We had an alarm set for just after 07:00, but we were up before that.  Although Iceland and Tenerife are in the same time zone, Iceland doesn’t change its clocks in the summer, so 07:00 in Iceland was 08:00 in Tenerife.  Once awake, we re-arranged our stuff in backpacks to more resemble what we wanted for a road trip; we guessed what the split should be for the next couple of weeks between hiking backpacks and storage backpacks that would just stay in the car while we were out and about during the day.  

Downstairs at breakfast, over 75% of the people there were Spanish speakers.  We had a quick bite, then took our stuff to the car.  We couldn’t unlock the car correctly, but it was user error on our part, as the Subaru symbol in the middle of the key was actually a button as well.  After getting everything in the vehicle, we started north on our way to Silfra.  We used our phones for navigation, even though our car came with a standalone GPS system.  We decided to call the navigator voice on Google Maps Gina.

On the drive, the car was driving both of us (but particularly Justin) nuts.  There were constant warnings/alerts for everything, with lights, beeps, and all sorts of things that were theoretically to “help” the driver, but in reality were immensely distracting, especially on a car we weren’t familiar with in a country we weren't familiar with.  The most frustrating things, at least this morning, were the car randomly telling him to keep eyes on the road (when he was looking straight ahead) and to keep his hands on the wheel (when he had both hands on the wheel).  We decided to call this backseat driver Sue.

We arrived in Silfra after about an hour.  Outside there were low clouds and it was misty.  We were early for our snorkel excursion, so we walked around for about 20 minutes, and watched an earlier group head towards the water in order to see what we’d do.  After checking in, we got in our dry suits, slowly.  Crystal actually got a second one, after they had multiple people trying to get her into the first.  The dry suits are supposed to be tight, but not that tight.  Our guide was from Spain, and her name was Sara.  There were six of us in our subgroup.

Someone mentioned a volcanic eruption that had started in the middle of the night near the airport, apparently shortly after we landed.  It’s too bad we missed it, as we were going to get only further and further away from Reykjavik for the next week.  With the dry suit, the only part of our bodies that actually touched the water and/or felt wet were our faces and our hands (where water came through the material).  We were in the water for 30 minutes, but it seemed shorter than that.  The water was very clear, and the view was mainly rocks and some stringy algae (or something).

Sara told us that while we technically were between two plates, the two plates didn’t immediately adjoin one another (at least at the surface).  She showed us some mountains in either direction that were the plate edges, and where we were was sort of a no-man’s land.  During the snorkel we got some water on our forearms, but it wasn’t much of an issue, and we didn’t freeze to death.  We had “free time” at the end of the snorkel, up to 30 minutes more, but only one member of the group wanted more than about 10 minutes, and he got 5 more minutes after the rest of us came in.

When we got back to the meeting area for the company, there were tons of flies (midges).  We put on our mosqueteras and they were a huge help - they already had justified whatever we paid for them.  We heard some other people commenting on how they wanted one, and presumably not for the fashion statement.  We walked up to a viewpoint near where we had parked, right by the Park Visitor Center.  Then we walked north to a nearby waterfall, Öxarárfoss, and used it as photo practice for the dozens (hundreds?) of other waterfalls we’d have coming up on the trip.

On the walk back to the car, we went past some little village/church area, Þingvallakirkja.  It was still gray outside, but at least it wasn’t misting any more.  We got in the car and headed over to Brúarfoss, about 45 minutes away.  Crystal paid for the parking with the Parka app, which we had downloaded before we left home.  Plenty of tourist spots in Iceland have paid parking, but with just one or two apps, you can pay at almost all of them.  Our stop at Brúarfoss was short and sweet, as there wasn’t much to the waterfall - it had really turquoise water and wasn’t too big.  We got hot dogs and Pepsi Max from a food truck in the parking lot.  We had heard that hot dogs were a common lunch for tourists going around the island.

Our next stop was at the Geysir visitor center.  The sun was kind of out by now, and it was a fairly nice day.  Someone was kind enough to see us looking for a parking spot, and motioned that they were about to leave.  We walked across the street to visit Strokkur geyser.  Just a few minutes later, we watched a triple or quadruple eruption.  We had no idea if this was par for the course or not.  We moved progressively closer to the pool following each progressive eruption, and they were all single eruptions.  Crystal got a slo-mo video of the bubble forming immediately prior to an eruption, but sadly it was for a dud of an eruption, so it didn’t turn out as hoped.  We walked around the area for a bit, seeing other pools of boiling liquid or mud, before returning to the car.

The last stop in the National Park was at Gullfoss.  We didn’t realize that Gull meant Gold in Icelandic, and presumably this is why the road we were traveling today was called the “Golden Circle.”  The layout of the walkways was different than what we expected, but it made things easier.  Several of the videos Justin watched were made years ago, and seemingly some new infrastructure had been installed in the time since.  There was a nice rainbow because of the mist from the waterfall, plus the sun being out.  We saw a marriage proposal right up close to the falls.  The wind kept us from getting too wet along the walk to and from the falls, so that was nice.

We got back in the car, and we started back towards the coast, but not the same way that we came.  We were now a little further to the south, On Road 35.  Justin was completely over Sue and her BS.  While the system may have some utility in the US, it is completely useless, if not actively detrimental, in Iceland.  Every time there is a sheep near the road, and you ride the center line - beep beep beep.  Every time a bus comes at you, and you ride the side line - beep beep beep.  Every time a gust of wind blows you one way or the other - beep beep beep.  Every time you’re looking around a hairpin curve to see what’s coming your way - beep beep beep.  Once or twice every hour, even when you’re looking straight ahead - beep beep beep.  More than once or twice every hour, even when you have two hands on the steering wheel - beep beep.  When the car is going just fine and all of a sudden center line disappears - beep.  When the car suddenly can’t see the center line or other vehicles - bright red light, kills cruise control, car loses power immediately.

Crystal looked for how to disable the backseat driver technology, but the rental car agency had seemingly removed/hidden the applicable menu item from the settings menu.  As if that wasn’t enough, we couldn’t even manually set the clock, which was off by hours.  And our hopes of integrating our phone with the car via CarPlay were dashed, as the CarPlay app was unavailable for use as well.  So we were going to have all this nonsense for two weeks, and none of the good stuff we actually liked about our Subaru in Hawaii.  We just started to constantly swear at Sue.

After an hour on the road, mostly swearing at Sue, we got to Kerið Crater.  This is a volcanic crater with a lake.  The lava was reddish colored, and the lake was blue.  Crystal said that for some reason it reminded her of Orongo in Rapa Nui.  We hiked around the rim of the crater, then got back in the car.  The fish jerky that Crystal had been snacking on smelled up the car on the drive to the hotel, and we hoped it wasn’t going to be permanent.

We got gas in Sellfoss, the first of what we expected to be frequent stops.  We took note of the amount (18.5 liters) and the price (a titch over 5000 ISK) - we wanted to keep this in mind for future fill-ups.  Then we went to our hotel, Lambastadir, right around 19:00.  We read up on the volcano, to see if there was an opportunity to go see it this evening.  But we couldn’t really find anywhere that was open, safe, and likely to have sufficient parking, so we opted for dinner and sleep.

For dinner we went to Lily and Julia’s Kitchen in Sellfoss.  From our research, we were expecting expensive food, but this exceeded expectations (in terms of cost).  We each got lamb chops, and thank goodness they were excellent, given their price.  To our shock, the restaurant was decorated with all sorts of old school West Coast rap, including DOC, Westside Connection, Dre, and 2Pac.  After dinner we tried to go to a couple grocery stores, but they closed at 21:00 and we had just missed things.  

Back in the room we caught up on our email and internet stuff, and enjoyed some of the Vodka we got at the duty free store.  There was a book with recommendations for what to do in the area, and we looked at the day that was most similar to what we were planning for tomorrow, and took note of a couple other spots to stop along the way.  Fortunately, most of what we had on tap was recommended, so we hoped we had planned well.  We crashed around 23:00.