The Road Trip on the South Coast begins...

We left Reykjavik and headed eastward on the Ring Road, which was built only in 1974. Before that, the wild and beautiful regions of the southeast were difficult to access. We stopped here and there along the way, including a miserably wet one in Hvergerdi. One place we stopped...only for this photo op...was Hella. Yes, Hella. It is the closest town to the famous Mt. Hekla, a volcano that spewed so ominously in the past that it was called one of the two gateways to hell by medieval writers. This was followed by a nice visit to the Saga Center in Hvolsvöllur, which is a museum dedicated to the epic Njal's Saga. The people there opened it up for us and answered lots of our questions. A pleasant stop.