Short flight and drive to Vik.. Aaron wanted me to name this, I pooped today.

We are currently sitting on the tiny propeller plane from Akureyri to Reykjavik; it's a quick 40 minute flight where there is barely enough time for me to write one sentence on my iPad.

Yesterday evening, we ventured about 35 minutes from our lovely Aurora guesthouse for dinner at a dairy farm. Literally a dairy farm. We walked into the building and there were cows chewing and a side room for milking them, and then about 15 tables.

 We were seated at a four top. Yes, it smelled like a dairy farm, but the food was quite good. We tried to order dishes with dairy in it as that's what they are known for, so we tried their homemade mozzarella which was good, grittier than the usual mozzarella we are used to. We had Arctic char and then their desserts were delicious! It was a nice meal with good cow company. We had wanted to go to the hot springs after dinner, but everyone was feeling kind of tired, so I drove us home. Kelsey and Eric slept on the way to dinner and Aaron tried really hard not to fall asleep on the way home, but right as he was dozing off, he flipped his phone up into the air and back onto his lap; even though this doesn't necessarily sound funny, it was so hilarious that I had tears in my eyes from laughing so hard. We all slept well.

Today, we woke up to the smell of yummy coffee and a table full of typical Icelandic items, all organic. Smoked lamb meat, eggs, cucumbers, tomatoes, homemade bread, waffles, jams. A delicious start to the day. 

Kelsey and Eric really wanted to hike while they were here but they didn't exactly realize that not much is accessible during the winter. Last night, I asked the restaurant for any good trails around here and they told us of one that is usually packed down enough to hike on. So that's where we went this morning! Hiking around volcanic rock in the snow. Beautiful and good exercise. 

We also finally could stop and take some photos of the Icelandic horses that I've been trying to photograph since the last trip here! 

The lake here, Lake Myvatn is gorgeous and I'm sure it's even more beautiful when it's not frozen over.  We had to rush a bit on the way back, so I drove a bit faster than usual to make it... Pick up our bags at the aurora guesthouse and then a quickie stop at godafoss for one last viewing and then arrived at the airport at 1:10 for our 1:40 flight. Right on time. The regional airports here do not have any security at all... Nothing to walk through or check, so it does make it much easier. 

However, when Aaron and I tried to board this flight, the woman was unfortunately not very nice and made me weigh my camera pack and of course it's 4kg overweight so she said that I had to wait until everyone boarded to put my camera bag in last. What a pita! We waited until everyone boarded and then had to hand our packs to the luggage guy so he could put them on top of the other bags on the side of the place. Not the most ideal situation, but we are making the best of it. Hopefully everything will be okay when we land. The rental car company is meeting us at the airport to take us to their headquarters to pick up our SUVs for the rest of the trip. I'm excited. I took some delta pillows so that we can make the car a bit more comfortable too especially if we are waiting for the aurora during the evenings! Ok, landing now. Quick flight over the beautiful country.

Flying in the small planes are nice and easy and smooth, which was a pleasant way to have our midday. When we landed, the rental car company said they got lost coming to pick us up at the airport so we waited for about 45 mins for them to get there... This is the regional tiny airport in Reykjavik and the woman driving grew up here, so that seemed odd to us. It took us about 20 minutes to get to the rental car place once we got into the white van with clear plastic covering everything... It was very clean. They didn't have the cars that we rented and we're excited about and gave us an upgraded car with an automatic transmission. I was hoping for a manual as they are much better in the snow around here. We have a Hyundai Tucson which is old but functions. It smells like gasoline inside the car and when we started driving and needed the windshield wipers to work, we discovered that they were totally destroyed. I mean completely falling apart. So about 20 minutes into our drive, we stopped at an N1, the gas stations around here, and measured and bought new wipers. We also went grocery shopping to stock up on some lunch foods and snacks... Chips and salsa, Icelandic Brie and French bread, sushi, digestif's, and some water. Oh, and organic peanut butter and jam and bread. :)

We had to rush a bit as it was getting late and we wanted to go to two waterfalls before sunset, but we ran out of time so ended up just getting to Seljalandsfoss and precariously with our crampons on hiked up behind the waterfall to photograph it. The sun didn't make an appearance, but it was still beautiful!

A quick stop at the next waterfall even though it was dark to scout if the moon would be in the correct direction for a moon bow, but unfortunately it was not, so off we went another half an hour to our hotel just outside of Vik. It's much larger than we had planned, but a good change.  We quickly got a bowl of soup and had some of our cheese and bread for dinner and then went into the natural hot tub! We spent almost an hour in there with Icelandic white ale, which was quite good. And finally sleep and recharging batteries, our personal ones and our electronics!

The breakfast from this hotel was ok, but the view of the sea stacks from here is quite beautiful!