Kirkjubæjarklaustur to Nýpugarðar

Icelandic horses are reluctant of comfort from a warm hand, until they realise how indulgent a stroke and pat relieves them into a state of catatonia.

We continued our journey to the south east, lurching around fjords, ‘fosses and ‘jokulls and abut shattering and crumbling mountains in a constant state in exfoliation.

Waterfalls explode often into cathedrals with columnular rock, themselves mushrooming from the earth’s stratum.

Then as if in a black haboob, everything dissolves into a horizontal plane of crunchy black powder.

In the background, mean-and-dark mountains pull whatever white shawls they can from the sky.

It’s over this horizon, a morgish lagoon with recent births for a glacier looms.

The bergs – optically brilliant in copper sulphate blue or mackereled in mountain ink, roll and bob in 300 meters of briny water.

Seals and terns skirt around their puddling and sweating bodies. The bergs fracture and fight amongst themselves in the incoming tide.

Life is reluctantly won and reluctantly forfeited here.

(One of the photos you can see the Kefir culture we have brought half way around the world with us fermenting on the dashboard of the car. It suffices as a meal unto itself especially when Icelandic food is insanely expensive. Eg. $20 bowl of fries, $40 bowl of soup, $50 main meal.)