Iceland May 25th 2022

 Today was the day of glacier hiking.  We stayed at the same place for a second night in the town of Hof.  The house is located 4 steps from sheep pastures.  It has been fun to watch all the babies run around drinking their mother's milk.  As we walked around the town today, we decided that there had to be less than 20 people living in houses surrounding the tourist spots.  In this area of the country, it has been more difficult to see actual Icelandic people driving around than sheep.  We estimate that nearly 3/5ths of all cars on the highway are tourists making it a fun experience to see an Icelander.  Soon we will be taking pictures of the people and petting them.  We were up early, eating Annie's special boiled eggs and pita before heading out to the glacier.  According to the guide, the glacier is the third-largest in the world.  The immense size of the ice is hard to comprehend but really is fantastic to see.  We got paired with 4 people from Spain that spoke zero English and one man from France whose wife bought him a to Iceland and didn't come with him.  The guide was a bearded fellow from Poland because apparently, Iceland has a large Polish population.  Annie brought her own crampons, which the principles took one look at, laughed and gave her longer ones.  The man gave us all ice pickaxes, which may have been one of the highlights as we were swinging them around picking ice from the glacier.  We made a beeline to the car after the tour to try and make the puffin tours that started at 1:30.  We got there 2 minutes late but unfortunately just missed the tractor that took people out to the peninsula.  At this point, seeing puffins is my mission before the end of the trip, and I will not board any plane before I see a Puffin with my own two eyes.  Anyways, we continued on to the Iceberg lakes that formed at the bottom of the massive glaciers.  The amount of icebergs in such small proximity is unlike anything I have seen.  The surrounding beaches are covered with ice pieces. It is appropriately called the diamond beaches.  We returned to the same grocery dinner spot as the night before, keeping the burger streak alive.  Tomorrow will be an exciting day as we have a 5-hour drive ahead of us and lots of stops along the way.  Until next time.