Shorely

Another day, another bus tour. This one took us along the south shore, past farmlands and open fields, volcanoes and waterfalls, toward a small village called Vik, where we stopped for a quick lunch at a service station before turning around and heading back the way we came. It was a rainy, soggy day.

First stop at Seljalandsfoss. Yes, I had to re-Google most of these names.

Volcanic ash/soil/sand. Great for farming. Terrible for rivers (great for floods).

Wool factory in Vik. Though "factory" might be a stretch. It's really a big, open room with a bunch of workstations. Which makes what they do there all the more impressive.

Black sand beach in Reynisfjara. Fierce waves. Craggy rocks. Foggy day.

Take shelter.

Meltwater and ice from the glacial tongue at Mýrdalsjökull mixing with volcanic ash from neighboring Eyjafjallajökull's 2010 eruption.

Mýrdalsjökull is one of the bigger glaciers on Iceland (Eyjafjallajökull, on the other hand, one of the smaller ones), and sits atop Katla, an active volcano much larger than the one under Eyjafjallajökull. Each of Eyjafjallajökull's known eruptions in the past have preceded a larger and more violent eruption from Katla by a few months, so Icelandic folks are basically expecting this guy to go any day now. The biggest problem is flooding caused by magma melting the glacial ice. So yeah, that's what living near volcanoes is like. On the other hand, erupting volcanoes are great for tourism, so there's that.

Anyway, it was still raining by the time we passed through, in late afternoon.

Our next stop was at the Skógar folk museum, founded by Þórður Tómasson, who started collecting Viking artifacts when he was 14. Dude's 92 and still hanging out at the museum, greeting guests and rocking out on this traditional Icelandic instrument that I've forgotten the name of.

Icelandic fishing boat. 17 fisherman would work off this thing, which may look fairly impressive here, but is no more than a glorified raft with sails. Tough livin'.

Fish skin shoes. Trips used to be measured not by their physical distances, but by how many pairs of these bad boys you'd wear out on the way.

Hollowed out piece of whale vertebrae, used for storage on fishing boats. Also the baddest-ass chair, probably.

Skógafoss, one of the bigger waterfalls in Iceland.

There's a hokey joke the locals tell all the tourists that goes, "What do you do if you get lost in an Icelandic forest?" "Stand up."

Sunset on the ride back to Reykjavik.

Kris snoozin' through it.

Oh well.

More sunset for the rest of us.