their descendants!

   We drove on to Selfoss, where we ate supper, and then we headed northeast on the final leg of our journey to our guesthouse in Flúðir.  Within a couple miles of our final destination my mother pointed out something white on the side of a hill that was next to the road.  When we stopped to take a closer look, the white spot started moving away from us and we realized that we were looking at an Arctic fox!  It behaved much like foxes and coyotes do in Colorado and fairly quickly made its way up the hill to put some distance between us.  Even though we got a much closer look at an Arctic fox at the zoo in Reykjavík, this was definitely a much more exciting sighting for us. 
   The rest of the trip passed without any excitement and we arrived at the "Viking Villa."  The name is a play on the family name of the owner, "Víkinger."  There are a few Icelanders who adopted family names in the 19th century before it was outlawed, and I presume that this is a descendant of one of those people.  The place was posh and spacious and we settled in right away.  There was a two-story octagonal tower attached to the house, which we used to look for Norther Lights that evening, since it was clear.  We got a couple small shows, which were the first ones that my folks and Greg had ever seen, so they were pretty happy with the experience.