Tuesday, August 2
The Hotel Budir is located, surprisingly, at a place called Budir, which turns out to be the hotel and a well-known church…well known because it is black and visible for many miles round about.
We packed up and left the hotel fairly early, hoping to grab a coffee and roll before we entered the national park. That proved a bit harder than expected…there are almost no services this far out on the peninsula. A very nice guy at a hotel buffet finally took pity on us and gave us a coffee!
The Snaefellesjökull National Park takes up the entire western end of the peninsula, all the land around the glacier. First stop was a short walk along the cliffs at a place called Londrangar; besides the “usual” phenomenal cliffs, this area boasts a number of volcanic plugs that tower above the surrounding eroded basalt cliffs.
During a quick visit to the park’s visitor center, I was given a lesson in pronunciation by the very nice young lady at the desk. I learned to produce a reasonable facsimile of the word for glacier—Jökull—but you wouldn’t believe the sounds that one has to produce. After the J, the letters seem to bear little relation to the sounds!
We had decided to do a short walk before heading to Reykjavik, and the walk from Djúpalónssandur Beach to Ditvik Cove more than fit the bill. The path down to the large black sand beach passes through a remarkable volcanic canyon.
The beach itself is lovely, but bears the mark of a tragedy. A British freighter, the Epine GY 7, was shipwrecked just offshore here in 1948; the seas were so rough that most of the crew was lost. The beach is still littered with the remains of the ship.
From the beach a trail leads up and through one of the massive lava flows from the volcano. Although the trail is only a couple of miles long, the treacherous footing makes it seem a good bit longer.
Ditvik Cove was an active fishing port in the day; the ruins of a number of fishermen’s huts are scattered through the lava field nearby.
Back at the car, we tried to check in for our flight, but were told that we could only do so at the airport…a sign of things to come.
The drive back to Reykjavik was easy; we passed under one long fjord through the deepest car tunnel we’ve ever seen.
Back in Reykjavik, we did a bit of mop up shopping for family and then had a drink while we waited for our very late table at The Fish Company.
As it happened, our last meal of the trip was one of the very best: Sue had a great, very inventive gravlax, I had the best seafood soup of the trip, and then we shared some sushi–some of the only sushi that bears comparison to what you find in Japan.
