- [Dana] It's another day of van life in Iceland,
brought to you by our friends at Squarespace,
and today we're picking up where we left off last week.
After our drive from Vik to Landmannalaugar
we were a little exhausted from
all the river crossings on the F road,
and since the rain brought visibility way down,
we decided to rest for the rest of the evening
and wait for a weather window.
Luckily things cleared up for a couple hours
the very next day,
which was just enough time to soak in
some incredible natural hot springs all to ourselves,
undertake a gorgeous hike through volcanic mountains
where steam rises through the crust of the earth,
and in the afternoon we got to meet
some badass Icelandic girls who run
the off grid Mountain Mall grocery store
and restaurant inside these three green buses.
They told us about this place called Askja,
and the Viti explosion crater where you can
swim in a volcanic pool.
One of the roads to get there involves 10 hours
of driving over treacherous lava fields,
so of course Lou decided we had to go see it for ourselves.
And to cap off the entire adventure
from the South coast in Vik all the way up
to the North coast, we set our sights on some
luxury hot springs in Husavic, overlooking the ocean.
♪ All the moods in a heartbeat ♪
♪ We're going back where it all began ♪
♪ The same ground under our feet ♪
♪ Starts to shake we do all we can ♪
♪ Winter turned to spring ♪
♪ I remember everything from Wichita ♪
♪ This town is on it's knees ♪
♪ You know god is overseas I'm telling you ♪
♪ There's more to this than what you see ♪
♪ You know this towns got the best of me ♪
- [Lou] What do you think Dana?
- This swim's so nice Lou.
It's like really hot and really peaceful.
There's sheep everywhere.
And the bottom of it is really like soft,
it's just like little pebbles.
There's not even that much algae or anything in the water.
Kind of perfect I think.
I would be shocked if we can find a hot spring,
or a hot pot as they're called, better than this one.
It has like rivers rolling into it,
mist coming off the water,
there's like huge mountains surrounding us.
I feel like everyone else is like packing up their tents
or like hustling and bustling,
and we're just like well why don't we just go in now
and there's nobody in the hot top.
Hot pot.
Hot tub.
Hot spring.
Whatever it's called.
It's so nice.
Now we'll get all warm, loosen up our muscles.
It's like lazy yoga.
And then we can go on our big hike.
(gentle music)
Thank you so much for the tip for the hike.
It was incredible. - Yeah of course.
Will you walk us through like actually
what hike we did though?
Wait I should probably introduce.
These are our new friends.
They're Icelandic, and they run this business,
it's like their family business.
- Hi I'm Katla.
- I'm Edith.
- We run this family business, Mountain Mall.
- [Edith] In Landmannalaugar.
- [Katla] The biggest mall in the mountains.
- Indeed.
(laughing)
- So we started today here at the base,
what is this campsite called?
- This is Landmannalaugar.
- Landmannalaugar.
And then we went to...
- You went up Suournamur.
Southern mines.
- [Dana] Southern mines, right.
- [Katla] And I'm guessing you came down Vondugil.
- [Dana] Which one is that?
- [Katla] Well it's the evil valley.
- [Dana] Yeah yeah yeah, that seems right.
- [Katla] Oh and all these colors you see on the way.
- It doesn't make any sense, it's like you're
looking at something and it's like blue,
then it's brown, then it's red,
and then like orange. - Then it's purple then green.
It's like they have such great colors.
- [Katla] All in one tiny little place.
- And it seems like if you were like
digging through the sand all the different colors
would come up.
- Kinda like our floor.
Yellow, green, gray, blue.
- This is so sick.
- You're also like on the best time
'cause like the fall is coming.
So there's like way more colors now.
- [Dana] Oh really?
- [Edith] I think so yeah.
- [Katla] Like the mountain over there,
you can see how much red there is.
- [Dana] Oh, true.
It's like a different moss or something
like that coming through.
It's also so much less crowded than I think...
- [Katla] Yeah, yeah.
This is the low season.
- How much longer do you guys stay here?
- Til Sunday.
- Yeah.
Only a few more days.
Like five more days.
- Exactly.
And then we go, we pack up.
- [Dana] What kind of soup do you guys have?
Is it that lamb thing that I--
- Oh no.
So it just came to me last winter
that we should have vegan soup.
- We're vegan.
- You're vegan?
- Yeah!
- I have vegan soup.
- What?
- Yeah, man.
- 'Cause everyone, they told us like everywhere
they do the lamb stew, and I'm like oh well
that's not gonna work.
- Around here we--
- Vegan food!
- This is the only fridge we've got,
and it actually broke.
- And it's easier to cook vegan.
- And it's cheaper.
And it's good for everyone.
- Exactly.
Wait, that's awesome!
- [Katla] Yeah, we're really proud.
- [Dana] Look at this, you guys have got--
- We're cutting out as much plastic.
How charming is this?
- [Dana] That's so beautiful.
- [Katla] Soup is usually...
- [Dana] So what did you make this time?
- So now we have potato, carrot,
red lentil, coconut, - Yum.
ginger, garlic.
- Mm.
My gosh it's so good.
Lou, vegan soup in the middle of the mountains.
Who would have thought?
(gentle music)
I think I'm gonna wanna come back to Iceland Lou.
- [Lou] Yeah.
- You too?
- [Lou] I told you, it's the best country.
- Yeah.
I could spend a whole summer here.
- [Lou] Yeah.
- Maybe we should.
We're back at it.
Now we're gonna go through another river.
- [Lou] It's way lower.
- Yeah it is lower today.
- We were warned by some new Icelandic friends
that this road sucks and it's very boring
and you're gonna be bouncing up and down for 10 hours
and don't ever do it to yourself.
But we're gonna do it anyway.
- And we are headed towards the Askja Volcano.
So I don't think we're gonna make it there tonight
because I got a little too chit chatty
with some new Icelandic friends.
But we had a blast and we're just gonna
stay at a campsite that's a little bit closer
and then we'll make our way to the volcano,
if all goes according to plan, tomorrow.
♪ If I ask you ♪
♪ Don't hold back on me ♪
♪ Only better ♪
♪ If you set it free ♪
- [Dana] What's the dealio?
- So we just got to the campsite
and we talked to the warden, this really nice lady,
and we thought we were like three quarters
of the way to the volcano.
It's actually a 10 hour drive over a lava field
and the road is like disappears at times,
you kind of have to just find it
and it's supposed to snow tomorrow.
- [Dana] And you can only go 20 kilometers an hour
so it's like crawling. - At the most.
- Yeah so it's like we would be on the road
for like at least 10 hours tomorrow.
And there's no visibility.
- [Dana] Yeah the weather's supposed to be horrible.
- The weather's supposed to be horrible,
so it's like we could get to the volcano
and not even be able to go up it.
- [Dana] And the weather's so bad
they're closing down shop here.
Like everything is closing at this campsite,
it's the last night of it.
Winter is coming.
- Winter is coming.
(laughing)
So, yeah, it's a bummer.
- Oh my god, I look crazy.
I'm all flushed and red.
You sure this is worth it?
Iceland is taking a toll.
Um, no.
We made it through the center of Iceland
on the crazy offroading roads, and I'm really proud of us,
and we just arrived on the other side,
so now we need to pump the tires back up
to get air in them to the right pressure for normal roads.
But being in a van in the middle of nowhere
in Iceland has been incredible,
like the Landmannalaugar,
I don't know if I'm pronouncing it right,
was truly spectacular, like I don't think
I'm ever gonna forget that hike.
Just the mountain colors and the beautiful
hot springs and the kind of people that we met,
like really made this trip something out of this world.
Yeah.
It's been one of the most special trips
I think we've ever had.
So as we make our way to some incredible hot spring pools,
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