We woke to silence. Not a noise from outside. Sleeping in a yurt is a great novelty. Unfortunately no thermal pool on site. I didn’t appreciate when booking that I should have looked for place that offered their own hot tub. I thought the various bigger spa would be great. But they are so crowded.

We had breakfast in the main yurt. It was just great. And had such a great chat to the manager.

Rating for this place Nattura Yurtel would be 🛌🛌 missed a 3 because of having to go to the shower room.

Saying good by to the horses we headed 6 minutes up the road to Gullfoss waterfall. Wow. It’s stunning. The noise warned us we were close – thundering! The spray caught us and there it was. You could view from above you walk down lots of stairs to see it up close.

It was quite warm after our walk so back into the car to head towards the coast to Vik. We passed horse riders. It’s big here in Iceland. There are so many horse centres offering riding. You mostly see girls ! Girls seem to love horses !

Driving through the valley towards the coast was beautiful. Green fields , wildflowers Neatly rolled and packed hay for the winter and lovely homes.

Around every corner there’s another waterfall. And quite a few people. It always amuses me the variety of gear worn – suitable or otherwise. There’s the intrepid pole wielding ‘hikers’ , the out for a stroll sandal walkers, the families in coordinated gear, the young old and adventurous.

We wanted to visit the Skogar museum. The other museum we had in mind – the Saga Centre was closed.

The The Skogar museum is an outdoor village style depicting how people lived. It was almost empty as there had been a downpour and scared people away. We visited the indoor museum first, viewing the tools, arts & crafts, fishing gear used by the locals years ago.

I love the social history of a society and I didn’t know much about Icelandic history. It was a relatively late settled country from the Norse Viking people around 870-900. There was no one living here then. I can’t imagine how hardy those people had to be. Even today it would be difficult living with the dark and the cold.

Lunch at Freya’s, the museum’s restaurant was delightful. A great coffee set the tone. Steve had prawn pasta and I had avocado with smoked salmon. Both were great. A light dinner tonight. I browsed the very good bookstore and bought a few picture books. They love their trolls, ogres and rather gruesome folk takes here in Iceland but I found some I think won’t scare the grandchildren too much.

Our next stop was the black sands beach. Reynisfjara Beach. It featured in the SBS tv series Black Sands. It’s famous, not just for its black sand and the basalt column sitting up in the water but also for its ‘ sneaky waves’. There are several deaths a year. Always tourists.

The signs point out the danger and today was an yellow alert with lines drawn on a map showing how far you could go towards the waters edge. Did this stop the tourists.

No. Of course not! We stood for awhile in the stiff breeze watching and kind of wanted a ‘sneaky wave ‘ to appear.

We gave up and went back to the car, careful not to lose the car door in a freak wind. We were warned by the car rental place not to open the door with only 1 hand.

Iceland is full of danger. A bit like Australia but different dangers.

I managed to spot a bride veil blowing in the breeze. They were Japanese so I think it was more a honeymoon with wedding photos thrown in.

Vik is a small town on the coast and we drove up the hill to a church and looked back to the basalt columns off the black sands beach. impressive.

Talk about amazing landscapes. The next half hour we drove through what looked like ash covered rocks. Then flat plains where glaciers has been. You could see the glaciers where they are now standing back up the slope a little. Frozen!

Our next stop is for two nights. It’s a little cottage guesthouse. Quite new in a nice location. The cottage is beautifully fitted out and has a little kitchen which suits us as brought some cheese and beer to have for our light dinner. After lunch at Freya’s we didn’t need much.

Have I mentioned how expensive everything is? Wise friend Patsy who has been here a few days before us sent a message saying don’t try and convert into $$$$ – you’ll get too much of a shock. Eat, drink and enjoy. We are Patsy!

But out of interest – a one course dinner with one drink each – a beer is around $100 Aus $!

Tomorrow we go on a zodiac onto the Glacial Lagoon. I am very excited about it.