God spent most of the day recharging the waterfalls, but the wet stuff finally quit around 6:30 PM and the big bright thing made a brief appearance. The eastern fjords of Iceland are supposed to be incredible, but with visibility sometimes reduced to four inches it’s impossible to be be one hundred percent certain – Lonely Planet will have to remain the authority on the subject.
Since there’s still a lot of time remaining until the return home I made a detour up north to the Langanes Peninsula, which the guidebook describes as one of the loneliest parts of Iceland. Having spent over two hours driving the fifty kilometer “road” out here, it seems like the guidebook has it right. There are a handful of abandoned farms, a lot of birds, an occasional sheep, some rolling hills, and a blustery coast, but almost no signs of people – there have been two other cars all night, and no inhabited buildings. One very cool sight while coming out was a herd of 20-30 nearly wild horses running along the coast – they don’t like cars, and it was impressive seeing so many animals all take off at full speed across the countryside. The “road” ended in the midst of a long-abandoned fishing village so I’m camped here for the evening with winds howling, dozens of birds flying by every minute, and some impressive sea cliffs disappearing into the fog along the peninsula’s southwest coast. If the weather cooperates there will be a lot of exploring tomorrow, and if it doesn’t then it may be time to make an offering to Thor to try and get the sun back again.