We did our tour through Eldhestar stables, outside of Reykjavik heading southeast on the ring road. We did the "Meadows and Mountains" tour, a 3 hour group ride. They picked us up at our hotel around 9:00 a.m. and we drove the 30 minutes or so out to the farm. There they gave us helmets and assigned us our horses. I was disappointed because our guide didn't know the horses' names. But we all had nice friendly horses. There were a lot of people there, but they were all departing on different day trips, so we ended up in a group with just the four of us and another couple, Swedish I think. Our guide was a very pretty girl from Sweden who was working at the farm for the summer. She set us off through the fields, and soon taught us how to "Tolt," which is a particular gait to the Icelandic horses. Here is a description from an Icelandic horse web site:
Tolt is a four-beat gait. There are alternately one or two feet on the ground, the two feet are alternately in lateral and diagonal pairs.
Tolt is a four-beat gait without a moment of suspension. In tolt, a horse has always either one or two feet on the ground. Tolt tempi range ridden from working speed right up to racing speed and a fast tolting horse can reach similar speeds as in gallop. The horse carries itself proudly and gives a very smooth ride, enabling the rider to cover long distances without tiring.
For anyone who has ever ridden a horse and ended up being barely able to sit down in the days following you can imagine how nice this is. We were able to trot our horses in tolt off and on (It is apparently more of a workout for the horses so unless you keep the reins tight they'll get lazy and start bouncing you again. We had a difficult time getting the hang of it at first but once you've got it, you know you've got it. :)
The Icelandic horse breed is very pure, having been unchanged since the animals were brought here by the Vikings. No other horse breeds are permitted to be imported into the country, and once an Icelandic horse has left it cannot return.....banished into exile for life! They're small horses, and in the winter they get this luxurious thick coat. They seem like sturdy friendly animals.
We walked, trotted, tolted, whatevered our way through some pastures, past the breeding animals, up a hill, then down some fun rocky paths and across a couple rivers. The time really did kind of fly by. Alexa has a blast, which was fun to see. The meadow part of the ride was a little bit boring, and I was really bummed by the fact that they asked you to not take pictures, even when you were stopped, while you were on the horse. I snuck the camera out a couple of times anyway, but I did miss some nice shots. I would have enjoyed riding these horses along the beaches.
Butts tired but feeling exhilarated, we returned back to town, asking the van driver if she would drop me and Mike off at the car rental place which turned out to be absolutely nowhere near the part of town where we were staying (Duh, "Old Town" and "Downtown" are not the same thing). She begrudgingly complied, and so we went into the Avis office and picked up our car. Like everyone else on the road who hadn't splurged for a 4WD we would be driving a Toyota Yaris. I had requested the cheapest car available, a 2D but she gave us a 4D. I was a little bummed to get a gray one but I was happy to finally have some wheels.
We navigated our way back to Old Town (we had considered going to Hafnarfjordur and doing some "elf hunting" but the time frame just wasn't shaping up), returned to our hotel and met back up with Robbie and Alexa. We relaxed a little bit, then set out back onto the town for some last minute souvenir shopping and our whalewatching trip.
Robbie found some really cute Christmas ornaments representing the "Yule Lads," 12 boys who show up, each on a different day, during the days leading up to Christmas and cause all sorts of trouble. They are the sons of trolls that live in the mountains There's the one who eats all your sausages, the one who comes and blows out all your candles.....I bought an ornament representing the one that comes and peeps in your window; Robbie bought the "Skyr-glutton."
Oooh have I not said anything about Skyr?
Skyr is a dairy product, apparently exclusive to Iceland, which is kind of like yogurt only smoother and less tart. It's actually quite similar to Greek yogurt in consistency. It is available unflavored (about as tasty as you would imagine) and in flavors like vanilla, blueberry, strawberry etc. People make smoothies out of it, or mix it in with their cereal and milk. It's extremely low in fat and high in protein; a fantastic food product! I had it for breakfast pretty much every day and often as a snack as well.
So anyway, with a couple more purchases from the christmas store (You know me and my Christmas ornaments - I got a little lamb made of lambswool with a santa hat, and a beautiful puffin as well, and a little book that tells the story of the Yule lads) we headed back to the hot dog stand for hot dogs and another sack-o-fries, then to the harbor to buy tickets for our whalewatching tour.
I'm glad we went, but man was the weather crap. Overcast, rainy, windy, and cold...and our guide's English was kind of lacking (I think she was German) as was her ability to indicate direction. We saw about 5-6 Minke whales and a porpoise, drank a lot of hot chocolate and spent time just talking to each other about all we had seen. We did get to stop at Puffin Island, a big breeding area for puffins and watch them all fly away in terror as the big boat approached.
One thing you sure don't see every day......diretly across the pier from the docking station for the whalewatching tour are these giant, hulking big ships with a big red "H" painted on the side. These are commercial whaling vessels (yes I found it a bit disconcerting); the "H" stands for "Hvar" which means "whale" in Icelandic. Just seeing the boats brought up images of blood spattered decks and big whale carcasses. Ick. I made it a point never to "Try" whale meat, which was offered as a delicacy in quite a few places. I also never had puffin, although not for ethical reasons, we just didn't really eat anything other than hot dogs and peanut butter sandwiches. :)
The whalewatching boat offered very warm waterproof bundling up gear, which none of us availed ourselves of, and regretted a bit later.
As much as we didn't want it to be, our time together in Iceland was winding down. After almost 3 weeks in Europe, Robbie and Alexa were heading home the next day. We returned to the room and started packing up our stuff. The plan was for us to leave really early in the morning, drop the kids off at the airport, then start on the road to try and catch the bus for the Thorsmork nature reserve in Hvolsvollur at 10 or 10:30. At some point we realized there was no way that all 4 of us plus our bags were goign to fit in this teeny car. So, we decided to forget Thorsmork and that I would drive them to the airport, then return to collect Mike and our bags and we'd get on the road whenever.
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