(readers note: The pictures follow the relevant paragraphs. Be sure to read all the way to the end. Click on any picture to see all the pictures in full size)
Our time at the farm done, we head to Siglufjordur, the
northern most stop on our trip. Time and
geometry and are playing funny tricks on us now. We’re nearing the solstice, so we expect the
days to get longer. But we’re way up on
top of the globe, if it was a beach ball we’d be near that round disc of
plastic where all the colors come together, so every mile we drive adds lots
more sunlight.
Along the way, we stop at Godafoss, the final feature
waterfall on our list. We’ve come to
find each waterfall’s personality, and this one is complex, a psych major with
a math minor who plays roller derby on the weekends. There’s a lot going on here. The upper horseshoe shaped fall has five
spouts, the left-most one fed by its own series of minor spouts. A few
yards downriver starts a series of craggy caves, a few small black sand “beach”
areas and a minor tributary feeding in for good measure. All of that dumps into a second fall, which
quickly hangs a left, creates a huge cave/beach, slips under the highway bridge
and heads on down the countryside. We’ve
seen so many waterfalls that we’re starting to overanalyze these things. Still cool though.
It’s rare to go from town to town in rural Iceland without going over a mountain, but the final approach to Siglufjordur surprises us with a series of two long tunnels bored through the mountains, the longest being a full 7 kilometers long. When we pop out of the last tube, we’re there, the Siglo Hotel, a favorite among Icelanders on holiday. The hotel was built on the site of a long-closed fish processing plant that dominated the town’s economy in the 1930s and backs up to the remaining plant. Our room is not ready so we wander the compact downtown. We walk by an empty schoolyard and I spot one of the huge jumping toys that we have seen in virtually every playground in the country. It’s a colorful bubble 25 feet on each side, coming right out of the ground, a cross between trampoline and bounce house. No one is here so I finally get my turn, kick off my shoes and get to bouncing. The video is more than a bit embarrassing, but hey, fun is fun.
Lunch is a fully forgettable smorgasbord at a local hole in the wall, the place we wanted to go either temporarily or permanently closed due to Covid. Back at the hotel we chill in the lounge and watch the working boats coming and going through the floor to ceiling windows. The lounge is simple and elegant, 20’ x 30’, with tables, overstuffed chairs and couches set to make intimate spaces. It’s the heart of the place, with groups gravitating to there for conversation and games. Checked into our room, we are fascinated by a mid-sized fishing boat being unloaded. Literally tons of fish come out of the belly of the ship, pallets of neatly stacked orange and yellow bins. Then more tons come out. And more. When each pallet is unloaded the two men on the dock grab each big fish and throw them into 4 foot square sorting bins, separating them by breed. Most of the fish are at least 3 feet long with the biggest we saw a full 5 feet. We sit in out window box seat for a full hour watching the work. We came here to relax, we just didn’t expect this was going to be how.
We finally pull ourselves away and head to the pool. If the lounge is the hotel’s heart, the pool
is its soul. It’s a long rectangular hot
tub overlooking the hotel’s front lagoon and vintage wooden fishing boat, and can
fit 20 people comfortably. It also
provides a view of the main entrance, so we watch people roll their suitcases
in and show up at the pool 10 minutes later.
We soak until our fingers prune, then a little longer still. We’ve been going hard, and now we’re in full
relax mode. “Wanna go back into
town?” “Nope, happy here. Let’s be here.” Nap it is.
Dinner right at the hotel, convenient not only because it is the best restaurant in town, but because we’re too lazy to put socks on. We’re so far north, latitude 66.148 degrees, that time has fully warped and the sun will not dip below the horizon at all tonight. I screenshot the weather forecast which shows Sunset 12:00am Sunrise 12:00am, but I think that’s just last lazy meteorology (unless the sun is actually lowest in the sky at midnight, quite possible this close to the solstice, and I am far too relaxed to Google it.) By the time we finish dinner, the lounge and adjacent bar are nearly full, quiet, happy conversations almost exclusively in Icelandic. “Drinks?” “Naw. Pool?” “Yup”. We change into suits and bathrobes and pad through the busy bar past the well-dressed patrons for some late night sun worship.
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