In rough weather you begin to appreciate why they make ship
showers so small, it’s a safety feature. In a tiny shower you can always lean
on a wall or hold the grab handle.
This afternoon we took a 4x4 tour and it was something of a
disaster. The other DrC and I were in what they call a “super jeep” that was
really a full-sized Ford van tricked out with rally lights, huge tires and four
wheel drive.
A short distance into the first off-road stint of our tour
our van broke a front axle and ended up with one front tire far from parallel
to the other front tire. So we were all redistributed to the other three vans
and we pressed on up the mountain for an enormous panoramic view, including of
the volcano that caused so much trouble recently for Europe .
Coming back down the mountain there was a new van waiting
for us where they were trying to fix the broken one. We reloaded and pressed on
for a couple of hours.
Late in the afternoon our replacement van blew out its
airbag front suspension and the other three vans stopped to try to fix it.
Twenty minutes later they’d succeeded sufficiently that we could finish the
tour. I wonder if Icelandic 4x4 tour operators routinely have this much
mechanical trouble?
The other DrC and I were reminded of a 4x4 tour we took in
the Falkland Islands in 2003 where we got
stuck in the mud every few minutes. Yes, 4x4s do get bogged down if the mud is
really slippery, as that was.
On the other hand, if the machines were unreliable, the
weather was spectacular. Visibility was nearly unlimited and the sunshine was
great.
Apparently the ugly weather sets in again tomorrow, the
captain expects 20 foot swells and 35 knot winds. We’ve been notified that the
planned stop in Greenland has been scrubbed and replaced with stops in St. John’s , Newfoundland ,
and St. John , New Brunswick ,
both ports in maritime Canada .
The new itinerary isn’t too bad, if the weather even permits
those revised stops. I can’s say I’m surprised that we’ve had some bad weather,
given what time of year it is in the notorious North Atlantic. However, Iceland has yet to begin autumn (factoid: Reykjavik is the farthest
north national capital).
