Everything I read about Iceland alerted me to the fact that the weather changed rapidly. Some people say that they experienced all 4 seasons in one day. That wasn't true for us as temperatures didn't vary greatly. The temperature fell to 32 degrees one night but most of the time, day and night, stayed in the upper 30's to the mid 40's. We had some rain but not enough to affect our daily plans. The only weather related change we made was because of wind. Seriously high wind!
We started off to hike 2.7 easy miles to the Skaftell Glacier,. Easy wouldn't be the word I would use to describe this hike on this particular day with the wind blowing at upwards of 30 MPH, with even stronger occasional gusts. We got to the top of a ridge and could see the glacier but the wind was so strong that we just stopped. George hunched down and I braced myself on the wooden guidepost. Deciding it wasn't safe to stay on the ridge in that wind, we walked cross country and did eventually arrive at the very impressive glacier. 'Walking' probably isn't the best description of the hike. It took so much effort to stay upright against the wind. At times I just bent over and spread my feet to make a big base so I wouldn't be blown away.
The camper van rental company had warned us that is was not safe to drive the camper van if winds were over 45 MPH. When we got back to the Visitor's Center, we learned that on the Ring Road (which is where we had planned to go later in the day) gusts were up to 90 MPH. The decision to stay became easy when the Ring Road, which is the main tourist road all around Iceland, was closed. The red road is the ring road. Closed.
Skaftfell is about in the middle of the picture, close to the white glacier. The place we wanted to go was Hofń which is at the end of the red road. One of the women working at the gift shop said that she wouldn't even drive her car on the Ring Road in that kind of wind.
So we stayed put and enjoyed a relaxing day watching movies in our warm comfy van!
No comments:
Post a Comment