Flaunting Karma in its face H drove us out of bloody cold Seyisdifjiordur straight past a young hitchhiking girl - according to me with her hand out signalling a lift, according to H with her hand out signalling the direction of the nearest inhabitable star system.
Climbing out of the valley was not as bad as our entry yesterday. We had to admit that maybe our imaginations had slightly overreacted when the fall offs from the road barriers revealed themselves to be about 10 feet - slightly less than the 1,000 feet we'd imagined in yesterday's whiteout !
Heading inland Karma came back to bite us on the ass. When feeling guilty about not stopping for hitchhiker number 1 H stopped for HH number 2 a slightly less attractive 6 foot 2 bearded Bulgarian who smelt like he'd been living in a sardine factory !
It was a long 50 kms as we conversed with the Bulgarian while trying desperately not to breathe ! We discussed his various travels , love of Iceland and alarmingly his various run ins with the local police!
After asking where the farm was that he was meant to be staying at our friend pointed out the first one he saw making us a little wary about whether this guys marbles were all in the right place !
We climbed higher onto a Volcanic plateau that went on for miles with our main interest now centred around how low the temperature would go. Our car gauge read 2-3 C but our own experience when hopping out of the car indicated that it was more likely - 10 C with the biting wind chilling us to the bone !
With the driving endless and the low clouds obscuring the scenery i resorted to entertaining myself by using the drivers control to keep opening H's passenger side window to see how many expletives he could come up with (many !)
Eventually we came to a turn off point indicating that the Dettifoss Waterfall (listed as one of the most powerful & Impressive in Europe) was some 28kms distant along an unmade road.
In my thorough research I'd uncovered comments suggesting that the road was in average condition although after 5 kms I'd thought the travellers comments were exaggerated ! Boy did i turn out to be wrong !
After enduring until we could endure no more we turned around and headed back to the main road this time though taking a note of the distance travelled to see how close we'd got to the unsignposted waterfall .
By the time we got back we'd registered over 27 kms indicating that we were only about 1 km from arriving at our destination. - Burke and Wills would have been proud of our failure !
Disappointed we drove towards Myvatyn renowned for its GeoThermal activity. Here we got the chance to road test a park that included bubbling mud pools and super steamed rocks that emitted that delightful and chewy sulphur smell that had H on the verge of throwing up !
All sulphured out we drove to beautiful Aukeyri the 2nd largest of Iceland's cities with over 17,000 people delightfully situated with its own harbour.
After taking lunch here in the supermarket complex (we're culinary experts) it was only another 100 kms to lovely Hofsos in outer rural Iceland.
Our B&B perched at the base of a giant scree filled hill came with beautiful coastline views in the setting sun as we were welcomed by our hosts.
We took an early night hoping that just maybe wed get a glimpse of those spectacular Northern Lights that this part of the world is famed for.
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