Thursday, July 4, 2013

Little Green Houses

The wilderness huts were actually very cozy, with a sleeping loft for hikers and a downstairs room for the guides, a full kitchen, and outdoor flush toilets. They are maintained by volunteers, who spend a week in isolation at the outposts. 
Finally, last night, we arrived at a small fishing village of 125 people and are staying in a guesthouse that was a former fish factory. The village people still fish cod here, in small boats by hand, and we were treated to fresh cod for dinner, caught the same day. So wonderful! It will probably be the only time in my life I will have fresh cod straight out of the sea like that as cod is nearly extinct in most parts of the world (I am reading Cod: the Biography of the Fish that Changed the World). Iceland is the one place that stopped overfishing cod before it was too late and now the fishery is quite healthy. 
The guesthouse was very cozy, and we enjoyed real beds and real bathrooms for the first time in 4 days. Today is our last big hike, then it's only 1-2 hour hikes each day as we make our way back to Reykjavik.

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