Day Six - Jun 17, 2014

Today was bookended with exceptional touristing. The meat of the sandwich was a fair bit of driving, but necessary to get back within striking distance of Reyjavik for tomorrow morning's rental car drop off. We woke up in the ridiculously idyllic Pagkil Campground. This has got to be one of the best campsites we've ever slept at. In spite of that, we were motoring out of the valley by 7:00am. We got back to Vik a little before 8:00 and took a walk on its black sand beach. While the weather was significantly nicer than yesterday, it still wasn't really sunbathing weather. Hoping to find a cup of coffee, we were hampered by Icelanders' unwillingness to open shop before 9:00 at the earliest and 12:00 as a general rule. It is a predilection we can truly appreciate, except when coffee hunting. We headed west out of Vik, following the road for a few kilometers before turning off to Gardar to look at a couple of caves cut out of a wall of basalt columns. Offshore were a set of famous sea stack rocks called Reynisdrangar. All quite pretty to look at. Eventually we hit the road again for our only really planned stop for the day, a natural hot pool on the edge of the mountains we were told the general public didn't know about. You park at the "new pool" and then follow a trail for about a mile to the secretish pool. What seemed fishy is that Theresa found this on Pinterest and it receives a passing mention in Lonely Planet. After a few missteps, we found the new pool and parked, pausing to make sure we wandered off into the wilderness in the right direction. As we checked our bearings, a Reykjavik Excursion bus pulled up and 40 people marched past us on their way to the hidden pool. We passed. Our big picture plan for the day was to get to the town of Grindavik, just south of the Blue Lagoon hot springs and within a half hour of Reykjavik. This would let us hit the Blue Lagoon in the morning when it opened and return our luxurious Mitsubishi Pajero a little after noon. With little of interest in between the secret pool and Grindavik (and weather that was great for staying indoors) we motored onward. We stopped for a bit in Hella to use the internet and grab a quick bite, but still managed to land in Grindavik by 2:00. Iceland is a small country. We warmed up with some lobster stew at the Bryggan cafe on the waterfront and then modified our plans by heading to the Blue Lagoon around 3:00. Turns out another great way to spend a rainy afternoon is to soak in an outdoor hot spring. We put in about three hours of soaking, steaming, and saunaing, before heading back to our campsite for some dinner. A surprisingly successful blustery day.