I slept until 10:38 today and it was GLORIOUS.
Even though this campsite is seemingly barren, I like the simplicity and slept probably the best I’ve slept the entire trip. The bugs are insane though—just like the tours in rvk (eek). Last night we had to configure our bug net window covers and figure out a way to leave the windows open for breeze but close the nets in with the door that way we configured a 'screen.' I'd give it a 8/10 for accuracy and success, and the breeze truly made it worth it in the end.
We’re driving south now towards snæfelsness and hoping to see some waterfalls or random local cheese stores (very wishful thinking on our behalf probably) as we go. We’ll probably end up making camp somewhere on the peninsula which will be interesting and busy. I’ll have to get my energy in line before we cross into that territory again, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t looking forward to another coffee in that cute hotel. I mean who knows if we’ll even go, or if it will (unlikely) be as quiet as I remember, but it just feels right to close the trip that way.
We picked up a hitchhiker about 45m-1hr into our drive—Axelle called us the Iti Express haha. He was from Cambridge, and only wanted to go 6km so it was quite a quick trip with him. We tried to make sure he didn't want to go any further, but he just wanted a lift to the mountain he was trying to hike. We’re keeping our eyes out for a girl hitchhiker now, figured we better pass on Iti’s good fortune and keep the vibes amazing in the Iceland hitchhiking realm. Although we didn’t see another for the rest of the day, it’ll be a good story to take back to Iti. We ending up stopping at a waterfall along the very last fjord road, and ate our lunch/read/took a nap for about an hour until another family showed up. The water was cool, and it made me realize how fortunate we truly are to have the luxury of time and almost local knowledge of the beautiful space we’re in. We soaked our feet and filled our water bottles before deciding it was time to press onward on our journey to home.
Touching base a couple hours later: at this point we’re pretty focused on getting towards the prismatic cliffs that Nathan found on google, so we ended up sort of accidentally driving past Snæfelsness (not to my despair at all, I really won't miss it that much) and while we eventually got to the cliffs, Axelle got a call from one of her friends from home about a pregnancy announcement. Axelle couldn’t believe it and kept yelling "oh mon dieuuuu" and asking about how her friends body (to put it family friendly) would change and if she could get progress updates haha. Typical Axelle, but I told Nathan he really didn’t need to translate everything for me since I got the general gist of what she was asking even WITH the language barrier at that point. It's truly not that hard to understand somethings in any language.
We found a campsite about an hour or so away from Reykjavik that was organized around a set of small hills. It was clearly a first stop for many campers, and seeing their excitement and energy for their journeys ahead recharged us a little, and kept spirits high. For dinner I made an absolute smack down of a pasta dish--sitck with me. It was our last bag of pasta, and I pan friend bacon before chopping it up and adding it to the pasta with a can of cream of mushroom soup and lime juice. I can't even tell you how good it was, and I definitely won the meal-of-the-trip award. After showers we watched the last fantastic beasts (woohoo) before we got to see a midnight sunset rivaling all of the midnight suns of our trip--even last nights pastel array. It made my heart smile so big, that even though the day had been heavy as our objective was to finish out the driving, it meant a great deal for my last smile from the Icelandic sky on the road was so perfect. There were two horses next to our section of the campsite that were bucking and playing, and a small cat that cuddled with us on the rocks as we all played in the last drops of golden light together.
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