Yesterday, after a short site visit, we spent the afternoon and evening is preparing the electrical and mechanical connections of the station parts. It took – as usual – longer than expected.
Already in the morning, dark clouds rose in the sunny weather, as Konrad received messages from Greenland, informing us that due to the Corona virus our accommodation will close.
Today, we setup all the station parts and connect everything together – we get faster! The sunny weather is gone, so we hammer the anchor pegs through frozen ground, which had already thawed yesterday. Luckily, the station is placed at the farm of Mýrar. Pálina, our local caretaker, supplies us with highly suitable tools – many thanks! Towards the evening, another light snow storm comes up, but we can finish before it gets dark.
An unforseen obstacle shows up – at the south coast of Iceland it is not possible to buy a SIM card for connecting the station to the mobile network. Tomorrow we have to drive to Reykjavík to obtain one from Siminn directly. Supposedly, there is a shop open on Sunday…
The dark clouds of Greenland become official, travel restriction will be active. We have to cancel our trip and postpone it. Not enough time in Iceland is therefore not anymore a problem. Our box is still scheduled for transport to Greenland, so the guest house people hopefully will pick it up from the airport and store it safely, until the situation clears.