I think I’ll start with the heart pounding, panic-attack inducing excitement of the day. We got stuck in a 3.1 mile long “chicken tunnel”….for 45 minutes….between a string of large tourist buses….in the dark….with rough rock walls that seemed to be closing in on all sides. Imagine an MRI tube, but with natural rock siding and no light. I’m not one to have physical reactions in situations like these, but I was close to a full level 10 anxiety attack.

How does this happen in the modern age of sophisticated traffic flow management you may wonder? In our case, the culprit was a stubborn Icelandic man in a Toyota Forerunner. I will henceforth refer to him as Forerunner Man.

In Iceland, you sometimes encounter long tunnels that are only 1 lane, but used by 2-way traffic. There are turnouts (called Meeting Places) along one side of the tunnel. Traffic moving in the same direction where these turnouts are located are required to pull into one when a vehicle is coming from the other direction. I call these chicken tunnels, because the driver that is required to pull over tries to get as far as they can before the other vehicle forces them into a turnout.

Forerunner Man lost the chicken fight in a big way to a large bus. They had a fender bender, because the man did not use the turnout about 100 feet behind him. He then refused to back up the 100 feet to let the traffic start moving again because he was waiting for the police to arrive and he didn’t want to let the bus “get away”.

Ok to recap, we are in a one-lane tunnel about 1 mile from the exit when this occurs. Traffic is now backed up in both directions and we are waiting for a police vehicle to arrive. Buses are piled up behind us (I know this because Peter passed them at Mach speed to get to the tunnel first), and in front of us. Now we have the drivers and tour leaders from all the buses in the roadway trying to get Forerunner Man to back up. They are yelling, gesturing, and even a nice British lady tries to cajole him to move. He was having none of it. And then there is Peter, also out of the car, beside himself at the lack of car and driving etiquette this man is displaying. I have to hand it to Forerunner Man he was not going to be intimidated.

So the police eventually get through all that traffic, do their thing, and then back the guy up about 1/2 mile where there is a Y in the tunnel to go to a different side of the mountain. After the police leave, Forerunner Man stops his car in the entrance of that second tunnel, and gets out, blocking the bus in front of us from making a turn into the tunnel. Apparently, Forerunner Man wants to go in the direction that we just came from, but can’t get through all the traffic he has successfully piled up for the last 45 minutes.

I won’t continue, but you get the idea. Thank you for your patience in reading about it to this point.

Ok, on to the day.

We drove to Dynjandi, the waterfall that Hawk declared the most beautiful in Iceland. We were there last week at 8:00 PM to photograph it in the rain. There were only 4 other people there. We were excited to go today while we had a break in the weather. There were about 4,356 people there at 10:00 AM. After a 15 minute wait to use the bathroom, we opted for “parking lot” shooting instead of trekking back up the steep muddy path with the rest of humanity. If I’m being honest, I liked the photographs from the parking lot better than the closer images.

In other important news of the day, we consumed Happy Marriage Cake #6 at the Jon Sigurdsson Museum. We now have a bad habit of eating this delightful treat instead of lunch.

Jon Sigurdsson played a key role in Iceland’s struggle for independence from Denmark in the 1800’s. The museum is located in Sigurdsson’s former home in a remote area on a beautiful fjord.

Oh, and there was another beautiful waterfall we photographed along the road. We had planned to see a third waterfall today, and go back to a pier that Hawk showed us, but the rain and wind set in, and we had a traffic jam to participate in.

It was a full day with 2 waterfalls, a historic site, and an epic traffic jam. I was looking forward to stopping at the Sea Monster museum on our way to Patreksfjörður tomorrow, but Mark has informed me they are closed on Sundays. I’m hoping the positive reviews about their Happy Marriage Cake will be enough to entice Peter to backtrack 30 minutes while we are in Patreksfjörður.

Unfortunately we have to go back through the chicken tunnels again tomorrow. Fingers crossed it will be an easy 3.1 miles.