Relative Something

After the exhilaration of the zodiac boat tour, it seemed like it would be hard to keep the thrills at such a high level, except our “super-planners” had packed each successive moment with more to see or do. There would be no time for a letdown. Even travel time in our rental SUV offered a constant barrage of unique and fascinating landscapes to keep our minds overflowing with wonder.

Plus, learning to decipher unfamiliar highway signage and coping with a combination of other unfamiliar tourist drivers and local business vehicles with their own sense of purpose on the narrow Ring Road offered video-game levels of challenge. We relied heavily on the voice directions coming from Mike’s phone plugged into the dash.

The glacier lagoon was the farthest eastward we would travel on the southeast coast, as we then circled back the way we’d come to visit the Svartifoss waterfall in the Skaftafell Nature Reserve. Just an easy 2-mile hike from the car park.

Barb’s step-counter tallied our total distance hiked over the whole trip at 54 miles. (That’s 87km for those of you wondering.) Two miles was hardly a blink for us, although all the hikes tended to involve a fair amount of elevation gain to be climbed, making mere distance an incomplete measure of effort required.

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The afternoon warmed considerably, making our stroll along the trail toward the main attraction more pleasant than we believed possible. Remember, we had been prepared to face cloudy days with chilly horizontal rain pelting us head to toe.

Each time we experienced more sun than clouds, I pinched myself to check if I was dreaming.

Ten miles further down the road, we arrived at our hotel for the next two nights. Appearing somewhat like a motel we might find on Route 66, Hotel Skaftafell proved to be classier than meets the eye. The restaurant was truly fine dining.

When I reached the pomegranate seeds in my salad, I remembered I had wanted to get some photos of our food.

For our entrees, Cyndie selected lamb,

and I chose cod. It was a work of art.

It was the end of only our second day. Wow. Really, just wow.

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