The Skipper and I awoke reasonably refreshed in a windblown tent this morning and then set off around the Vatnsnes Peninsula. On the far side of the peninsula we found a large grey seal colony and a neat little hostel, and since Mother Nature chose to blast us with wind, cold and rain it seemed like a good place to stop. The soft-spoken but very friendly farmer who owns this place has either been a regular subscriber to the Time-Life carpentry collection or else just simply likes excuses to buy tools, and he has hand-built several two-story cabins along the ocean. It’s a dramatic setting, but given the weather I utilized it primarily as a napping spot.
The day’s one notable adventure came as we were heading off for dinner. Most of the more interesting roads in Iceland require negotiating steep hills, fording streams, and escaping from some slick situations. The rental car I’ve got to handle these roads is a Suzuki Jimmy 4WD, aka Suzy the Wondermobile. Suzy has been a bit underpowered on the roads compared to my trusty Suby, and the handling has been a bit suspect, but she showed her true mettle as I was turning around in a gravel parking lot and she got stuck. Suddenly many of the roads on the Iceland map no longer look like possibilities. In her defense Suzy was fine once I switched the car to 4WD, but getting stuck in a spot that a Ford Focus would navigate with ease is at least mildly concerning.