After leaving the Panorama Glass Lodge, we carefully started our trek back on the gravel road with our donut tire. In the daylight, it did not seem as treacherous or long and soon we were back on the Ring Road, headed towards Hella. Once we arrived in the town, we stopped at a little bakery for some breakfast and called the car rental place again. They emailed us the address of a local repair garage, so we headed there next.
The guy at the garage quickly got our tire patched up. Some guys in a Land Rover showed up while we were there, also with a flat, so seemingly even the 4x4s aren’t immune to the perils of Icelandic roads.
The plan for the day had originally been to take the ferry to Heimaey, the only inhabited island as part of the Westman Islands off the southern coast of the main island. However, it was very rainy all over the south, and the forecast in Heimaey especially looked bad. We had missed our ferry due to the time it took to get the tire fixed, and the boat tour we had scheduled around the island was canceled due to the rain. So we decided not to take a rough ferry ride for what would amount to just a few short hours on the island and decided to choose a Plan B.
I had several backup plans for this day because I knew this would be our most likely day for our plans to be thwarted (although, I did not expect a flat tire to be the cause!) but most of them were longer hikes that would be doable in a drizzle, but did not seem appealing in the pouring rain. (However, if you are looking for ideas, some of my backup options were hiking to Bruarfoss, Glymur, or Reykjadalur Hot Spring Thermal River, all of which take roughly three hours roundtrip.) Instead, we went to UNA Local Product in Hvolsvöllur, where I bought a locally made lopapeysa, then back to Hella to tour the Caves of Hella.
The Caves of Hella tour was pretty interesting and ended up being one of Mr. Strange’s favorite parts of our trip! They took us into a few man-made caves dating back to the earliest settlements of Iceland, one of which was seemingly used as a chapel.
From there, we headed on to Reykjavik, which is where our next hotel was located. We checked into the Skuggi Hotel, then headed out for a drizzly walk around the city.
We ended our day with dinner at the Lebowski Bar, something I had kept a secret from Mr. Strange, as he is a Big Lebowski fan, and why wouldn’t there be a Big Lebowski themed bar in the middle of Reykjavik? I had a delicious white Russian and a burger.
We then headed back to the hotel to take it easy before our big last full day in Iceland.