Dyrhólaey, Reynisfyara, Eldhraun

Dyrhólaey, Reynisfyara, Eldhraun

The first business of the day after breakfast, a relaxing visit to the swimming pool in Vík.   Hot pots to soak in needed soaking in.  An ICE pot to drop yourself in headfirst and see how long it took.  Backup, Benjamin.  A word.  The breakfast spread and company I really appreciated, and did every day, at my guesthouse.  Ok.  Today would be my "day off", that is, between big excursions into the hinterland, I would relax and visit interesting places where I could be on my own and explore without a lot of effort.  First to the two black sand beaches, Dyrhólaey and Reynisfjara, the latter claimed to be in the top ten list of the most beautiful in the world.  I'd be there confirming that.  As I've been to every other beach as had the persons claiming this.... 

I'd pickt up two Czech hitchhikers which was fortunate for me, as we all were going to that beach with the headlands as you see in this picture, with the cliffs carved away from the headland and forming arches. That's Dyrhólaey. And I was going to the wrong beach for that view.  Lucky catch of the day.  I taught the two Czechs three Czech words, slůně sluníčko and neplač, nonsense words generally meaning baby elephant sun and neplač meaning don't cry. (Don't cry if a baby elephant sun is trampling on your eyes to wake you up. It doesn't hurt, hurry and get yourself to school.)

Guimard/Wikicommons

The beach at Dyrhólaey, the little bit that was there, isn't sand, but shingles and I walkt down to the beach to get my feet wet and take some video of waves, a kind of obsession or if not that, just what I do. I miss living near the ocean, and take a bit of the ocean back with me this way wherever I travel. Mostly however, Dyrhólaey is a headland, cliffs rising right out of the sea and crashing waves. There are parts of the headlands that are now islands to themselves and one in particular makes the site famous, as there are now several arches formed in the cliffs, hence the name Dyrhólaey, literally, Door Hole Island.

The cliffs of basalt are always interesting to me, especially where they form these columns and the more twisted, the more photogenic.

The cliff above the beach was layered, lava, solidified ash, lava, ash, the ash layers of course weaker and eroding more quickly, and the beach was littered with huge blocks and boulders of basalt that broke off when there was no longer support.

In and on every possible ledge no matter how small, was a cairn built with the smooth shingles from the beach.  Hundreds of them. Desecrating actually.  The cairns were devoid of something, they were just there for fun, someone else did it I'll have to too.  It was begging to be cleaned up.  It needed me to visit at night, get my iPhone out as a torch, a sweep away every one possible.  That was what I understood I should do one night (and then the next...), but I didn't make any promises (they're not hard to keep, they're just always misunderstood, and worse, you can never trust a promise, at least the first one) and I didn't imply that I'd even try.  Feeling empty, that vacuum attracts strange ideas, from where I cannot.  In dreams.  So, never answer já or nei questions in your dreams, only já and nei questions, so you can give either já or nei answers and everyone is satisfied.  Nor not.  And, in dreams, only ever ask questions with but já and nei answers.  Laugh, unsatisfied, or not, and get a good night's sleep.

So they're still there.  The cairns.

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I spent over an hour at Reynisfjara, a very very long stretch of beach from Dyrhólaey east to the Rejnisfjall headland, where, just on the other side of it, was Vík, but it wasn't possible to take a beach route to get there, but a challenging hike over the mountain would've given me a beautiful view that wasn't going to happen on a day off.  

View of Dyrhólaey headlands from Reynisfjara beach.

Receding headland at Rejnesfjall leaving solitary
basalt sea stacks, the Reynisdrangur.

 

I walkt up and down the black shingled beach
and I filmed the ocean waves for well over an hour.   

I had someone take two photographs of me clambering up on the most classic basalt columns I've ever seen, and even though I've had climbing experience, I fell twice ;-)

I fell twice climbing up these stacks to take this photo for you.

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I drove east on the "Ring Road", Route 1, to Kirkjubæjarklaustur, had a double expresso with an 'x' because I wanted it right now, intending to take the Meðallandsvegur Route 202 in its circle through and around the Eldhraun.

(Note on cairns: on Route 1 east, a stretch named Suðurlandvegur, is a cloverleaf warning sign of a rest stop and picnic table 1km ahead.  Varuð.  Across the road is a segregated field for persons to create their own cairns and drive away spiritually, eh, something. The only place like this I saw in all of South Iceland.  I drove by with a heavy lead foot and an involuntary shudder while they sighed realizing they had to give up some of their space for this behavior and sighed for my já and nei promise about the clearing up those cairns at Dyrhólaey.)

So, Eldhraun. The Suðurlandvegur runs right though it and Meðallandsvegur through and around it. It's seemed a more ancient hraun, the thickness of the moss on it an indication of age or it's just more wet there being close to the sea. I mistranslated Eldhraun as Old Lava but it means Fire Lava. Appropriately.  It's part the lava flow from the enormously destructive eruption of Laki in 1783. This link is worth the time reading; the Lakagígar fissure eruptions had catastrophic consequences world-wide.  Buried is 15 square km with up to 12 meters thick of hraun.  As I was saying, the moss was more lush than any I'd seen yet. Yet this place is also forbidding, unnatural, do not disturb, stay on the road.

The hraun was endless. Sailing on calm seas with no land in sight and it's sameness and endlessness. In a train though North Dakota and the flatness is sameness and endlessness. Through the hraun and soon it was sameness and endlessness. I couldn't get my head around it. Just so vast.

These feelings are not negative ones. They're actually very calm. Just calm. Broad, wide, sameness and endlessness. On a rise in the road, I stoppt to get out and look down on the hraun and it had no horizon. Falling asleep on a thick mossy bed and disappearing there.

[...photographs and explanation of rootless volcanoes...]