Crystal briefly got up at 03:00, saw a really cool sky outside, but didn’t feel like opening the curtains to take a picture.  We got up a little before 07:00, tired, but way less tired than when we went to sleep.  Justin quickly typed up everything we did the day before we forgot.  The Wu-Tang falls were something we had already forgotten, so take that for what it’s worth.  We enjoyed a nice hot shower, then got ready and left a bit before 08:00.  Actually that was a false start, as there was in fact breakfast, so we put some stuff in the car, then ate a quick breakfast (waffles), and then we did in fact leave. 

We had a group tour today, with Midgard, and we arrived at the Midgard Base Station around 08:40.  The reason for the tour is that we wanted to visit Þórsmörk (Thórsmörk), and to get there you need to cross a couple rivers, and even regular 4x4s are not equipped for those crossings (and indeed, explicitly called out as a no-no in rental car agreements).  So we booked a tour with Midgard so that we could go out there and do one of the more amazing hikes on the island.  We were in the Puffin group, and hoped that was a good omen, as later in the day we were going somewhere on the south coast where we hoped to see puffins.

It was raining steadily outside when we got in our monster truck.  Our vehicle was like one of the stretch Excursion limos, but with monster truck tires.  With us in the vehicle was a French family of 4, a German couple where a woman was coughing up a lung, and a couple of Americans.  Our first stop was at Eyjafjallajökull (aka E16), the volcano/glacier that disrupted air travel in Europe several years back.  The ice was mostly black, owing to all the volcanic ash that mixed with the ice after the eruption.  We walked around for a bit, with the French Dad running and scrambling all over the place.  The kids were throwing rocks into the streams.

It was nice, but we started to wonder when we’d actually get to Thórsmörk.  After we eventually got back in the car and drove a bit more, we saw the hill we wanted to climb, Valahnúkur, but then we drove right past it and kept going!  Our guide even had the audacity to tell us it was one of the favorite hikes in all of Iceland.  We know; seriously, WTF?!  We parked a couple kilometers away, to the east.  Justin determined we had 2.5 hours here before heading back, and he told Crystal he’d see her in 2.5 hours.  Crystal ate lunch with the group, found out the German couple was from Stuttgart, and found out the French people were actually Swiss.

Justin walked down to the start of the hike to Valahnúkur, crossed two rivers on bridges, but the third river crossing had no bridge.  People who were crossing the other way said it was up above the knee.  So he angrily gave up and had to walk back.  When he got back, it had been an hour, and everyone was still there, just loitering around.  They’d wasted an hour of the 2.5 just eating at a picnic table.  They were about to start a hike, so he thought of joining, but then a minute became two, became five, and after that he just took off again, this time east, along the riverbank.  He was livid with how idiotic this tour was, and what a colossal waste of time and money the tour had been.  

The weather was perfect for hiking…only we weren’t hiking.  Crystal decided she didn’t want to go on a hike with the rest of the group either, so she just hung out around where she’d had lunch.  Justin got photos along the riverbank, including of a glacier and some interesting rock formations.  He walked as far as he could (until the river went to the edge of the valley floor and there was nowhere to hike), backtracked, and got back around 13:30.  Crystal ran into him on his walk back, and we chatted for a bit.  Crystal showed Justin where the rest of the people had gone, and he walked up the hill as quickly as he could, trying to get some decent views of the valley floor before 14:00.  The views were decent enough, but nothing like Valahnúkur, which is in the middle of the valley and has 360 degree views.  The whole thing was infuriating.  When the group got back at 14:00, we didn’t leave straight away.  Instead, we wasted another 20 minutes so the people who just ate 1.5 hours ago could have tea or coffee.  We sat in the vehicle and quietly fumed.  

Once we finally started heading back, Justin realized that his Sony camera had broken, adding insult to injury.  He read up on the error message he was getting, and it looked dire.  So he tried frantically to find a store that might have one, and enlisted his parents in the US (with way better/faster internet) to help.  His Dad found a store in Reykjavik, which was out of the way, but at least something.  Justin called them - they’d sold their last model 30 minutes prior.  The other big camera store on the island was out of stock as well.  We were going to get only further away from Reykjavik, and tomorrow was a weekend and nothing was going to be open anyway.  We were just SOL.

There was actually another stop on the tour, this time in a valley with giant green walls.  The only issue was that it required crossing some rivers, and none of us had (with us) water sandals, as the company had said nothing about that.  Only half the people were getting across unscathed.  Crystal and 2 others didn’t cross the first river, and Justin and the German couple didn’t cross the second.  Justin and the Germans then bitched about how stupid it was to have the tour arranged this way.  They said it was an awfully expensive “bus” to a bunch of places they didn’t want to go.  [There actually was a bus to come out here, but we booked the tour thinking it would be better - apparently not.]  Eventually the guide came back with the handful of people who’d crossed both rivers, and we started back to town.  We just wanted the thing over.

But instead, because we were “early” (we weren’t), he headed off on a detour to a waterfall that was just 10 minutes from where we were parked, one that we could all just go to on our own if we wanted, Gluggafoss.  So for an 8 hour trip, only 1-1.5 was spent hiking in Thórsmörk, the rest was driving (understandable), walking around a glacier for close to an hour, eating for an hour, having coffee/tea for 20 minutes, walking through a green valley requiring getting wet feet for 30 minutes, and making a detour to probably the 50th most popular waterfall in Iceland for 30 minutes - it was absolutely asinine.

When we got back to the Midgard Base Camp at 17:00, we hurriedly got back to the Subaru.  Justin went into the trunk and swapped out the broken Sony for the older model, which we brought because it’s the one that has the waterproof case for snorkeling.  So thank goodness we had the Silfra excursion on this trip, because otherwise there would have been no backup.  But it wasn’t a perfect backup, however, as the newer (now broken) Sony was 24-200mm, and the older one was 28-100, meaning it couldn’t zoom out or zoom in as much.  On the zooming out, it wasn’t a big deal, as we had brought a camera with an ultra-wide angle lens on it since we knew there were some spots where the extra wide-angle would be needed.  On the zooming in, this was more of an issue, as Justin’s large camera with the telephoto lens was 160-640mm, so there was now a range of distances, from 100-160mm, where none of the three cameras worked.  We’d just have to work around that.

We made a beeline for Seljalandsfoss.  This is one of the most famous waterfalls in Iceland, as you can walk behind it, and during part of the year you can see the sunset from back there.  Justin walked behind, got soaked, but whatever, it was part of the experience.  We then continued east on the Ring Road to Skógafoss, another famous waterfall.  This one is very large and powerful, and there are viewing areas at the bottom and at the top.  We both checked it out from the bottom, but while Justin walked up to the top, Crystal went back to the car.

On the stairs up to the top, there was a Mom with two daughters going slowly, and one daughter just called it quits just 25 steps from the top.  The Mom and older daughter were doing their best to convince her they were almost there, but she wasn’t having it.  We hope they eventually saw whatever they wanted to see.  We had thought about seeing Kvernufoss, right next to Skógafoss, but it was kind of raining, we were running a bit late, we were still irked from the tour, we’d been out late the night before, and we sort of just wanted to see the main things and call it a day.

So we just continued southeast to Dyrhólaey, in the hopes of seeing some puffins and somewhat salvaging the day.  It started to rain right when we got there, which seemed on brand with the rest of the day.  Moreover, there were strong winds.  We did see a handful of puffins, and with a large hood on the zoom camera, and standing at a certain angle, Justin could take pictures without getting the lens wet.  We were late, tired, and irked, so we just saw things quickly and headed off rather quickly to the other side of the bay, Reynisfjara beach.

At the parking lot, we received some less-than-ideal news about a noise complaint dispute we were involved with in San Diego, and that didn’t help the mood at all.  On the beach, there were a decent number of people, even at this hour (around 20:30).  There was a couple hogging one of the more photogenic spots with what was basically a private photo shoot, and several people were waiting for them to vacate.  After 15 minutes of them still being there, Justin just walked up and started taking photos, with them in all the photos.  They didn’t seem to get the hint, and perhaps didn’t even realize Justin took photos.

Anyway, this was the last scheduled stop of the day, and we headed into town (Vik) to get gas.  It was just after 21:00, and everything had just closed for dinner.  Thankfully we saw the 50th best waterfall in Iceland earlier in the afternoon, so that was totally worth not getting dinner.  At the hotel (Hotel Katla), we checked in, but the restaurant there had just closed as well.  We went to the room, ate a bunch of candy, had some vodka, and tried to forget about this piece of crap day.  At least we saw some puffins.