Two Thumbs Up!

We had another driving adventure on Thursday. We were supposed to drive our friend's car to Heydalur, a farm in the northeast, by noon so we left the house at 6am. We took turns driving and made it to the town of Holmavik by 11am. We were just 30 minutes away from the farm when the unexpected happened. We were lost, driving along a narrow gravel road, and when we tried to U-turn, the car got stuck in a ditch! Just 10 ft away was a cliff and no guard rails. If we backed up too much, we would fall! It was the worse place to get stuck. We jacked up the car, placed flat stones under the tires, and tried every imaginable thing we could think of. But the car just simply wouldn't move. Two hours passed... and miraculously, we managed to get the car out! It was definitely good team work and good spirits that pulled us out of there.

We arrived at the farm two hours late, and from there we hitchhiked. Our hostel for the night was located 75 miles from the farm. We started walking but only saw two cars in 30 minutes.

It wasn't easy getting picked up. One hour passed... We thought we would have to walk all the way to the hostel...

But then a car stopped for us! It was a nice old lady who was driving alone. She was on her way to a town called Flateryi to visit her parents. She was a farmer all her life and had five daughters and 13 grandchildren.

She was so kind to drive us all the way to our hostel. It was an hour and a half drive. We said, "Takk" (thank you in Icelandic) and she smiled and said, "No, thank you. It was much more fun than driving alone." What a nice woman she was!

The hostel we stayed at was a little house in the middle of nowhere.

The problem was food. There were no shops nearby, the hostel had no food, and we had eaten all our cookies and peanuts. All we had was a tiny bag of raisins. We knew we would have to go to sleep on an empty stomach, but I actually had a little something that would bring a smile to Yoshi's face!

A bag of instant rice with dried vegetables that I had secretly brought from Japan. It was Yoshi's birthday on Friday and I thought a consumable gift would be appropriate. And I knew he would miss Japanese rice! It was a day early but I gave him his gift that night. He was so happy! Look at the big smile on his face.

Don't forget to post a birthday message on Yoshi's blog!