Day 15 – Mountain Biking and HotPot

I woke up to pretty good weather. The wind last night wasn’t too bad, a little bit of tent-shaking, but nothing that it couldn’t handle.

I was tired from driving around a lot the past few days. I had seen a mountain biking rental store on the way to the campsite. Biking through the volcanic fields sounded like a good way to spend the day.

I mapped out a route that followed a hiking path for about 18kms. The ride started off well enough, single-track riding with some nice challenging rocks and jumps.

About 3kms in, the riding became much easier with a double-track and flat land. There were some sandy parts from the volcanic ash, but nothing too challenging. I covered major ground pretty fast.

I got to the base of Hverfjall faster than I expected. Locking up my bike, I started the hike up to the rim of the crater.

Getting to the top, there was wind. Ugh! And nothing much to see up here either. The crater was huge, but apart from walking around what looked like a big mound of black sand, not much to tell it was the site of a huge eruption 2500 years ago.

I hiked back down and decided to keep riding on. Found this guy travelling with 3 horses, which seemed even more fun than riding a bike.

Next stop was Dimmuborgir, which is a lava field that solidified to create strange rock formations and caves. I enjoyed biking around here immensely, and spent the next 2 hours doing loops around the whole park.

I explored some caves and the rock formations were kinda interesting. I was having more fun riding the bike though, and at one point I wasn’t even paying attention to the rocks. It was more fun jumping off them. Some of the other tourists seems a little disturbed by my antics, but I was zipping around too fast to hear them complain.

Last stop on my bike tour was Höfði. About 3 kms away.

This was not a biking path.

I first encountered rocks, that I had to walk up carrying the bike on my back. Then there was loose sand for about a kilometre, that I had to push the bike through. It was tough enough walking on it, let alone pushing a bike.

After a while, I had to climb back down from a hill, again through rocks carrying the bike on my shoulders.

I found a cave on the way down, which looked like it had people living in it! I yelled “HELLO”, but no one responded. I would have liked to meet a person actually living in a cave but I guess he/she wasn’t home.

More climbing, pushing and hiking with bike on back until I got to Höfði.

I was exhausted. I rode back slowly along the highway to the bike-rental store and returned the bike and got into the car.

I needed to cool off.

I drove to Jarðböðin, which is the natural bathhouse that was closed the previous day. Soaking in the silica-like water, I felt pretty relaxed. I met some people, but I don’t remember their names. Not that it mattered since I probably wouldn’t even recognize them if I saw them again.

I spent about 3 hours in there until the place closed down.

I decided to do the drive to Akureyri that night itself. Getting into the second largest city in Iceland, it suddenly felt too big and glitzy for me. I had gotten used to the village life over the past few weeks.