day 6

The day started very romantically, with Willem feeding me grapes, a new tradition that quickly lost its charm when two days later we ran out of grapes and he started throwing chocolate raisins at me. The hike of this day first took us past the Svaritfoss, a unique ‘black’ waterfall in a landscape of basalt columns that formed the inspiration for the Hallgrimskirkja in Reykjavik and then we continued our hike to a mountain ridge next to the Hvanndalshnukur, the highest mountain of Iceland, and a huge glacier of the Vatnajökull icecap. We had lunch in the sunshine overlooking the glacier and the lake and river delta that had formed at its terminal. There was a possibility to climb down to the edge of the rock that we were on and take impressive pictures, but I was done with that kind of thing, so I positioned myself on a rock that was safely at the top of the cliff and asked one of the group members to take a picture from an angle that made it look impressive. Like we would say in Holland, if you’re not brave, you gotta be smart.
We were about half way up the hill that we were climbing after lunch, when one of our group members pointed out that the sole of my shoe had almost completely come off. The sole of my right shoe was only still stuck to the shoe with about 1 cm at the tip and it turned out that my left sole was only still hanging on at the tips at the front and the back. The other layers of the soles were still providing the necessary support and firmness, but I needed the parts that were coming off for grip. I continued to walk up slowly, trying to very deliberately place my feet such that they were as flat as possible with my right sole not doubling up on itself. When I made it to the next plateau where some of the others were waiting already, it turned out that nobody had any strings, but two group members did have hansaplast sports tape with them, which we used to almost completely tape up my shoes. Given this injury (because that’s what it looked like), I decided to take the short route home. This trail was still more than 10 k, but it went around the higher and steeper peaks of the mountains instead of over them (which, let’s face it, I was glad to have a good excuse for anyway).
The remaining hike was luckily very much like I expected from a hiking trip with a difficulty level of two (out of three) feet. We crossed a sloping plateau again with plenty of delicate plants and flowers, including the little berries that we would eat and the cotton-like flowers that I assume (given that they grow in ICEland) provide the primary source for the fabric in my thermo-underwear. And everything was bathing in sunlight.
My shoe solution was holding up perfectly. I had almost forgotten about it, until we came closer to the campsite where larger numbers of mostly overweight car-tourist were struggling to find their way up the hills to the waterfall, while gawking at my shoes. After literally cutting my way out of my shoes, I found out that just like the previous hike, my blister patch was not holding up that well. It had again slid down my heel, while still also being firmly stuck to parts of the skin, tearing the wound further open instead providing a means for healing and causing me some more pain that night.