continued… At the base camp, the tour group got back into the regular bus for the return trip to Reykjavík. They passed an aluminum factory. While Iceland did not have aluminum ore deposits, it did have abundant and inexpensive electricity. And a lot of electricity is what was needed to process aluminum. So they bulk shipped in the ore, processed it, and exported it. Apparently, aluminum refining generated a significant amount of revenue for the country.
They stopped at the Hraunfossar and Barnafass waterfalls. Apparently, the smaller falls were Hraunfossar and the bigger ones above them were Barnafass. Here were some smaller falls (Hraunfossa) by the river leading the bigger falls.
Hraunfossar
The main waterfall area (Barnafass) was beautiful.
continued… The entrance was small and had a carpeted path to a large room with benches.
The guide said that they’d used the same equipment and crew to make these tunnels as they’d used to make the tunnel under the ocean that they’d driven through on the way to the base of the glacier. These were the longest man-made ice tunnels in the world, and they were created by farmers working to make a tourist attraction. The temperature was just below freezing inside, and apparently stayed relatively consistent year round.
Saturday, March 21 – Friday, March 27 — This week has been bittersweet. On Saturday, Tiki Tour, Zimovia and us decided to go to Little Bell Cay, but midway they changed their plans to go to Compass Cay. We did not want to go there. Instead we went to Samson Cay, but Tiki Tour and Zimovia decided the anchorage was too rough at Compass, so they went to Little Bell after all.
Big waves at Rachel’s Bubble Bath on Compass Cay, Exuma Islands, The Bahamas
Cette semaine est aigre-douce. Samedi, Tiki Tour, Zimovia et nous avons décidé d’aller à Little Bell Cay, mais ils ont décidé de changer leurs plans et d’aller à Compass Key. On ne voulait pas y aller. À la place, on a décidé d’aller à Sampson Cay, mais Tiki Tour et Zimovia ont décidé qu’il y avait trop de roulis à Compass, donc ils sont allés à Little Bell après tout.
Big waves at Rachel’s Bubble Bath on Compass Cay, Exuma Islands, The BahamasContinue reading →
Thursday, April 2 — It rained hard all morning, but the forecast said it was supposed to stop in the afternoon. By the time Christi and Keith finished school, the rain had mostly stopped. Believing it was going to be clear for the rest of the afternoon, Keith and Christi hopped in the car and drove down to Ft. Lauderdale, which was about an hour drive south, to see Tiki Tour.
Shortly after getting on the freeway, a cloud rolled over that dropped rain so hard that there was no visibility. Maps re-routed us off the freeway, so we figured there must have been an accident ahead. The detour took us a couple of miles south before routing us back onto the freeway. The street route had many traffic lights, and it took a solid half-hour to drive those two miles. By the time we were back on the freeway, the rain had stopped and the freeway was clear.
Tiki Tour was anchored in the ICW near a bridge. Unfortunately, Christi was confused about which bridge and went to a spot about a mile away. After a bit of texting back and forth with Tiki about not seeing their boat, Tiki figured out we were in the wrong place. All in all, by the time we finally arrived at the correct bridge, the one hour drive had turned into a two hour drive.
While there had been heavy rain North Palm Beach, it hadn’t really rained in Ft. Lauderdale this morning, and no rain was in the forecast for the afternoon. Christi, Diane, Keith and Fynn went to the Hugh Taylor Beach State Park, located on the barrier island between the ICW and the beach. The entrance fee was $6 per vehicle or $2 per person if entering by foot, so it was actually cheaper for the four of us to take the car in than it would have been to walk in.
Per the map/brochure they gave us, the road did a one-way loop around the 180-acre park, with parking lots interspersed along the loop. We found a parking spot and began to explore on foot. Per the blurb on the brochure, the Tequesta Indians utilized this land during their annual migrations, but generally moved on quickly. The first permanent settlement in Ft. Lauderdale was the fort, which was built for the Second Seminole War, and was located about 2-miles south of the park. It sounded like Hugh Taylor Birch was one the earliest non-military residents in the area. In 1893, he started purchasing land in what is now part of the city of Ft. Lauderdale. Upon his death in 1943, he donated this piece of land to the city to be used to preserve a natural, wild area for the protection of wildlife. It was a surreal little rural oasis in the middle of the dense and bustling city.
The diversity of the park was surprising. On the south side was the ICW, with a sea wall and dock that offered great views of the nearby expensive waterfront homes.
There were quite a few walking trails. This one paralleled the road.
And several trails went through the center. Most of the trails we walked were quite different from one another.
When we got up, we were pleased to see that the forecast had been correct — the wind had shifted so that anchoring at Rachel’s Bubble Bath would be comfortable today. As soon as we got up, we immediately started getting Kosmos ready to go to sea. We pulled up anchor at 0715, as the sun was rising. It took us about an hour and 20-minutes to get to the anchorage on Compass Cay that was next to Rachel’s Bubble Bath. We had to go through the narrow, shallow channel while the current was strong, which was stressful, but we followed our previous line and all went smoothly. We immediately got dinghy down and made breakfast.
After breakfast, we met the crew from Tiki Tour on shore and trekked up the short saltwater river to the Bubble Bath.
Thanks to the recent big winds, the waves were huge. They were even coming over the left side of the big rock — in our previous visits, we’d only seen the waves come over the right side of the rock.
