Iceland

Arriving in Iceland
in the middle of the night

When we arrived at the airport of Keflavík, we were the very first passengers to leave the plane, so we had a quick talk with one of the stewards. He held a list in his hands with goods marked as “important”. Upon asking him, he said that this was cooled food and other imported goods and he explained to us, that a substantial part of Icelandair's income came from importing and most of all exporting goods. Interesting.

We arrived at Reykjavík only very late at night, at about half past 11 local time (and two hours later for us). The strange thing was, that it was still slightly bright out. Something like half past nine, after a thunderstorm. Our first and foremost worry was, whether we could rent a car with a credit card, with only signing capabilities, since we both managed to disable passwords on our credit cards shortly before leaving (oh, stupid us — this would be something we needed to look into later, since you could only get fuel with credit cards with pin codes in a lot of places). But, somehow, incredibly, it worked. We were able to pay the depot fee of about a 1000 CHF for the car and found our rental car in the parking lot. A small automatic Suzuki Swift. And then we soon were off from Kevlavík airport to Reykjavík on a very simple, two lane road, through a quasi–night into a brighter and brighter dawn. About two hours later we arrived at the Reykjavík City Hostel. Needless to say, we soon fell into our beds.

Starting early
for the Golden Triangle

After a rather rough and short night's sleep (we only got up at half past 9 while pretty much everyone else in the hostel got up at 7), the first thing on our minds was to buy some food for our trip. So we started off with our car towards the first grocery store we could find. It was called “10 11” (and we later learned that it was one of the more expensive ones). As we went on our way towards Þingvellir National Park, we realized what the smell in the air was, that seemed to permeate everything in and around the city — sulphur! It abated a little when we were on the road again, but it swelled and decreased time and again until we arrived at the park.

Many things here reminded me a lot more about the US, than any other European Nordic country I've been to. The streets are wide, the crossings are big and easily overlooked and lanes are well marked in advance. It soon became obvious that this is a country for cars and pretty much nothing else. In truth — we didn't see any trains anywhere and I later learned that there isn't a single train line in the entire country. Coming from the cramped, hard to overlook and always slightly clogged streets of Switzerland, driving here is pure joy. The main reason for that is that there are a lot less people overall. I guess that helps. The other American thing is, that there are a lot of fast food joints and places where you can get free coffee or free coffee refills. Normal food is actually really expensive, eating out even more so, but fast food is positively cheap. Something that is quite different from home. And finally, you can buy everything and anything by credit card. Most gas stations even required you to do so.

We soon found out that there are several things that make up an Icelanding road: metal cattle grids (or “brrr–brrr”, as we soon called them, for the sound they made when you drove over them), bridges that go over (often glacier water) rivers and that resulted in the road being single lane, roads where you could drive 90 km/h (this is what you did most of the time), and roads inside a city where you could drive 50 km/h. Oh yes, one more thing: there were sheep and they would block the road at random. Mostly it was just easy driving and I soon wished for a cruise control — it would have made things so much easier. But the car had other benefits. In parking mode and once it was stopped on a steep hill, it would block the tires. That came in really handy in some situations where we had to or wanted to stop at the side of the road, as most of the time, the road just fell off into gravel.

There is also the little matter of the rain. I think I will have Iceland to thank for the fact that I can now finally handle the windscreen wiper. Why? Because if it rains, the amount of rain changes about once every few minutes.

So. Our first stop was Þingvellir National Park, the place where the Eurasian and the North American tectonic plates meet and move along one another with a whopping 2 cm per year, building up pressure and sometimes discharging themselves in massive earthquakes and causing rock rifts to form in the landscape. We learned all of this from our guide books and some movies in the visitor centre. Since it was still before meal time we decided to walk around a bit and so we hiked down to the Þingvallavatn, a big lake and then back through some rock rifts, overgrown with all kinds of flowers, grasses and those small rain pearled horse tails that seem to grow everywhere here. Strangely, even though there were some tourists at the tourist centre, we were pretty much alone on our little hike.

After some lunch we moved on to Geysir, where we walked through the field of, well, geysirs. The biggest of those is of course “Geysir”, but it erupts only a few times a day. Its smaller brother, Strokkur does so every few minutes, however, which leads to rows and rows of tourists waiting around it, cameras in hand. We aren't much for museums, so we moved on to Gullfoss waterfall, quite an impressive set of cascades south of Geysir. By the time we travelled on, we actually started to get tired. The lack of sleep from last night was starting to take its toll.

Our next stop was Kerið, a small volcanic crater that is long extinguished and now harbors a small lake. We walked around it and then down to this lake — a peaceful place that is cut off from virtually all sound, except for the cawing of some ever present birds.

Our final stop was Seljalandsfoss and Gljúfrafoss. Just when I thought I had no more stops in me though, the landscape opened up to reveal wonders. The waterfall Seljalandsfoss and its cliff was so high, you could see it for miles off, and once close up, it made for a spectacular sight. A path along the cliff lead to Seljalandsfoss' smaller sister, nested inside the cliff in a small cave. The Gljúfrafoss is a true gem and its hidden beauty is hard to describe. I'll just let the photos speak.

Our hostel was at Skógar. We expected a town, but it was more like a few 20–odd houses not far from the main road on a set of rectangular streets. The inn–keeper was very rude to us and we learned a few things in quick succession: take your shoes off when you come in (yeah, I read it in the guide, but I forgot it at that point, too tired), rent duvets and linens (how dare we not bring sleeping bags) and, at least in this hostel, don't come in with your bags from the front door (seriously, how where we to know that?). But all was well, we even managed to call the credit card company after getting the right number from the internet (the one on the back of our card, which is an emergency number, would not work — way to go, UBS...) and get our cards back up and running, so we could get fuel. A good thing, too, our tank was getting dangerously low.

Gorges and glaciers

We checked out at 10 and got another rude answer from our host when we asked where we needed to put our used linens (what did we ever do to this guy?).

We drove off, our next stop being Vík í Mýrdal, where we went for some food shopping and gas. Next stop, was a small gorge called Fjaðrárgljúfur. The road we took to get there, one that forked off the ring road, was pretty harsh, and I am sure that the underside of our chassis must have suffered considerably at one point or another, since some of the rocks that I jumped with my tires sounded pretty big. I shudder to think of the repair fees already. The gorge itself was rather, well, gorgeous and we took a little walk all the way to the top of the hill and down again.

Our next stop was something called the Dverghamrar or dwarf cliffs, apparently a dwelling of ghosts or elves, if the stories were to be believed, but we didn't see any. They are formations similar to the Giant's Causeway in Ireland, but with a lot less tourists. We ate lunch there (mmmhh… garlic bread).

Skaftafell National Park was our next stop, but it was raining heavily when we arrived there. I still trusted in my rain gear then and so I tried to convince Luke that we still take the short hike to one of the tips of Vatnajökull glacier. Needless to say that we both got thoroughly soaked and it was so misty that we could only barely see the glacier when we got there. So, in short, it had not been worth it.

We changed into dry clothes on the toilet of the tourist centre and then drove off. Again, for someone who does not live in a flat country, I still find it hard to grasp how wide the landscape can get. At one point, during a drive through an ashen dark stony terrain, I swear we could see all the way to the horizon into practically every direction. With the clouds it almost looked like the sky was falling on our heads.

We went on to the glacier lagoon of Jökulsárlón. That was actually quite impressive. It's a lake where bits and pieces of bright blue and dirty gray ice shoals float around. All before the incredible backdrop of Vatnajökull glacier. Apart from the periodically screaming small birds, this was again a ghostly silent place where you could even sometimes hear the crackling in the ice.

Our next hostel was Vagnsstaðir farm. Just in time, the sky finally cleared up for good for today to reveal a steep mountainside and green meadows, reaching almost to the horizon. The farmhouse host was the complete opposite of our previous host. Blonde, friendly, and welcoming, she showed us around and even allowed us to hang our soaked clothes on the wash line, so they could dry — which they did pretty quickly because of the wind that was blowing over the fields.

We made dinner (spaghetti with pesto sauce and cheese and some sweetened and cooked pears for dessert) in the kitchen there (all hostels seem to have fully equipped kitchens). The eating space was a beautiful winter garden that looked over the rolling fields. The nice thing about those kitchens is, everyone at the hostel comes there to cook, so you meet all kinds of people. We had a short talk with some Swedes, for example, who were on a motorcycle tour through Iceland (and also got thoroughly soaked by the rain). After dinner, we were so exhausted, that we went straight to bed.

Arriving at
the Eastern Fjords

Our road today lead along the coast and our first stop was Höfn, one of the bigger towns of Iceland (over a 2000 inhabitants!) and the second largest in the south–east. We took a walk along the coastline and got attacked by the nesting birds, so much so, that we finally gave up and turned back to our car.

Driving along the coastline was sometimes very thrilling, especially since you had roads on steep cliffs with no guide rails whatsoever. Only always the same orange–yellow plastic milestone poles. We stopped at the light house of Hvalnes next, where we strolled along a black beach and listened to the breaking of the waves. I gathered some of those stones into a bottle to bring home. Some souvenirs cost little. Other than stones, there was a very sturdy form of light green plant with violet blossoms growing on the beach and the whole place was strewn with violet and white shells and crab arms. Also, on the lake behind the beach, you could see a whole flock of many hundred white birds in the water. Probably the swans that were mentioned in our guide, but they were too far away to tell.

We stopped at Djúpivogur for lunch and ate at the Langabuð, one of the oldest warehouses of Iceland turned diner and poetry museum. We had some smoked lamb on bread and a good deal of cake and sweet stuff after (it just looked soooo delicious).

On our drive onwards, the landscape began to change again. There were more and more sea inlets (or fjörður or fjords) which we had to drive around and we encountered our first tunnels (70 km/h, sometimes spiked with speeding cameras) and gravel roads (80 km/h, which weren't as bad as I thought). The few towns we passed where almost always at the end of those fjords.

Soon our road curved away from the coast, through the mountains, and we came to a stunning landscape of snow fields and dark rock. It looked like the mountains were only a small excursion though, as the road soon lead down again to the small town of Seyðisfjörður where our hostel was, at end of the inlet with the same name.

The business was as usual: shoes off, linens, cooking food in the kitchen — it's fascinating how quickly you get used to things. It looked like the hostel was a two–building business, and we had been put into the building that wasn't usually attended by the host and was on the outskirts of town. The hostel wasn't locked and we could just take the key. Since the hostel was out of linens though, we had to call the host anyway, a lovely lady called Thóra.

After dinner (even during dinner) we were so exhausted again, that we had to go to bed soon after.

Lunga at Seyðisfjörður

We had the whole day in Seyðisfjörður and so, after the exertions of the last few days, we thought we should take it easy. After sleeping in we took a stroll through town. The town is incredibly small and peaceful. It had a harbour and a small factory that smelled of fish, a city centre with a school, a super market and an area with domestic houses. The striking thing about the inhabitants was, that there were almost less of them on the streets than tourists, and you could tell them apart very well. Inhabitants: clothes that were more on the ragged or woolly side, sports or leisure shoes. Tourists: mostly expensive outdoor clothing, sometimes the trademark camera.

With going shopping every now and again, we often wondered how the all the goods are transported to the shopping malls. We assumed it was mostly lorries, but when we asked someone, they said that depending on the season it was also brought in with ships or even with air planes, if the weather allowed it. Also, we sometimes wondered how all those people came to all those tourist places. Sometimes we would drive for a good long time and see only deserted roads with no one on them.

We took a small hike to the first bend of the cove, past the fish factory (we don't know if it actually is a fish factory, but it really smelled like it) and up a hill. Then back to the city centre. There we found some people, taking strange pictures. One of them was modelling and was wearing black clothes, headphones and a sleeping mask, while the other was photographing her in various different locations (in the supermarket, in front of the church etc.). When we asked them what this was all about, they said that this was part of “Lunga” a local art festival that takes place once a year in Seyðisfjörður — and it took place right now. Basically, it was an internationally acclaimed festival with courses where people could make art. On the program today, apart from those courses, was also a so called “art walk” where people were guided through the town and could experience all kinds of small art installations. Luke wasn't really into it, but I decided to participate, since it was free.

The art walk was a curious thing. First there was a performance in the local theatre where two people in space suits and gas masks drank blended sheep hearts. Then, we went on to a small house that had a room which was completely shrouded in darkness. There was a net on the ceiling and it felt as if someone was caressing your head. It was kind of nice, actually. Further places included a room in another house where you could draw whatever you wanted and then hang it on the wall (I met a pretty obnoxious American there), there was a carpet out of coloured stones lying on the sea ground of the fjord, close to the land, and the local radio station Wolf.fm had constructed a small installation on a meadow with sheep made from wood and wool and with music (naturally). It was all rather interesting.

Unfortunately, since the art walk took so long, we missed getting a pizza at Skaftfell restaurant, but got a hamburger at a stand later.

Hallormsstaður, Dettifoss
and rough dirt roads

Today, a little bit sad to leave Seyðisfjörður, we drove on. We would take a detour to an area with a large, long lake and to Hallormsstaður forest. Hallormsstaður is an actual forest by it's own right, planted in the beginning of the 20th century and sporting trees that are over 60 years old right now. Still, the trees are not as high as you would expect. Most of the firs and beeches are no more than about 10 or 12 meters in height.

We decided to go to a certain camping ground and rent a canoe to go boating on the lake. The camping ground was one of the most beautiful and peaceful ones I have been to so far. Going down to the lake, we saw boats on the beach, but no one was there to rent them out to us. But, there was an abandoned, locked trailer with some life vests and a phone number to call. After some deliberation we decided to give them a ring and after 15 minutes a small red car arrived. In it came a young man in his 20s who spoke little English, an older man in his fifties who spoke no English at all, and a very overeager little dog, who pranced around us. While the older man unchained the boats, the younger gave us life vests. Unfortunately, we had to always stay within viewing distance of the two and so our scope to go anywhere was quite limited.

After this little excursion, we decided to go hiking in the forest. One of the things to note is — the forest smelled amazing! All the pine trees exuded this piny and wonderful smell and the hike was all the better for it. Also there were flowers of mostly yellow and lavender everywhere.

We ate lunch at a picnic area we had found in the middle of the forest during our hike and then moved on. What can be said about the weather was that it was very windy and sometimes it was hard to keep on to the lane. Other drivers also seemed to have this problem, as they were sometimes driving in the middle of the road and only moved out of the way when another car came. I learned to take this in stride, but the first few times this happened, it was worrying — and I thought of all the hills you couldn't see over in the past.

Our next stop was the great waterfall Dettifoss (the biggest in Europe by the amount of water it carries per time) and the little smaller Selfoss. We could choose between two roads to get there, a tarmac road and a dirt road. No question that we took the tarmac one. We reached Dettifoss and Selfoss without problems and after a hike through an impressively barren landscape, we stood in awe at their sheer thunderous force.

When we came back to our car and wanted to move on we were faced with a slight hiccup, however. The dirt road we had wanted to avoid continued from there on. It was much worse than the previous road I had driven on. First of all, it was one–way, framed with bushes, left and right and going over hills — so, very bad sight conditions. Second, it was riddled with potholes that would appear every then and again out of nowhere. There were those blue M signs that marked evasions, but they appeared very infrequently. In short — I have no idea how anyone in their right mind would drive down this road with 80 km/h.

The original plan was to go to the gorge of Ásbyrgi after that, but by the time we came out at the other end of the dirt road it was so late in the evening already and I was so exhausted that we just rolled into a gas station parking space and had some fast food there. I also bought a nice Icelandic CD which we listened to on our way to Kópasker.

Our host this time was an elderly man called Benedikt that said “Jaaa.” a lot.

On a side note: It seems that Icelandic locks don't work the same way as our locks. You turn the key a quarter of the way one way and then back to the 12 o'clock position and the door is locked. Turn it a quarter of the way the other way and back up again and it's open. The direction you turn it depends on the lock.

Whale watching in Húsavík

Today our plan was to drive to Húsavík and go whale watching. It was another beautiful day and the road to Húsavík was easy to drive, even though it was along the coast and there were no guide rails along the road again. On our way there we stopped at a beach where we walked around a bit and found some bones and a half decayed skull. Creepy.

Húsavík is again a bigger city, compared to the small villages we had visited in the past, but still tiny by any standards. The city centre was two parking lots, a small supermarket, a church and the harbour with the whale watching ships, ticket offices, restaurants and a whale museum. It seemed that, other than whale watching, nothing was going on in this town, but that's what Húsavík was famous for, after all. So we got some tickets for the “Whales, puffins and sails” tour and spent all afternoon on the whale watching ship, a gorgeous two–master wooden sailing boat with a crew of three. Our first stop was an island that was mainly populated by puffins and a minority of other sea birds and we learned a few things about puffin biology. These days puffin hunting is almost banned in the south and hunters only have time to hunt the birds for 5 days a year. Like this the harrowed population is slowly recovering. In the north legislations are bit more lax.

Then we rode further into the bay and after some time of patience found some feeding humpback whales. At least 6 or 7 of them. It was the first time that I saw humpback whales in the wild and so it was quite exciting. We could shoot some nice photos.

And then there was the “sails” part of the journey. We could help to set sails on the sailing ship. Something that's hard work, but also a lot of fun. Remind me to do a sailing turn sometime. So, when we were sailing back I had a nice talk with one of the crew, the youngest, and learned a few things about Icelanders. For one thing: the job this guy had on the whale watching ship wasn't the only one. Currently, he also had a job at a hotel where he took the night shift and another job as a bouncer (probably outside of whale watching season). And during winter? Well, since there is virtually no tourism in Iceland during winter, jobs are much, much scarcer. So either you “cry yourself to sleep”, as he put it, you get drunk, or, what he did, you go to school. He had finished studying recently and now he still wanted to study Japanese for a few years. But there was also his son to think of. His son? Yes. But how old was he? 23. And he had a son, with a girl, but was unmarried. Apparently in Iceland, it was normal to have children at this age and not only that you weren't married when doing so (something that is also very common in Switzerland), but also, that you had several kids from different partners. He himself came from a family where he had six siblings all from different fathers.

It was an interesting little chat, but also somewhat depressing. It really does seem that a lot of Icelanders drink their pains away and that alcohol is a problem. And winter really seems to be a time when there is nothing much to do.

Interestingly enough, the guy also came from Kópasker and he knew our “Jaaa” saying host of our hostel.

At the end of our trip, I had a funny little thing happening to me. The captain of the ship offered us some rum (or Strohrum) and I consented to having some. The first mate filled me up quite a good bit. And then Luke reminded me that I had to drive afterwards. I didn't know what to do with the stuff, then. Luckily, after a few small sips, I could finally convince another Swiss guy on the boat to drink the rest.

When we came back to the harbour we wanted to check out the whale museum, but it was about 10 minutes before it closed, so we only lingered in the gift shop for a short while. As we were hungry, we looked for a restaurant at the pier. There were a few, most of them serving food on big plates with little on them for quite the sum per meal. We finally went to restaurant Gamli Baukur, the one the captain of whale watching boat had suggested to us. The food was pretty good (lamb entrecôte), but all in all we spent over 50 CHF per person, per meal.

After a short food shopping tour in another Samkaup–úrval we drove back to Kópasker.

Mývatn and
arriving at Akureyri

Our program today was to go to Mývatn, both a lake and nature sanctuary further inland. It was a relatively short drive and we arrived at the tourist centre well before midday. After a small potty break, we took a map (which was free) and and drove our car to a spot where we ate. Then we took a walk down a small gorge in the middle of a flat landscape. After a 5–minute scramble, we walked further down the road, but soon found out that there was nothing much to see in this area, but for a little factory (actually the first we noticed that didn't seem to be related to processing fish). We drove on to the volcanic crater of Hverfjall, a formation of dark stone, probably basalt. From a rather crowded parking spot, we could hike all the way up to the top. We also met the same Swiss couple there again that we met on the whale watching tour, the one where the guy drank my whiskey. Luke and I hiked all the way to the top of the volcano, which luckily or unfortunately is no longer active, and once there I just couldn't resist the urge to jog around its rim. This, of course, earned me some strange looks form people who were “only” hiking around.

Once back down, joining Luke back at the car, we went on to another location called Dimmuborgir, a park with dark lava formations that were created when this part of the park's grounds was still much higher and lava was pressed up from below and above through funnels in the earth. It made for some rather spectacular formations. We decided to take the road through those formations to what was called a kirkja, a church. I don't know what I expected, but it turned out to be a cave of sorts, open on both sides — with an entrance that looked like a gothic ogee arch. It was Sunday, and interestingly enough, we found a lot of people sitting there in this quiet hollow in silent prayer. All in all, it was a well worth while little walk with dark lava towers, arches, caves and moss covered landscapes as well as lots and lots of other tourists, of course. In the end we also visited the tourist centre at that place, but apart from the usual t–shirts, plush lundis and woollen pullovers, they didn't offer much else out of the ordinary.

So we drove on and further around Mývatn, stopping here and there for a crater and a nice spot of land. Finally we left the reserve entirely. We continued on through a rather hilly landscape which made for a spectacular down sloped drive towards Eyjafjörður where Akureyri nested into its side. The sun was on the water just in the right angle for it to look absolutely stunning. Akureyri is the main city in the north, but with it's a little under 18'000 inhabitants still very small by city standards of any other countries. We drove almost all the way to the other side to find our hostel. This particular hostel was actually rather cool, with a cute little court yard where you could eat. It had also some nice showers. After a good long time in country hostels, all the houses around us almost felt like a culture shock.

A day in Akureyri

Today was our day in Akureyri. We walked around a little and found the bakery, or in Icelandic bakarí, that the lady at hostel recommended us. Breakfast was full of bread and sweet cakes, and it was good! Our entertainment during breakfast was to watch seagulls fight over croissants on the street. Then, we made our way back to the car and drove to the city centre. Something that needs to be said about Akureyri is that it is the only city in Iceland with a parking limit. As anywhere else, you don't pay for parking space, but you do have a limit as to how long you can park your car in the centre. No idea why. On the parking space we chose, you had to set the parking disc to your time of arrival and could only stay there for one and half hours. This pretty much meant that we had to reset the parking meter every one and a half hours. But that was ok, since the city centre was really small anyway and it didn't take long to get back to the parking spot.

We first went to the interestingly designed Akureyrarkirkja. It was your typical protestant church. A bare, unadorned interior with only the windows richly decorated. It was a nice enough church, but the exterior was much more impressive. Apparently it had been designed by the same architect who was also responsible for the church in Reykjavik, Guðjón Samúelsson.

Then, we took a gander in the shopping district — or at least that one small street where all the stores were. You found the usual tourist oriented settings: shops with books and knitted pullovers as well as huge, funny looking statues of Vikings and trolls. We continues walking along the inlet and to the harbour to a cultural centre and conference hall and a huge shopping mall. We didn't go in though.

There was something odd we noticed all over the city though: young people were doing all kinds of labour, mending the street, cleaning up garbage. We never really found out if this was some sort of civil service or a punishment for misdeeds, but we saw a few of these groups of young people, especially around the harbour. Also, I would like to mention something about Icelanders in general: they look very much alike. A lot of them are blond and have the same slightly round–faced facial structure. You could basically use these people for a study on inbreeding and I wouldn't be surprised if genetic similarities were rather ubiquitous.

In the afternoon we went to the Public Park and Botanic Garden of Akureyri, known for its subarctic plants. It was what you would expect from a Botanical Garden, flowers, insects, even a small very modern looking café. After that, we still walked around in the domestic house area around the park for a bit.

Back at the city centre we went for some ice cream and then headed back to the hostel. We considered going out for something cultural, but the offer on the cultural calendar in the hostel wasn't that interesting, unfortunately.

Turf houses and no seals

Today, we wanted to get up early because we had a long drive ahead of us to Broddanes hostel. We left so hurriedly that we later found out that we had left our cold food in the fridge of the hostel. This was cause of some grief on my part.

Our first stop was the turf church of Víðimýri, basically a small house surrounded by a tiny graveyard. It was more museum than church and there was an entry fee you had to pay to get inside. Way too expensive for us though. What we did go and see, however, was the turf house museum of Glaumbær. There, a whole small set of houses had been refurbished. The houses kind of reminded you of Hobbit–holes, since they were half under ground and their roofs covered with grass. The house complex had mostly been owned by protestants and often by chaplains or priests and their families. It was an interesting little museum, but very small, and finally only that interesting because I'd never seen a turf house from the inside (or at all) before.

Our next stop was Blönduós and the island of Hrútey, a small elevation of land between two rivers. By that time I was actually already tired, but Luke really wanted to walk around the island, so I complied. The walk was sort of worth it, since there were a bunch of art installations around the island, such as a moose–like creature made of wood and a station where you had to embroider pictures into a cloth framed into an embroidery hoop. We didn't really see that many special birds, apart from the usual ones, but the vegetation was once again really astounding and diversified.

The last stop for the day was the seal colony in Hindisvík. We had to take quite the detour for this, again, over a gravel road. This time I was a little bit less stressed, since I had already gotten used to it a little by now. I still had to drive slowly though, as this was once again pothole city. When we finally reached the end of a land tongue, the sun was already very low over the horizon. We arrived at the colony, but there were no seals in sight. After some driving, we found a road, a house and a sign. Apparently the so called seal colony was actually private property and the owners did no longer allow tourists on their land, since the seals had reduced drastically with the arrival of said tourists disturbing their resting sites. We respected and understood that and moved on, but we kept wondering if this was the reason why there were currently no seals around.

The drive back was a bit easier and we arrived safely at Broddanes hostel. Another of these wonderful places in the middle of nowhere. It was at the sea with a great view over the coast line where you could watch birds plummeting out of the air for food. Sadly, I was a bit pissed on this night, since I had to drive for a long time, so we didn't eat a lot this evening. Only soup.

Witchcraft
and creepy tunnels

We woke up to the sun and once again I was amazed at how rarely we ever saw night time here. Today we were to go deeper and deeper into the Western fjords of Iceland. This time we made sure not to forget our stuff at the hostel. We still had some bread and jam, but not really anything else, so we were in dire need of a shopping mall. Our next stop on the way was Hólmavík. We parked our car at the village and took to the mall there. Once again, we were denied the pleasure to shop at a Bónus (our guide said that this was the cheapest store). An interesting thing about Icelandic shopping malls is that a basic commodity seems to be wool. In all strengths and weights, but mostly knitting wool. The sheep rearing had apparently propelled knitting to a sort of national past time. That also explained all the self–knitted pullovers at the tourist shops and all the ladies you would see knitting in stores or anywhere else for that matter.

After some food we ate in a small park, we decided to visit the Hólmavík Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft — and that was well worth it. It provided us with some very interesting facts about the matter like, for example, the fact that in Iceland, unlike in the rest of Europe, mostly men were convicted of witchcraft. Most spells were of the nature that you would expect of people that live in a harsh country and were mostly poor: spells to protect you from thieves and to show you how to find them, spells to amass riches, spells to steal milk and raise the dead. The museum is small enough that it doesn't overwhelm you with information and at the same time presents the information so that you can easily memorise it.

After that we drove along the coast for quiet some time and stopped every then again for some pictures. At some point we found a nice little waterfall at the very end of a fjord and hiked to it and back for an hour. Finally we drove to Ísafjörður, but at that point we were so exhausted that we didn't do much and just drove a little through town and then moved on. It has to be said, that the location of the town is rather spectacular, as it was right below a huge rock formation, but somehow it was also very depressing there, and I couldn't even tell you why. It lacked the dreaminess of other towns, but that's maybe just a personal opinion.

From Ísafjörður, we drove onwards to our hostel. On our way there, close to Ísafjörður, there was a long tunnel. Tunnels are usually not a problem, but this particular one was not lit and it was one way with small blue M–sign spaces for evasion on one side, our side, in the case of opposing traffic. The other scary thing was the howling of the ventilation which made for an eerie atmosphere. It also branched off somewhere midway.

After we had survived the tunnel, it was a longer ride, again into back country, off the ring road and on gravel roads, with absolutely no one around. It seemed that the Western fjords were even more sparsely populated than the rest of Iceland. We arrived at our hostel, Korpudalur. Again, you guessed it, in the middle of nowhere. This time still in the flat lands, but surrounded by mountains.

Our host was very nice and forthcoming and showed us around the facilities. We ate dinner only very late, because there was a huge group of loud French teenagers that all occupied the kitchen. Until it was free, we talked with their bus driver. He was a mellow yet sarcastic guy who told us some stories about his travels when he still used to be a truck driver and recommended us a nice map and bird book.

Relaxing in Korpudalur

We slept in today and didn't do much. I did some drawing and wrote a bit. It was warm today, around 26 degrees Celcius. Almost too warm, but like this I could sit on the terrace and just relax. I watched two girls play, probably the host's grand daughter and her friend, and watched our host and them chase away sheep from their land on his quad with shouts and bellows and the honks of a horn. It was altogether a calm yet wonderfully simple and entertaining day.

The only productive thing we did was book the ferry to Stykkishólmur and in the evening we took a small walk to the adjourning farms. We disturbed some birds who made one hell of a racket and always walked before us to fly off when we came too close and then walk in front of us again, but further away. Presumably to lead us away from their nests.

The solitude
of the Western fjords

We moved on to our next destination.

First, however, we drove back to Ísafjörður to do some shopping again, since we didn't buy that much food the last time (yes, that means we could drive through that tunnel again). This time there was even a Bónus, but it was closed when we arrived (at 10 in the morning!), so we drove to the next best thing. A Samkaup–úrval closer to the city centre. Those stores seemed to be more prevalent in the remote areas — and they had better opening hours.

After that, it was one of those longer drives along the coast again. Wonderful scenery and stunning landscapes, and great weather. Especially weather–wise this vacation was truly a lucky one. Þingeyri was our next stop. We ate lunch there at a table in a park and took a small walk through the city, but didn't do anything else worth mentioning. Then, we drove through some mountains, and along the coast to find Dynjandi waterfall. It was an impressive, broad waterfall, the likes of which we hadn't seen before.

Mist had started rolling in and transformed the hills on our path into something captivating. After a trip through another rather barren landscape we arrived in Bíldudalur where it was a little more sunny. We found out that they had a Sea Monster Museum by the same organisation that had created the Hólmavík Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft. This sounded interesting enough and we decided to go there. Even though the museum has some nice ideas — like a radio that you could tune and then listen to various accounts of people who had seen sea monsters and a projected map on a backlit table that you could move around with a steering wheel and choose stories by moving a plastic “mouse” around on it — there was actually very little differentiated and interesting information. All in all it was rather ok though, even though it felt a bit like Disneyland.

Bildudalur itself was a nice enough town, but it seemed rather deserted. There were very few people on the streets.

On our trip onwards, driving through a small town called Vesturbyggð on the way, where we got some money. The mist returned and the landscape became continuously more sandy and swamp–like when the fog finally broke up again, we were treated to a shallow fjord with lush, green water and a sandy beach. It rivalled every Caribbean holiday resort. Except for the lower temperatures and the wind, of course.

Our guest house, Hnjótur, was further inland. The host was a nice, maybe a bit sullen and misanthrope man (interestingly enough, he knew our previous host and we relayed some greetings). We talked with him for a bit and he told us that this used to be a farm, but because of several legislations, farming had become very unprofitable, so the house was turned into a guest house, but only in summer. In winter, he would go to Greenland and Finland and seek solitude — something that was interesting, since to me, this part of the world was already rather solitary.

We soon cooked dinner and then went to bed.

Lundis!!!

We had a whole day to spend at Hnjótur and its surroundings. The first thing we did today was drive to Rauðisandur beach, or red sand beach. We walked along it for a while, but there was a lot of mist and we couldn't see very far or much. Also, it seemed that the beach would only appear read in a certain light and these light conditions weren't given. Still, it was a nice and peaceful walk, mostly through fields where sheep and cows grazed.

In the afternoon we drove to Látrabjarg, a steep cliff with tons and tons of seagulls and... lundis (or puffins)! They had an interesting kind of system in place at the cliff. All along it was a white line about one meter from the ledge. People were allowed on one side, birds on the other — you can guess who was allowed which — and people actually more or less observed this rule. This, in turn lead to the birds being really docile and unafraid and you could approach them really closely (up to two or three meters!). I took some nice pictures there.

Since this was a slow day we didn't do anything much after that but kick back and relax back at the guest house.

The island of Flatey

Today was the day we took the ferry to Stykkishólmur. We said our goodbyes to our host and were off. Once again, the weather was nice and we enjoyed some gorgeous views over the fjords. We arrived at Breiðafjörður station way ahead of the ferries departure time, so we relaxed in the sun by the small ticket cottage. A woman came and spoke to us asking us how we liked the Western fjords of Iceland and asking us whether we wanted to fill out a survey, so this is basically what we did until the ship arrived. As a reward we could pick a CD with local music on it.

We had decided a few days ago to take the ferry to Flatey and stay there for the afternoon. How this worked was that we drove the car into the ferry and then gave the key to one of the staff, so they would drive the car off it in Stykkishólmur. We would take the next ferry in the evening and get the key back from the staff and get our car in the parking lot of the harbour.

So this is what we did. To my relief, driving the car into the ferry was no problem. The trip to the Flatey was beautiful. We crossed Breiðafjörður and found that the fjord was dotted with an uncountable amount of small islands. The water was still as a sand–polished mirror. Upon arrival on Flatey we saw kids fishing and people relaxing in a restaurant right by the berth point. It also seemed that the ferry did not only transport people and cars, but also goods, as some large crates were unloaded onto the dock.

Flatey is a beautifully peaceful place. Cars were not allowed here (or at least only cars that transported things) and so you only got around on foot. The island is small enough that you can walk around it in about one and half to two hours and it is dotted with houses nestled between grazing sheep and fields of grass. At the time we were there they were packing said grass up into neat plastic–wrapped bundles, and this was the the first time I saw the machine that did that. We saw children playing and a very cheeky boy was trying to sell us painted stones by the wayside. Women were knitting or just sitting around on the grass. A man was telling off a sheep for trying to eat one of his plants that was hanging over his fence. Families were picnicking or barbecuing. It was almost like a small part of paradise. Most obviously a vacation resort.

We walked around the island, meeting a strange wooden troll statue and a lot of birds on the way and we ate lunch on a field looking over the fjord. Then we checked out the local church, which had some very nice modern paintings (very non–modest for a protestant church) and then returned to the island's village centre and had some porridge at a restaurant there.

There was a lot more time to kill, so we went to the harbour again and just relaxed near it on a meadow. Luke fell asleep almost instantly and I crocheted my hair and watched the people walking by. I noticed for the first time that a lot of Icelanders were rather on the rotund side.

On the ferry back, we both ate dinner — hamburgers, the usual fast food, no wonder Icelanders are fat if they can only get that stuff — and watched “The Lion King 1½” in Icelandic. You can understand the whole movie, even though you don't understand a word — the mannerism of Disney characters seems to be universal. It was a bad movie though. We arrived at Stykkishólmur soon after and got to our car. I was rather tired again and so we just drove the rest of the way to Grundarfjörður, our next place where we would stay. It was a marvellous drive, with an absolutely stunning sunset.

Once in Grundarfjörður we found our hostel soon. It looked like a normal family house with a lot of rooms and to sign in we had to follow an arrow to the cellar door, open an envelope with our names on it, and then use the passcode in it to open a small closet on the wall to get our keys. Not too easy and a lot of guests who had arrived at a similar hour as we did, had even more problems finding their keys. Needless to say that the hostel wasn't manned. The kitchen was also a bit sparse on spices and towels and was pretty unordered, but we made do with what we had and made dinner. Our room was called Jökull (glacier) and had a pretty creepy picture of a blue faced thing on the wall that was licking its lips.

It seemed that there was some sort of town festival going on, as all of the town was draped and hung with yellow flags and hangings and there were bands in the city centre. Music was drifting to our room. I was so exhausted for some reason (I guess because of driving), that I just wanted to sleep (plus I was pissed again, which in turn annoyed me and Luke). So I went to sleep almost immediately.

A drive around
the peninsula of Snæfellsnes

For some reason or other the two of us were both exhausted, so we decided to sleep in. We only stood up late in the morning.

I have to say that I liked Grundarfjörður. I couldn't tell you why, but this is the first town in Iceland where I thought I felt at home. Maybe it was the mountains nearby, maybe the utter calm that seemed to emanate from it, possibly also the fact that it was close to the sea and the city layout had certainly something to do with it. I liked it here.

After some breakfast in the bare kitchen, we decided to take the car again and round the peninsula of Snæfellsnes we where now on. I drove on the road along the coast and around the peninsula. We were going to go in a circle and just see what we came across without any kind of plan in mind. Luke soon fell asleep and I just enjoyed the beautiful backdrop of Snæfellsjökull and its surrounding mountains. After a longer drive west and then south, I saw a sign towards some tourist attraction, and forked off from the main road to the sea. It was the beach Djúpalónssandur which had a quite spectacular lava formation. It sported a frozen wave of long, sharp, rocky shards that seemed to have been petrified in the middle of its breaking and the breach itself was filled with dark, rounded stones. It was one of the most fascinating rock formations that I have ever seen. On its one side, there was a hole where a lot of seagulls nested. Needless to say that I took a ton of pictures.

After some food we drove on with the goal to find the seal colony of Ytri Tunga, the last place on our voyage where we hoped to see seals. The place was a very private looking farmhouse at the end of a road, surrounded by grass fields. A thin footpath lead to the beach. Again, we weren't in luck. There were no seals. It was a nice walk along the coast, but the only thing that did greet us were raindrops. I feared that also here the seals had been chased off because of all the tourists frequenting the beach to spot them or for some other, darker reason.

We decided to go back to our hostel and eat dinner and then go to bed.

The Saga Settlement Center
of Borgarnes and
more waterfalls

Today we left the peninsula of Snæfellsnes and drove to the town of Borgarnes. It was a relatively short drive and the landscape became increasing cultivated, so close to Reykjavík. Agriculture, mostly grassland, dominated and only rarely did we cross vegetationless stone fields now. We arrived at Borgarnes relatively early. So early, in fact (before 2 o'clock), that our hostel room wasn't ready yet. So we decided to leave the car in its parking spot and explore the town. We walked through suburbs and along the coast to the very tip of the coastline and to the small harbour there. Then we decided to go to the Saga Settlement Center close by. We did both exhibitions, one about the settlement of Iceland, which is incredibly well documented, and the other about Egil's Saga, which was more or less cliff notes to the full story. Both of the exhibitions were well done. I especially liked the Egil's Saga one, since, to illustrate story points, the statues of the characters had been created of roughly hewn wood. It somehow fitted the rough and kind of querulous tone of the story. So, even though rather expensive, the exhibitions were completely worth it. Again we decided not to buy anything in the museum gift shop, even though the Aurora borealis candy had been rather tempting.

We returned to our hostel and were allowed to get a acquainted with our room, a spartan, tiny little thing with just space for the beds. Since it was still very early in the afternoon, we decided to go out again and drive to Hraunfossar and Barnafossar. As you might have guessed by the name, those were waterfalls. My GPS lead me “the short way” which was over a dirt road, something that started some bantering again between Luke and me about which was the better GPS or who the better navigator. Hraunfossar and Barnafossar were again different from all other waterfalls that we had seen. They were more like a labyrinth of not too deep canyons, covered with moss and other plants. Over it ran hundreds of small rivulets. It was a somewhat very endearing sight.

After the waterfall, we still had to get some gas, and since my hunger for adventure wasn't quite satiated, I just drove along the road. This particular road just lead to a camp ground and then more or less ended there. We got gas there and on the way back we took the route that wasn't the dirt road.

Once back in Borgarnes I still had excess energy and decided to go jogging. This was not the very best idea. It seemed that Icelanders are not the most avid runners in the world and even seemed to make fun of those people who did go jogging. Even though it was close to 10 o'clock, there was still a rather large amount of people on the streets, most of them driving in cars. I got a lot of whistling after me and calling out to me, all of which didn't sound very friendly. When I came back to the hostel I shrugged it off, however. Another thing that made you realize that you were close to Reykajavík, or at least close to the European/North American fault line, was that the hot water smelled of sulfur again. Taking a shower was interesting.

Back to Reykjavík

Our road took us back to Reykjavík today. As always, the beauty of landscape was striking. Again, lush green fields, mountains. I could write odes to the landscape of Iceland. It's like nothing and anything I've seen before.

We decided not to take the tunnel, even tough our GPS first lead us to it. I just wanted to enjoy the scenery a bit more. So, even though it was longer, we drove around the Hvalfjörður. We were not really interested in hiking to any more waterfalls, even though the highest of Iceland was said to be somewhere close by.

Arriving at Reykjavík was almost a bit of a culture shock. For the first time since our journey had begun, I encountered motorways with more than two lanes on either side. Fortunately signs are plentiful and navigation is rather easy. We were at our hostel rather early again, the same hostel as in the beginning, the Reykjavík City Hostel, close to Laugardalur.

After checking in, our first order of the day was to walk down Sundlaugavegur, Borgartún and finally Sæbraut along the coast towards the city centre. We saw some nice vistas there, like the Harpa Concert Hall and a Viking ship statue. We decided to go to the shopping streets, a nice small set of streets in the older part of town and peek into stores here and there. Since the Hallgrímskirkja isn't too far away from there, we also decided to check it out and enjoy the view of the city from way up top. It was an interesting experience, especially, since you are very close to the bells... let me be corrected — it was a very loud experience.

After that we just walked around and much rather by accident stumbled across the Alþingi, the house of parliament, and a nice little plaza with some restaurants close by it. Interesting to note that at one of the rare times when we watched TV, we found a channel that does nothing other than film the front of the building of the Alþingi 24/7... yes, Icelandic TV isn't really all that...

And then I had the hair–brained idea to walk to the Perlan — hair–brained because we were both actually too tired by then, and I only realized it half way. On our way there we went through a nice park with a rather big lake and some swans and other birds, but other than that, until we reached the Perlan it wasn't the most riveting walk. The Perlan itself though was surrounded by another nice park area, where they even had bunnies roaming free. We took a walk through the building and then ate something in the rather less expensive fast food restaurant there.

After that we walked home through the suburb area and went to bed pretty much straight away.

Relaxing in a spa

It was another day where we slept in and didn't do much. We went to a spa, since this is something you apparently do when you are in Reykjavík, or in Iceland for that matter. We went to one of the lesser known ones close to our hostel, not to the Blue Lagoon. The good thing about this was that there was a pool there where I could do some swimming.

In the evening we went to the cinema to watch the hilarious movie “This is the End”. After the movie was the first time since we had arrived that night at the airport that I drove at night–time.

The Volcano House

Today we just checked out on the internet what else we could do. I had also picked up a copy of the “Grapevine”, Reykjavík's free, hip, and English street newspaper, a few days earlier. In it, we found an ad for the Volcano House and we decided to go there.

It was rather windy today and not very pleasant to walk around. The Volcano House was close to the harbour, so we found a parking spot more or less close by. As soon as we got out of the car, however, we found that the wind cut through everything and often blew small particles at high velocities into our eyes. It took us a while to find the Volcano House and we walked into the wrong direction at first, which made me a bit cranky. The only interesting thing to see there was a movie about volcanic catastrophes — but it was a great one! To see the island of Heimaey be almost swallowed up by volcanic ash and people fighting against it. To see the power of the Eyafjallajökull and finally all the technology needed to predict a volcano eruption and the measures taken to keep people safe. It was in a way propaganda, but all very fascinating.

In the afternoon, we went to one of the larger shopping malls to buy some souvenirs and presents.

The last day

It was the last day today and we had to get to the airport. I genuinely felt sad to leave, so we decided to make a detour and go around the south of the peninsula to Keflavík, thus taking the long way around and not the short way we had come when we had made the trip the other way. It was one last trip of beautiful lakes, coastlines and small towns.

We were at the airport rather early as we had to bring back the car and didn't know how long it would take. We also had to pay for a dent (which I found out later on had already been there). It was all rather annoying, but finally didn't do anything to prevent our spirits from being dampened.

The flight back was a beautiful collage of Icelandic landscapes and clouds.