It was a long day, and finally we are in our stay of the day Vorsabæ 2, a truly magical small cottage that seem to be only exist in fairy tale story. The owner home and farm house was just 50 meters away from our cottage, and beside that, it was purely country side wonderland.
Once we reach our cottage, the first person who welcome us is not the cottage owner, but her pet, a black dog! She run to us once we stop our car, and keep playing around with us happily, and she is very smart as well, even though she is very active running around our cottage, but she never step a foot into the interior of it. I believe cottage owner have teach her well on this manner, and she is all good with it. We have so much fun playing with her, and we know she felt the same too!
Sue Hui with her.
Hybrid with her.
Me taking selfie with her, sitting just outside doorstep.
Back to Vorsabæ 2 itself, it have 2 rooms on the ground, and a stair to another small room with 2 bed on second floor. Beside that, it also have a living space, kitchen, dining area, a bath room, and also a kind of store room space, which the owner kept a washing machine and dryer there. It was not huge, but I can say the space are well utilized perfectly!
Owner house area.
Should be a farm house.
Jet fly over a bright blue sky.
Hybrid and Jenson missing in action.
Ying Ying and Gary with our little cottage. Oops CK is there too~
View straight from cottage front door.
Living Hall.
Kitchen and dining area.
Bed room A.
Bed room B.
Bed room C on the second floor.
View from the window, endless view of grassland.
Everyone busy exploring the cottage.
CJ with the cottage, and our car.
Me with the cottage, and our car.
Jenson with the cottage, and our car.
Panaromic view, just love it so much.
To make our trip more cost efficient, we agree to have most of our meal self cook as eating in Iceland is not cheap at all at any restaurant. Sue Hui, CK, Hybrid, and Ying Ying are undoubtedly best chef we have throughout our trip! The rest of us mostly focus more on cleaning and basic tasks as we do not have much cooking experience. Tonight we have a specialize spaghetti with sausages and french fries as dinner, although there is some mistake I believe during the preparation, but everyone do have a wonderful, cheerful, and great dinner together! Regardless of failure or not, we enjoy the food to the fullest as well!
3 main chef of the night.
Standing outside to snap this photo in the cold night, yet nobody saw me....
Finally, they found my existence lol.
Ying Ying and Hybrid.
It look like CK punish Gary to knee down on the floor lol.
Our specialize spaghetti of the night!
Our trademark pokemon trainer lol.
Dinner time~ Photo credited to Hybrid.
After dinner, some of us start to setup our camera with stand on the field next to our cottage, although there is still not any sign of aurora on the sky, we still manage to see a great dark skies full with bright stars everywhere. Indeed it was a very good weather that night. I kinda regret did not learn properly on how to take a clear night sky photo before the tour, hence most of my take was blur. I did spend quite some time using internet sharing on how to do it properly, and well at last after few hours finally get the root cause of it, as i did not perform a manual focus prior to the long exposure shot. Below is some of the method i practice for my basic night sky photo shooting:
1.Long exposure shot with lowest aperture possible. Try few click to determine best shutter speed to use depend on the brightness of the area.
2.Choose manual focus mode, and after setup the frame of the photo, get a most obvious object (e.g.brightest stars on sky) to use focus manually to make it as sharp as possible.
3.Use shortest self timer option (e.g.2 seconds) for the capture to start as direct pressing might share the camera and causing image to become blur.
The weather keep changing during this few hours and there is no sign that it going to appear at any time hence we decided to have a rest first, and check back again at around 4 AM as per prediction from Iceland Aurora Forecast tool.
At around 4 AM, we went out to check again on the sky and finally we saw the slim aurora appearing, but there are some dark clouds blocking the view. We gather everyone and after some brief preparation, we drive out to find a good spot to have a better view of it. Finally, we found a good space on the road side (near to junction between Biskupstungnabraut and Skálholtsvegur road) and spend a rough 30 minutes to enjoy the view, under negative temperature! Although it is only a slim aurora visible to us, but it was a truly an unforgettable moment for me.
Practice result, finally the view is sharp!
4 AM, here it come....
The clouds are blocking lots of vision.
Aurora night with negative temperature, take 1.
Aurora night with negative temperature, take 2.
Aurora night with negative temperature, take 3.
Aurora night with negative temperature. take 4.
Aurora night with negative temperature, take 5.
3 missing in actions.
A car drive by during our long exposure shot, and this is the special result we have.
8 of us with the aurora night!
It is fading now when we back to our cottage.
The time we went back to cottage was already around 6 AM in the morning, hence some of us proceed to take some short nap while some just have a seat and chit chat a bit in the living area. Oh yeah, some just took their nap there as well in the living area. After just a while, morning is approaching, and we taking our sweet time enjoy the sunrise around the cottage. All the view was just stunning and relaxing. It was a magical stay, we do not really rest much, but all of us are very fresh, and we do enjoy it so much here!
What you do if you can't sleep in the midnight? We eat M&M!
Good morning from Vorsabæ 2.
A jet fly through bright sunrise.
It look like a comet.
Decreasing the aperture for darker view. The jet is more visible now.
Great view to start our new day of exploration.
Sunrise approaching.
This weather is just too good!
Bright sun under cold atmosphere, love the conflict.
Thin layer of ice on the cottage wood.
After a light breakfast, we say goodbye to Vorsabæ 2, and proceed with our ring road trip. Personally for me, this was the best stay in my opinion throughout our whole journey here in Iceland. Hope I have the chance to return here again in the near future! Bye for now!
Simple porridge for our breakfast.
And we have toast too!
Good morning guys!
Funny moment when I bring in a overnight chair from outside for our breakfast, and it was sticky when I try to stand up as there are ice on it! Well, this is the shape of my asses~
Bye for now, lovely Vorsabæ 2!
CK with Vorsabæ 2 and our car before leaving.
Vorsabæ 2 - Iceland
October 2016
