Iceland Trip Account - Day 6

Day 6

• Up at 8:19. Bang knee on tripod. Bruise. Walk it off… Okay that didn’t work, get the pain killers.
• After a couple of days of touristic attractions we sought for adventure. Glymur waterfall [see location marker] is the second tallest waterfall in Iceland at 198m above sea level and you have to earn the right to see it with quite the hike. The first kilometer from the car park is simply a dusty gravel path that takes to the bottom of the cragg (valley). The change in the crossroads (literally) is when we come to a cave that you enter at one level and climb down to the river at the bottom. A short walk up and we come to our first river crossing where someone had installed a chord to hold on as you hobble across the flowing water and rocks. Once everyone is across we then begin the inclined route upwards. The paths that follow the valley up give you sneak peaks of the enormous Glymur water as you get closer and closer to it.
• 1:56pm. Lunch. Ham was exceptionally nice. Great view too of course
• Reaching the peak of the valley the waterfall is right below and it is nothing far from epic. Definitely worth the effort! Approximately 300 million photos later it is time to cross back over the river. This time there is no chord so it’s boots, socks off and camera in back ready for the coldest river crossing experienced yet. I’m glad I had my flip flops because those who didn’t had to hobble across and hence prolong the time time spent in close to freezing water. The descent was a lot easier than the sometimes vertical ascent and we were briefly joined with some New Yorkers who were in a touring group. We chatted briefly and the Icelandic tour guide took a fancy to conversing with Marion. Sorry mate if you’re reading this but she’s getting married to my cousin in October (maybe the beard doesn’t work on every lass you come across).
• As we settled into our evening drinks and prepared dinner two hitchhikers knocked on our door and asked us for a lift! They were scouts so we felt slightly obliged to help seen as they had been there for about 2 hours since we had got home from our own hike. I accompanied JC to the take the total 3 of these German lads up to Thingvellir. They asked for any world news seen has they had been hiking for 3 weeks (4 week trip in total) completely disconnected from the world. I was sad that the only news I had for them was that there had been terrorist attacks in Paris, Barcelona and Finland… Sad times.
• Fish cakes for dinner followed by chocolate cake. Good stuff.