The place we stayed for the last three days of our hiking adventure is called Lýsuhóll and is on the southern Snæfellsnes peninsula. One of the things that makes Lýsuhóll particularly unique is that it has an extraordinarily slimy swimming pool. This swimming pool is actually filled with natural mineral water that is warm and comes straight out of the ground. The pool is renowned for its sliminess but nobody seems to mind because supposedly the water is filled with amazing healing properties – silica algae if I’m not mistaken – and it’s all self-cleaning and everything. Meaning, from what I gather, that the water just keeps running through it all the time and that there’s no need to actually remove the slime. Anyway, make of that what you will; here is a picture of the pool…
Friendly, isn’t it? The changing rooms definitely are – they’re quaint and lovely, only the showers are damn cold.
Here’s a picture of the slimy algae mineral water:
Looks very healing, does it not?
Here’s a picture of the hot pot, which every swimming pool in Iceland has at least one of …
… not quite as slimy as the swimming pool but shares the same healing properties I should think. Ahem.
All that aside, the pool at Lýsuhóll is a totally unique experience and YT at least has never heard of anyone getting gravely sick after mucking about in all that slime.
[End of tourism promotion].
OH, IS THIS THE ICELAND WEATHER REPORT?
Yes, and YT has not been living up to her self-assigned role of late. So: today we have cloudy skies and some wind, and even though the forecast didn’t specify this we are experiencing a wee bit of a drizzle. Incidentally, this is Iceland’s Big Travel Weekend, with outdoor festivals all over the country and lots of people getting drunk and disorderly. Not that all festivals are complete drinkfests of course – there are family oriented festivals, and theme festivals, and teetotaller festivals and whathaveyou. The biggest one, attracting thousands of people, is in the Westman Islands and when it is on the island residents all leave their homes and move up to a nearby valley for the weekend. Once there, they pitch tents all in a row and even name the paths between the tents after the streets in the town. They bring all sorts of excellent food and then, all weekend, they drop in on each other and have a blast. But I digress: current temps are 12°C and it is getting darker by the day, we even have daybreak and nightfall times again, meaning that it is no longer light around the clock. So, today daybreak was at 03.05 and nightfall will be at 23.58.