Iceland Part 3

Next up was the Hafragilsfoss waterfall.  This one was kind of interesting in that you could see the waterfall from the top of a deep gorge called Jökulsárgljúfur canyon.  The waterfall is from the glacier river Jökulsá á Fjöllum.  What was interesting was to see two distinctly different landscapes.  Before the waterfall, the river flowed through a flat grassy plain.  At the bottom, the canyon had very deep cliffs on either side, as if the land simply fell away at some point in history.  The canyon is much too deep to just be simple erosion from the fast-moving water. 

Further upstream you come to the massive Dettifoss, the most powerful waterfall in Europe.  As mentioned above, both waterfalls are fed by the glacier river Jökulsá á Fjöllum, and it flows from the largest glacier in Europe, Vatnajökull. 

The road to the two waterfalls was 15 miles of bumpy dirt roads in and out.  It was filled with potholes and washboards, as it seemed were most of the roads I traveled on.  The rental car companies all specify you must stick to paved roads only, no dirt roads.  I’m here to tell you, even if you stick to the Ring Road, and don’t take any detours to the sites you want to visit, you are still traveling many, many miles on dirt roads.  You only need to look at your car, as well as everyone around you to see how beat up these cars are.  Apparently I was not alone in disregarding that particular rule.

I basically stumbled upon a bizarre geological feature called Leirhnjukur ('Mud Peak').  It’s a 525 m high active volcano, who’s last eruption was from 1975 to 1984, near Lake Myvatn.  It’s part of the Krafla Caldera; a 10km long, 2km deep, cauldron-like geological feature perched on the edge of the Eurasian and American tectonic plates mentioned earlier in this blog. It’s a very strange landscape; it looks like you’re on another planet with steaming sulfuric pools of mud and multicolored lava fields everywhere you look. 

Up the road is the Krafla Power Station, a geothermal power plant with huge plumes of steam and a maze of above ground pipes.  It supplies power to the entire region and to get past it you go through almost a gateway of enormous pipes over the road.  A bit further on and you come to a small dirt parking lot with a random shower sticking out from the ground and a sink.  I have no idea what that was about, the shower seems to be on continuously; I didn’t see an on/off handle.  It was much too far from Leirhnjukur and the power plant to be a safety feature if someone fell into the super-heated mud or steam vent.  

The next day I decided enough driving, I wanted to do a whale watching tour.  I had two location I was considering; the town I was already in called Akureyri, or a town an hour away called Husavik.  Both were touted as whale watching capitals with a near 100% success rate in finding whales.  I opted for Akureyri for two reasons.  1 - I was already there and could sleep an extra hour.  2 - this tour went through Eyjafjörður Fjord where as Husavik is on a bay right on the Norwegian sea.  I was hoping for better landscape in the fjord.  I admit I was a bit disappointed, it looked pretty much the same as everywhere else I had seen in the area.  But we did spot a lone female humpback whale.  Or at least we saw her spout and dorsal fin 6 to 8 times as she came up for air.  I did manage to get two pictures of her tail just before she dove, so it wasn’t a total loss.  The guide could identify her by the markings on her tail, so they did know a bit of her history.  She was a young female, not quite old enough to head south for the breeding season, so she lived in the fjord year-round. 

The next day was basically a driving day, headed to the Westfjords region.  Again, the slow driving conditions put me at my guesthouse just about the time the reception closed, in fact I made it with 1 minute to spare.  Alas, they had gone home early.  Before I had time to panic, a kind soul cooking dinner in the shared kitchen, pointed to a note for me with my room key. Whew.  Since it was so late, I just wanted a bowl of soup and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  The other guest was German and his partner was Asian.  Both eyed me skeptically as I made my PBJ.  I laughed and said its an American staple.  They admitted they had heard of it, but never tried.  Well, they were in luck, I had plenty so I made them a sandwich.  They both were quite surprised at how good it was.   

A new day, a new waterfall, this time Dynjandi, which means thunderous.  And it was!  It’s a series of waterfalls, almost like steps, flowing down the side of a mountain and is the largest in the Westfjords.  If you want to hike 200 meters (656 feet) up a very steep trail, you can view the waterfall from the top.  As you can imagine, I gave that opportunity a pass. 

The scenery in Westfjords was spectacular; you will find some of the country’s most dramatic landscapes - from long narrow fjords, to towering cliffs plunging into the sea.   The weather was pretty bad during my visit with high winds, light rain, and plenty of fog.  The fog in particular gave the mountains a really eerie feel as most of them just disappeared into the gloom.  I did miss a massive storm hitting the south part of the country, I kept getting yellow alerts on my phone from the car rental company, so it could have been much worse.  The many fjords did make for a much longer journey as you had to drive around them, kind of like tracing your handprint; you have to go around each and every finger. 

My last stop was Snæfellsnes Peninsula, often called Miniature Iceland because of the diversity of the natural features.  Like the day before, it was raining off and on and was pretty foggy.  The peninsula has both active and dormant volcanoes, and the majestic ice capped Snæfellsjökull volcano.  There are crashing seascapes at the bottom of vertical cliffs, basalt columns of all sizes, and like the rest of Iceland, plenty of rugged Icelandic ponies and sheep, as well as natural hot springs.   Of course, I couldn’t see much of anything because of the very low clouds so I missed most of the really spectacular landscapes.  Despite the weather, I did enjoy driving through the Snæfellsnes National Park.  The most interesting feature still visible was the Rauðfeldsgjá Gorge.  It’s basically a cleft in a huge moss-covered cliff face that you can climb into to see a small stream trickling down from somewhere above.  If you are really fit, and don’t mind getting wet, its possible to follow the stream up into the chasm. 

The small village of Hellnar is a nice spot to stop for some hot soup to warm you up on such a blustery day.  In fact, as you drive through this area, it’s one of the only places to stop.  I guess soup is pretty popular in Iceland because lobster soup as well as sheep or meat soup was on most menus. While I didn’t try the sheep one, I do like a good lobster bisque and I was not disappointed.  Well, maybe it could have had more actual lobster chunks, but the soup was very delicious.  I’ve often seen it served in bread bowls, but always with bread.  I’m talking the really good home-made bread, which in and of itself was delicious!  One of the guest houses I stayed at served home-made bread in the morning and evening and let me tell you, I made sure to get my fair share, preferably when it was still warm!

Back to Hellnar; like most of the area, the views of the coast are awe inspiring but at one spot they put in a parking lot that offers a great viewpoint.  It was pretty exposed and very windy, certainly nothing new or unexpected at this point. 

I’ll be honest, by now the landscape was all blending together. While it was all very dramatic, stunning, unique, and several other adjectives, it was all starting to lose the wonder of seeing it for the first time.  At this point, I had been driving for 8-12 hours a day, every day for 9 days.  I needed a break.  And of course, the rain made it a bit less exciting to be climbing in and out of the car when often the scenic points of interest were shrouded in fog.  I decided the next day, I would stay in the snug little cabin I had rented and just relax.  On the way home that night, I stopped at the only small grocery store within a good half hour drive and got some provisions for the following day.  The one thing I forgot?  A toothbrush.  I had apparently left mine in the bathroom of the last hotel.  Of course I didn’t remember until bed that night and there was no way I was driving an hour the next day just for that.  So for 3 days straight I didn’t brush my teeth so much as wipe them down with toothpaste.  I sure was happy to be back in Reykjavik the following day.  As an added bonus, my good friend Kevin just happened to be visiting Iceland at the same time.  Kevin and I worked together in Washington DC and he was in my close circle of friends who went on many adventures together.  Ask me sometime about the rafting trip we went on and got sunburned so bad everyone rode home in just our underwear because we couldn’t bear the pants touching our skin. 

And so ends my trip to Iceland.  It was one of those places that was always on my bucket list and I’m really glad I went.  I’m headed back to Scotland for my last two months, which it will no doubt take to pay off this super expensive trip!

 

Iceland Research - https://guidetoiceland.is/travel-iceland/drive

Quality Iceland photos to purchase- https://throughlisaslens.zenfolio.com/ New photos

Iceland photos - https://photos.app.goo.gl/YoELo6eSGE5ygMNKA