Fabulous Horses & Splendid Nature
Iceland trip July '08
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Skálakot -horse and sheep ranch on the
southern coast.


This is the Icelandic way to herd horses: With
car!
Riding to the delta of Markarfljót.
Yubi! Back in the pasture
Vindótt - or at least that is how I think they
spell it. My favorite horse and the one I rode
most of the trip.
By Paradise Cave
Seljalandsfoss
Like out of a saga.
A well deserved rest and a roll.
From here we went ahead of the horses in a bus.
The extra horses were brought back to the farm.
Þhórsmörk natural park the next day.
The morning fog still hasn't quite
cleared and hovers over the cliffs.
This grey colored horse stands out.
I love the old way of using
turf and soil to build the long
walls - natural insulation.
Aurora
Astrid    -    Sanne    -    Sigrid
Coastal Plain with hazy view of
Vestmannaeyjar (Vestmanna Islands)
The little dots you see on the road are the horses being driven to our
meeting point. Other drivers know to watch out and make way.
The wet climate shows in
this moss covered brook
Our mounts take a break while waiting for the
rest of us to get back from the water fall. We
became tourist attractions ourself - a really odd
feeling!
The extra horses are taking the opportunity
to graze a little further from the group of
tourists.
My mom, Sanne.
Sanne and Aurora.
Looking towards the
interior of the island.
Our cabin
was well
hidden behind
the trees.
On the other side of the campground, the horses would graze
freely during the day when we weren't riding.
The landscape in the national park is very varied - from dry
rocky flats to river delta to spare mountain sides to lush,
stunted trees to dramatic rock formations to grassy meadows..
Sanne, Victoria, Aurora and Astrid.
Sigrid
This is what you get when
you do river crossings!
Bread bags were a nice touch
but turned out not to work...
It rained the last day and it was a
wet ride back towards the farm. A
good thing we were meeting the bus
half way.  The borrowed rain sets
leaked a lot of water in, unfortunately
Shortly after, we said goodbye to the horses and returned to Reykjavik via Eldhestar headquarters in Hveragerdi. We stayed
overnight in a hostel in Reykjavik, and Mom and my nieces flew back to Denmark the next day. My flight back to the States wasn't
until the day after, so I had booked a whale watching tour that afternoon. It was wet and stormy, but I decided to go anyway. I could
only take photos near the shore where we stopped to watch puppins, but we did see - and smell - several Minke Whales feeding at the
surface further out..





MINKE WHALE (Balaenoptera acutorostrata)
Length: 7–10 meters
Weight: 8–10 tons.
Worldwide population: Possibly 1,000,000
And now only photos and memories
remain, but what a ride to acquire them!
I thought I had taken a lot more
photos of my family, but they
just didn't work out. Darn!