It appears the internet closed down halfway through my last post. What I was going to say is that the ship travelled all night and ended up at Grimsey Island which is a little island at the Arctic Circle. There was no tour that day so we simply took zodiacs to the island and looked around. The biggest attraction there were puffins and I got lots of great photos. There was also a gift shop and a grocery store. Another interesting thing was the golf course. It apparently is above the Arctic Circle and many people liked to golf there and say they golfed above the Arctic Circle.
The next day the ship docked in Akureyi. It was the first day the sun had come out and was a lovely day. We had a whole day tour in the Akureyi area. We saw a lovely waterfall called the Godafoss falls "Waterfall of the Gods", then continued on to Lake Myvatn. It is a large lake and is quite the tourist area - lots of summer homes, camp grounds and some hot springs. We also went to Dimmuborgir which was an area of large black lava formations, which some people called the Black Towers and others the Black Trolls. Each tour guide talks a lot about trolls and fairies, apparently still a big part of Icelandic tradition. Finally that day we went to an area full of mud pots, steam vents, suphur deposits and boiling springs - all very cool!!
The tour guide talked about the sheep in Iceland. We see them all over the place and apparently the farmers who own them let them roam the countryside and eat the grass all over during the summer and then round them up in the fall to take care of them. Their ears are marked when they are first purchased and that is how the farmers figure out where to return them. It is amazing to me that the farmers all trust one another to let the sheep roam and not have farmers take each others sheep. Apparently most farmers own a few hundred sheep and make part of their living selling the meat.
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