This was where everyone who was doing the Glacier hike got fitted out for crampons. The folks there checked out everyone’s hiking boots, and if they didn’t think they were sufficient for the crampons, they provided the person with “rental” boots.
Once all the Glacier hikers got kitted out, they got back on the motorcoach to drive over to the Glacier they’d be hiking. Those of us doing the alternate hike headed out from the parking lot to another Glacier walking distance from there.
It was a really pleasant walk. The skies were blue, and it was relatively warm, and it was just a really nice area.
This is part of the birch forest near the base of the mountains. The trees are only like 3 feet high (no-one is getting lost in this forest) but since so much of Iceland has been deforested over the years, they are very proud of the forests they are re-establishing.
The path out to the Glacier.
Group Glacier Selfie!
I don’t take many Selfies myself, because I am *so* bad at it, but this one turned out not too bad!
We didn’t walk all the way out to the Glacier, but we got pretty close. It was very cool looking!
We then turned around and headed back to the Visitor’s Center to wait for the Motorcoach to eventually take us to meet the folks coming off of their Glacier hike. But we had at least an hour or so to kill, so Stebbi took us into the Cafeteria to buy us Hot Chocolates.
So here I have to stop for a bit, and talk about something on this trip that I hadn’t really seen since my first
ABD: finding out that there was someone on this trip that I really, truly did not like. I’ve found other people annoying at times (heck, I’m *sure* some people have found me annoying, too!) or folks who were a bit full of themselves. But while sitting in that cafeteria waiting for the motorcoach, I discovered that I *really* disliked a woman on this trip. I hope this doesn’t come off as offensive to anyone. This woman, I’ll call her Mary (honestly not her name) made sure we all knew, by constantly mentioning it over and over again, that she was in treatment for cancer of some sort (she never specified). So you would think that would make us all sympathetic towards her. Unfortunately, not. It turned out she was opinionated and rude and downright mean. She seemed to believe that she was considerably “woke”, far more than any of us mere mortals, and made sure we all knew that her opinions were the only correct ones because she knew they were.
What occurred at the Visitor’s center was that the sweet young lady who had not ridden horses the day before because she’d recently injured her back also did not go on the Glacier hike, so she was in the alternate hike group (I’ll call her Sue). Mary had decided not to do either walk, and just hung out in the Cafeteria the whole time. So, anyways, after we got our Hot Chocolate, we all congregated at one of the tables. Sue was talking about some work she was doing, I believe with people with disabilities, and mentioned how much good was coming from the treatments they were getting from some people from a particular foreign country. Mary interrupted her quite abruptly and basically told her she was morally depraved if she accepted any sort of help or anything from those people because *she*, Mary, didn’t agree with their politics. And she kept saying this over and over again, stopping poor Sue from continuing with her story.
A couple of us tried to support Sue, saying that the people who were helping had nothing to do with the politics, but Mary insisted we were all wrong, and continued to berate Sue about this. In an extremely rude fashion. Sue was FAR more tolerant and nice to Mary than I ever would have been. Mary continued to push her opinions and berate Sue, and then tried to engage *me* in the argument. I looked right at Mary and told her I was *NOT* going to have that argument while on vacation! I and some others eventually had to leave the table because it got so uncomfortable and was just so awful.
So the one good thing about the large number of people on this trip turned out to be that it was relatively easy to ignore and avoid Mary for the rest of the trip. Which, fortunately, I mostly managed to do. I guess I’ve been lucky to only have something like this occur twice out of ten trips.
Anyways, back to our lovely day!
Eventually, we headed out to the mortorcoach, and drove over to the area where we’d pick up the Glacier hikers. We waited there a *long* time. You could tell Stebbi was getting a bit concerned, as we still had to get to Jökulsárlón for our Glacial Lagoon trip. We waited a good half hour or so, but eventually they all showed up, looking tired but satisfied! Once everyone was onboard, we headed out towards Jökulsárlón.
As we got closer, we approached a bridge, and Drew said “when I say so, look out to your left”. And there it was. Jökulsárlón Glacial Lagoon. There were just all these icebergs bobbing around in the water. It was crazy and amazing!
We split up into 2 groups because we wouldn’t all fit on one boat. I got on the first boat. It wasn’t just us; there were a few other people who also were on the boat with us. It was a Duck boat. We were given those big orange life vests to wear (like you have on cruise ships). We had to sit down while the boat drove over to the entry point for the Lagoon, and then floated off.
Continued in next post.