Andi's Journey: Heimaey Island

We weren't quite sure what to do with ourselves today since some of our plans fell through. We had hoped to go to Landmannalauger but that turned out to be more difficult that we anticipated (you really need a 4x4 vehicle to go on those roads). We had also originally hoped to go to Mælifell but quickly learned that that was nearly impossible. But no worries, we found other things to do.

We started by going to Seljavallalaug which was built in 1923 and is one of the oldest pools in Iceland. It doesn't cost anything and it's surrounded by beautiful mountains and a river. But I have to say that the water is pretty slimy and gross so I didn't stay in there long. Also we had been forewarned that the changing rooms aren't the cleanest and to bring a plastic bag or something to stand on.

After returning home for lunch we decided to go check out Heimaey Island. It's about 4 miles off the southern coast so we took a ferry there. We were lucky we looked at the ferry in advance online though because most of the time slots were full! So we could only go on the 5pm ferry and caught the last ferry back at 9pm. This gave us just over 3 hours on the island so we were rushing to get to all of the things.

First we walked the length of the island (a little over an hour) to the peninsula which is where the puffin lookout is located. It is home to about 8 million puffins this time of year. When we got there we had to search around for a bit but we finally spotted the puffins down in the water. There were a ton of them out there but they were so far down it was difficult to differentiate them from just specks in the water, so that was a bit sad that we didn't get a better view of them. We ran into some people from Iowa there and chatted with them for a bit. It had been awhile since we had talked with some people from the Midwest!

We had to quickly turn around and start on the return journey in order to try to also see the volcano before our return ferry but then we got lucky. I had been trying to hitchhike ever since we got to the island since we were so pressed for time and finally someone picked us up! (Don't worry moms- I had read Iceland is the safest place for hitchhikers!). It was an older couple with their dog and they were very friendly and informative. They actually took a quick detour to show us the famous Elephant Rock which is a natural rock formation on the island and it was pretty cool. They also shared some anecdotes about their volcano experiences. When the Eldfell volcano (located on the island) erupted in 1973 it wiped out half the town and buried about 400 homes. In order to save the harbour (the town's main source of income) from lava there was an unprecedented effort to slow the lava by cooling it with seawater. It's pretty interesting to learn about so check out the Wikipedia article if you want to learn more. Also in 2010 when Eyjafjallajökull erupted on the mainland it coated the entire island in black ash and they spent weeks cleaning it up.

Anyway, then they dropped us off right at Eldfell volcano which is where we were trying to go. So huge success! I'd kinda always wanted to hitchhike so this seemed like the place to do it. And it saved us nearly 30 minutes! Also, once we started climbing up the volcano we ran back into the Iowa folks who were so surprised that we had caught back up with them. They had spent $50 for a taxi to get there! They were pretty jealous when we told them our story.

We quickly climbed to the top of the crater to take a peak inside, but it really just looked like a hole. If you climb to the top rim I expect you'd get some great views of the island but unfortunately we didn't have time for that.