Category: Iceland

Happy, happy day.  As sad as we were to leave our peaceful little heaven at the Ásbyrgi campsite, we knew we were heading somewhere we would love.

We took road 864 back from Ásbyrgi to the Ring Road, which was somehow even worse than the road we took there. Well, really, it didn’t start off all that bad. We made it to the east side of Dettifoss without too much trouble. The mist and fog and rain that had set in the night before was still hanging around as we hiked out to the massive waterfall, but I do have to agree with what I had read online, that the view from that side was better.

Every spot I stopped at, I decided I needed to get just a bit closer, until I was standing near the edge right by the waterfall. I almost felt like I was just going to be sucked right into it. It was just so big, and so powerful.

But then we left Dettifoss, and the road was just ridiculous. It took us so long to bounce our way over the potholes back to the Ring Road.

And then we were flying down the road, taking in views of mountains and valleys and waterfall after lovely waterfall.

Iceland is ridiculous with its waterfalls. You’re just driving along the Ring Road, and there will just be a little pull off to walk up to some gorgeous waterfall that you know nothing about.

We reached Egilsstadir, the gateway to the East Fjords, and stopped to refuel and grab some groceries. And then onward we went, our little Jimny climbing up a mountain, looking out over forests (in Iceland!!) and beautiful land as far as we could see.

We were clearly in a cloud at the top of the mountain, but as we started climbing back down into the town of Seyðisfjörður, the views started getting clearer and prettier.

We pulled into a parking lot and were mesmerized. Seyðisfjörður is quite possibly the most picturesque little village I have ever seen.

We walked through the streets and checked out the little blue Church.

There was a ferry docked, but somehow there weren’t many people around. We walked the sidewalk along the fjord for awhile, and then stopped in a pub on the water for some lunch, where I had a wonderful veggie burger and baked potato.

We considered just staying there the rest of the day since we liked it so much, but the day was still young and we already had a lot of ground to cover the next day. So, we climbed back up the mountain, the weather having cleared up a bit to allow us to see the fjord and the little waterfalls along the way better.

We drove south and turned off toward Mjóifjörður. I almost chickened out of going after seeing the condition of the road. I looked at Anthony and said “I don’t know, maybe we should just skip this one.”
And he asked, “Well what’s going to be there?”
“Just some beautiful fjord.”

And so of course, Anthony decided we were going. And I am SO glad he did.

Not many people know about Mjóifjörður, or at least don’t make a point of going. It’s far off from the Ring Road for one thing, and the road there is rough, and there is barely even a town in the fjord (population around 35). But I had read online that it was beautiful and that the little fjord had wonderful weather from being so well-protected and that was enough to put it on my radar.

The views the entire way there were insane. Waterfalls everywhere we looked. And sure enough, the weather became sunnier and warmer and calmer the closer to that fjord we got. I swear it is magical. I fell so in love.

One of the only named waterfalls on the way down is Kliffbrekkufossar, which is actually a series of stepped waterfalls. And it was stunning.

I saw so many other little waterfalls in the distance that I wanted so badly to go try to explore. But the fjord itself was stupidly beautiful itself, and it was calling our names, so we drove down and along the water until the little town. I daydreamed of going totally off-grid and staying there for the rest of eternity. Ok, so maybe not for winter. But I could totally live there for the summer.

We slowly made our way back to the paved road, and drove down to the next fjord for the night, Reyðarfjörður.

They had a lovely little campground next to a duck pond looking out at the fjord.

It was absolutely freezing, so we ate some soup and drank some hot chocolate to stay warm, and huddled up in our top-tent for the night. We set an alarm for the middle of the night to see if the Northern Lights would make an appearance, and sure enough, they did, but it was a weak showing. Possibility looks good for tonight, though, so fingers crossed!

We slept in on day 4. And by that, I mean we got up at, like, 7:15. We tore down camp and wandered over to the campground’s cooking facility and made ourselves some oatmeal with bananas and brewed some coffee. I always like people watching in those situations, see what food they’re making for their camping experience, what gear they’re wearing for their trek around Iceland.

We were finally ready to be on the road a little after 9, and our first stop of the day was Grjótagjá cave (aka, Jon Snow and Ygritte’s cave). The cave is cool looking, but the best part was the hot spring inside of it. It’s supposedly too hot to get in, but it felt pretty great, in my opinion. You can then climb above the cave and see steam coming out of all these fissures. It was a unique experience.

And then we drove through some of the most bizarre landscapes I’ve ever see. Steam was just coming out of the ground everywhere we looked, and then we came across a (very smelly) steaming, milky blue body of water with colorful mountains behind it.

After a few minutes of this, we were at the Hverir geothermal area. I couldn’t breathe through my nose due to the sulfur smell, but oh my goodness, it was one of the coolest places I had seen.

We’d walk by steam vents and see bubbling mud pits around us. Really, really unique.

After a small bit of hiking, we made our way to the Myvatn Nature Baths, kind of the north’s version of the Blue Lagoon. It’s a small lake of hot, milky blue water. It’s less tourist-y than the Blue Lagoon, and also cheaper. We relaxed in the hot water for awhile, which helped with my achy back.

At this point, we were starving, so we stopped at a restaurant next to a farm with a view of Lake Myvatn. They had “geysir bread” there, which is bread baked underground by geothermal heat and is pretty tasty.

We had a long drive to our next campground, so we got moving, turning off the Ring Road after a little bit, passing barren, hardened black lava fields. I’ve heard Iceland be described as “like another planet” so many times that it’s cliche, but it is so true.

In the middle of this crazy landscape was Dettifoss, Europe’s most powerful waterfall. We made a short stop here, hiking down from the parking lot. It may not be the most picturesque waterfall in Iceland, but it’s really impressive. The darker, grayish color comes from all the black sediment from the lava rocks.

Knowing we would be seeing it from the other side on the way back, we quickly ventured on. Unfortunately, the road we were on, 862, turned into the roughest gravel road I’ve ever seen in my life right after Dettifoss. We were hovering around 30 km/h the whole way, bouncing around on potholes.

The crazy moon-like landscape just all of a sudden turned into a lush vegetated one.

After gritting our teeth for probably 45 minutes, we turned down toward Vesturdalur, which was a beautiful little detour.

We went on a short walk, checking out the bizarre rock formations and the pretty plants.

And then it was back on that terrible road the rest of the way to Asbyrgi. Asbyrgi is a U-shaped canyon that was carved out by a massive glacial river flood, likely caused by a volcanic eruption underneath the source glacier that caused an immense amount of melt water.

We first ventured to the interior of the canyon to hike through a small forest.

We climbed up to a little viewpoint of the pond and forest and canyon. It was insanely peaceful, which is not a word I usually use to describe Iceland.

We went back to the campsite to pick out a spot before doing the hike along the giant rock in the middle of the canyon. That hike eventually brings you to a spot where you are directly across the U of the canyon, but dense fog settled in, and I knew we wouldn’t be able to see anything. Instead, we took it easy and drank some wine, cooked some dinner, and hung out at the campsite, which was our favorite campsite ever. It was pretty, it was quiet, the facilities were nice, and I kinda just wanted to stay there the rest of the vacation.

We got a good night’s sleep up in our top-tent, rejuvenated for a day heading to the East Fjords.

Day 3 was a long driving day, and we covered a lot of ground. It started out as rainy as the day before. We woke up at 5:30 after not sleeping terribly well, and we got on the road to our final Snaefellsnes stop: Landbrotalaug. Landbrotalaug is a tiny little hot spring out in the middle of nowhere. You have to cross some water to get to it, and once you’re there, it can only fit two people.

Once we were back on the road, we weren’t really able to see Eldborg crater through the rain and fog, so we just cut up across the peninsula and started making our way back to the Ring Road. People in Iceland apparently are not early risers like us, so we were not able to get any coffee until around 10, at which point, we were dying for a nap. But the caffeine perked us up just enough that we were able to push onward.

I had one stop planned for before we got to Akureyri, not really knowing much about it, but figured we needed something to break up the drive. Kolugljufur was just about 10 minutes off the Ring Road, and once we got there, I was so happy with myself for finding out about it online. It’s a canyon with a few waterfalls, and it was gorgeous.

We walked around to the various cliff edges trying to get every view we could for around half an hour until our hands and noses were numb.

After that, we were refueled by both the caffeine and the adrenaline, so we had no problems continuing our roadtrip. We drove up and down mountains, looking in awe at mountains and valleys and bubbling brooks all around us. At one point, we turned a bend, and saw SUNSHINE. And we were driving right toward it!

By the time we got to Akureyri, the largest town in the North with a population of around 18,000, the weather was just beautiful. I took my jacket off while we walked around town. We ate some lunch, sat in a little park, checked out the bay, and took the long way back to our car.

We left and ended up passing Godafoss on our way to our next stop. I had planned on saving Godafoss for the next day, but since we were already there and the sun was shining, we stopped and parked. It is truly beautiful. However, it’s right on the Ring Road in addition to being gorgeous, so there were tons of other tourists there, all taking their turns getting the perfect selfie with the waterfall in the background, so it was a lot of waiting around to get the right views of it. Still definitely a worthwhile stop.

Then, we had a big detour off the Ring Road to get to Aldeyjarfoss. Aldeyjarfoss is very slowly growing in popularity, but it will add close to three hours to your Ring Road journey, driving down very rough gravel roads there and back, including an F road that 2wd cars are not allowed on, and then a 20 minutes roundtrip walk on a fairly steep rocky surface, so most tourists still don’t make it there.

When we arrived, we had it to ourselves. And it was definitely our favorite waterfall so far. We drove along a stunning blue river to get to it, and once we were there, we learned that that large blue river all came from this waterfall with a rather narrow opening. So the water was just gushing out between all these incredible basalt columns. The contrast of the blue water and the basalt columns everywhere you looked was just really cool to see.

Since we didn’t have anyone else to worry about trying to get the best view, we sat down on the cliff right across from it, and just enjoyed it for awhile, sun shining and warming our backs.

Once we had our fill, we turned back and headed all the way back to the Ring Road. I had planned on staying at a campsite there near the waterfall, but it was still only 5pm, so we decided to keep moving. We drove down south around Lake Myvatn, taking in the views. There were so many stops we should have made, but we were tired, so we kept driving until we got to our campsite, around the northeast corner of the lake.

The campsite was really nice, which explained why there were dozens and dozens of tents already set up. There was an office to buy bottled waters or some beers, there was a cooking facility, hot showers, 2 different areas with bathrooms, and some decent views of the lake. We settled in, took our showers, ate some food, and called it a night at 9:00, calling the day a success.