Iceland...the Perfect Ending

Our last full day in Iceland began great. We had tickets to the Blue Lagoon, which we purposefully booked on our last day so that we could relax in this water paradise. Here are a few photos of our time there...

The little "building" in the picture below is the swim-up bar. So relaxing to grab a glass of wine and float around.

Can you see the girl in the middle of the below picture? She is wearing a one-piece and standing beside the ramp in the water? She is putting a mud mask on her face (you can see a few people sitting on the edge with it on, too). There is just a bucket of the stuff floating out in the water and people line up to slop it all over their bodies. It was free, and it makes your skin feel great....

Woot! Woot! Pale, old men without shirts alert!

As you can see from the landscape below, this lagoon was in the middle of no where. A diamond in the rough.

 

 

After we returned from the Blue Lagoon, it was after lunchtime. With only a few more hours until our last full day in Iceland would end, our best adventure of the week was just beginning...

If you know anything about Gene, you know that he loves learning about extinct animals. One of the extinct animals that Gene has done research on is the Great Auk. It went extinct on Eldey Island in 1844. All week in Iceland, Gene had done research about Eldey Island, which he found out could be seen from the tip of Iceland. He found out that there was a statue of a Great Auk located at the edge of Iceland on a cliff, which overlooked Eldey Island. The directions were vague on how to locate this statue, but Gene was determined. 

Without a car, we weren't sure how to find our way to this particular tip of Iceland. No tours went to this location, so we weren't sure how to get ourselves there. Then on a whim (of course, right? ALL of my adventures with my husband are usually carried out on a whim.) with only a few more hours of daylight left, we went downtown and rented a car. Gene was determined to find the statue and see Eldey Island for himself. 

We drove about an hour to the middle of no where. We saw two cars pulled over at a small billboard on the side of the road. Gene thought this might be the spot, so we pulled over too and began walking several miles over a lava field towards the shoreline.

There's Eldey Island (that small black dot in the middle of the ocean below)!!! We got a glimpse of it, but we were not in the right spot. This wasn't where the statue was. So.....back over the lava field a few miles to get to the car. In case you haven't figured it out yet, I love my husband. A lot of walking on a lot of lava rocks for a lot of miles. But it was worth it.

 

So close, but yet so far.... 

Gene was walking ahead of me, so he reached the cliff before me. He told me that this was not the right spot and that we should just turn around and head back to the car. I said that I had to at least walk the few more feet to the edge so I could see the water! I had walked several miles so far, what was a few more feet? 

And...OH MY WORD! WHAT A VIEW!!!! I'm glad I didn't let me husband turn me around too fast. This was amazing. Just look at the water! A teal-ish color with the gray rocks...just heart-stopping.

 

So back into our little Hyundai we went...

Shortly down the road, Gene thought he saw a road that looked familiar from his online search. So we turned off and parked beside a hot spring. We were seriously just driving around Iceland blindly looking (and praying....praying HARD) for a random statue.

Everything in Iceland is just breathtaking!

And then, on the other side of the hot spring, we saw a lighthouse. This. Was. It. The moment we had searched for. The statue was supposed to be by this lighthouse. This little lighthouse with the Lighthouse keeper's home located at the base of the mountain.....there are no words.

And then we almost missed it. Missed our chance to see the statue, that is. We saw these signs at the bottom of the road that led passed the lighthouse, and we weren't sure what they said, but with all the exclamation marks, we thought maybe it was a warning to STAY OUT! Gene was like, "Maybe we should turn around." And I was like, "Are you kidding me?! We are THIS CLOSE to your dream. I'll take a chance of the lighthouse keeper shooting me off his property. We're walking down this road!" 

(Side note: We found out it was totally legal to go down the road. There were more people who came behind us and several who drove through in cars. We think the signs say something to the effect of "Warning! Bird Nesting Grounds!" because there was a HUGE flock of birds that swooped down on us as we bolted through their breeding ground.)

 

And over the hill.....we saw it. IT!!!!  I was so pumped up by now. I had been brought into this crazy adventure and now this was MY dream, too. I told Gene that we had to run. He looked at me like I was crazy, but I started running towards the statue. 

And here comes the awkward part...but we couldn't have cared less. There was one dark van parked a few feet behind the statue. The only other car/person/living thing around the area (of course, right?!). But we didn't care who was staring at us out their creepy van windows. We were going to do inappropriate things to this statue and we didn't care who watched! 

"Oh, Eldey Island. We miss you..."

 

Awww. Our little family. I love how it looks like the Great Auk is kissing Gene's head.

 

We drove home after our little Great Auk photo shoot with smiles on our faces and memories of the most wonderful adventure. What a perfect ending to our week. 

Goodbye, Iceland! We already miss you.