Oh the weird days of our lifes.

What a day! Everything feels really weird today. It started with thunderstorms. That is quite unusual and I felt like I wasn't in Iceland anymore. It was hot (!?) and dark clouds built up, flashes were coming down over the highland and the thunder was rolling "making the windows tremble" (said the farmers). In the news it was told of a hiking group in the highlands whose hair was standing up because the air was so electrified.
I felt electrified too, nervous because I was expecting my parents and friends coming today evening coming with two different flights and I tried to put a plan together how to pick all of them up in a very small car and I was dealing with a stomach flue ....
Then it started raining, it rained a lot, and Gauti was just about to finish his work shift when a couple came in looking wet and a bit desperate because their car tire was punctured and they had to go to the next workshop (20 km from Húsafell). We drove them there and drove them back and we were joking that they have to help us in return if the same will happen to us .....
It happened. Just a few hours later. On my way to Keflavík airport a heart a silent "sss sss sss" on my side of the car. "It's probably the wind", I thought. "The wind is sometimes so strange in Iceland ...." KKKKKRRRHHKKK. The car was shaking and driving on something hard. The tire was not only punctured but half exploded. And I had to park the car on the road turning on all warning lights and calling to Gauti's family to "rescue me!!!"
They are so great and arrived with the jeep and put the reserve wheel on ("that's a bike tire", Gauti's dad commented the thin reserve wheel). I drove back to Húsafell just hoping that none of the other tires was punctured too and would explode .... They didn't (yet). Europcar told us to bring the car to the next bigger gas station (Borgarnes, 70 km) and then to Reykjavík where they hopefully will fix it.

Now my friends are somewhere between Keflavík and Reykjavík and my parents are on the airport and got a new car from Europcar and we are stuck in Húsafell. And the day just feels really really weird .... But somehow the weirdness cured the stomach flue. And there is always much to learn from weird days.

Bæjarfell and Selgil: A beautiful evening hike

Being in Húsafell is being in a hiker's paradise, there are so many hiking trails one can choose from! And it's even nice to hike the same trail several times since the nature and light around are constantly changing, providing us with new views and experiences.

So a few days ago Gauti and I decided to go on an evening hike on mount Bæjarfell, the highest mountain/hill of the Húsafell area (578 m). We dressed up in hats, gloves and jacket/pullover since it was a typical Icelandic summer evening: neverending light but slightly cold and windy. We climbed up the left side of the creek Bæjargil and got a nice view on the waterfall at the end of the creek.

Gauti taking a rest at the margin of creek Bæjargil with its beautiful waterfall.

Bæjarfell is a rather shallow mountain once the first part along the creek is done, so we had a rather cosy hike to the top of the mountain, passing blueberry fields, big rocks and the neverending calls of the Golden Plover. When we were almost at the top and turned around we saw that we were pretty lucky with the weather: from the West clouds had started to creep into the valley covering the mountain Tunga in the North under a dense grey blanket and bringing rain to the lava field of Hallmundarhraun. Bæjarfell though remained cloudless with even some sunny spots. Once at the top we decided to head for a little highland lake East of the mountain and I completely loved the walk to the lake, watching the cloud blanket in the North coming closer and listening to the calls of the many whimbrels close to the lake. We also got a beautiful view on the upper part of creek Selgil which we hadn't seen before, there were many of shallow waterfalls on softly sloping rocks. Somehow I wished they were made of hot water, so I could slide them down onto my ass and hop into the beautiful little pools with the blue water at their feet.

One of the shallow waterfalls in the upper part of creek Selgil.

And the funny thing on our way back was that we found a sheep path along the left side of Selgil and the path was trampled down so deeply into the soil by countless sheep feet that Gauti called it "the sheep's highway". Interestingly, this highway led for the most part really close to edge of sometimes steep cliffs. So my guess was that the sheep want to enjoy the beautiful view on their walk and are not scared of falling down (I was a bit sometimes, though ...).

Sheep's "highway" along the edge of Selgil, the clouds creeping in from the West.

Gauti on the sheep highway.

Majestic sheep close to its highway.

Gauti at a "blue lagoon" in creek Selgil.

Blogging instead of facebook

I started this blog as a more creative option for facebook. I use facebook mainly to share photography and pictures of my knitting and other creations. It's easy and nice to use it for sharing but sometimes I catch myself hanging around on facebook reading stuff I am not interested in and getting bored of it. Sometimes I get angry on myself that I do this. It also makes my stop writing, something I love to do since I was little, but facebook somehow isn't the place for writing down stories (it's books and blogs).

So I decided to start this blog in order to "force" myself away from facebook and get more creative again with the writing.