Iceland-Day 4

 Our only full day on the Westman Islands was packed with adventurous hikes.  Hikes I wouldn't take our kids on and honestly probably wouldn't have taken ourselves on had we known what we were getting ourselves into.  The islands jut up out of the ocean 1000 feet and on top of them are these magnificent views with puffins and sheep.  But, to get up to the views is steep.  Cliff steep.  So steep, the only way up in several places were vertical ladders.  And small places where there are only a few inches between the trail and a 1000 foot drop straight to the ocean.  But it was worth it, after we finished.

 After our morning hike, we got a quick lunch at a local coffee shop (I need to write an entire blog about the food in Iceland.  It was incredible, everything we had).  We had heard that a local sport was spragna, or cliff rappelling.  At the base of the second hike we wanted to do that day, were these ropes, permanently (see below) anchored at the top of 100 foot rock faces.   You hold onto the rope and climb the rocks as high as you can before jumping off and swinging.  It was much harder than it looked.  We had read about this on another person's blog and their family had photos of doing the same thing on the same rope.  

 Next to the rock faces was another dizzingly steep hike (not quite as close to cliffs).  We decided to go up and see what was at the top.

 It looked down on a whole section of the islands that we didn't know existed.  It was gorgeous.

 When we got down from the hike (maybe an hour later), the rope that we had swung on, the rope that the family swung on more than a year ago, was gone.  Vanished.  We have no idea how anyone got up to anchor it in the first place, and no clue how anyone could have possibly climbed up to take it down in that one hour we were hiking.  There was no indication that it had come undone or got stuck.  It literally vanished.  Maybe we were the last ones to swing from that rope.  As we left the islands the following day, Brian ran back to check and make sure it was still gone, and it was still in fact gone.