Day Ten - Driving down to Reykjavik
Where we hike up the Eldborg crater, take a dip in the Landbrotalaug hot springs, then drive down to Reykjavik.
After a lazy morning and a late breakfast, we decided to head out to the Eldborg Crater hike. It was just after noon. The hike was a 7.3km walk to and from the crater, and it was a largely uninteresting walk until the crater. Sparsely populated, we saw maybe two others on their way back near the start; otherwise we were the only ones on the entire hike. There wasn't much of a view to speak of until we climbed up the crater. The path there was quite muddy, and I was wearing snow boots rather than my hiking boots, which kept sinking into the mud so we had to wade our way around carefully. At the crater, there was a chain that helped us climb up. The view at the top was quite nice, and overall, we did not regret the hike, though it did take us 2 hours and 35 mins in total.
Once back, we prepared and ate a late lunch, realizing all the other guests had left. We shared our dessert with a girl from Poland who was there on a summer work assignment, and was responsible for keeping the space clean. She told us about a free hot springs in the area which we decided to check out before heading down to Reykjavik. After cleaning up and packing away all our stuff, we drove there, only to have to return because I needed to use the washroom. Our second drive there was successful - luckily we were the only ones around at the time. The springs is accessible by crossing a small stream, and whoever maintains it has done a great job because it was a very clean space, and easy to get in and out. We had worn our bathing suit under our clothes, and there was a small space near the springs to change and store our clothes and shoes. It was a lovely end to our adventures.
We spent about an hour here; it was mostly empty though a family did come by a bit later. As the evening progressed, we started our drive down to Reykjavik for the last leg of our journey, starving as usual. We bought some smoked salmon at a grocery store once in the city, and by the time we checked into the B18 apartments, we were extremely tired. We had a lovely dinner of smoked salmon and tomato sandwiches with cream cheese - incidentally, this was our only meal of the trip which was not a vegetarian one - but we were tired, had a long day and really needed those calories.
After a short night walk around Reykjavik, where we hoped to see the Northern Lights but were unsuccessful, we turned in for our last night in Iceland.
