Brenna Abroad

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.

 

We woke up Saturday morning and walked to Braud & Co, pretty much the most amazing bakery I have ever been to. Anthony got a delicious, buttery croissant, and I got a gooey cinnamon bun, and we got a loaf of fresh baked bread to go for eating on the road.

We picked up our rental car, a tiny 4×4 Suzuki Jimny with a rooftop tent, and ventured out. So this is what we will be living out of for the next 9 nights. I am simultaneously super excited and very nervous.

We immediately headed toward the Snaefellsnes peninsula. We had wanted to go last time we were here, but the weather was no good for it. Not that it was much better today! But when visibility is decent, there are endless beautiful views. Waterfalls and mountains and rivers every where you look.

We cut across the peninsula, missing out on Stykkisholmur and who knows what else, but the road across was a great little detour. And then our first stop was Kirkjufell, the most photographed mountain in Iceland, and with recent fame in season 7 of Game of Thrones where Jon Snow and co. fought the White Walkers. Excuse my super goofy hat.

We left and drove along the coast awhile, and as soon as we passed into Snaefellsjokull National Park, weather took a turn for the worst. We drove between lava fields unable to see anything further than 20 feet from us, with the wind constantly beating us, nearly pushing us off the road.

We turned toward our next stop Djúpalónssandur and once we arrived, parked into the wind and sat there. After awhile of seeing several other people coming back from the little hike, looking wind-blown and fairly miserable, we decided we should probably join in on the fun. We could barely get our car doors open, but once we started hiking down, the rock formations blocked the wind a bit.

That is, until we reached the actual beach. And then I could barely open my eyes against the wind, so backward we went. But hey, checked that off the list.

We waited out the wind a while more and decided we needed to get on the road at some point, so we headed toward Hellnar. We had intended to do a 2 hour hike along the coast, to Arnastapi and back, but clearly, the weather was not going to work for that. So, we ate some soup at a cafe, and by the time we came back out, the wind had lessened, and visibility was clearing a bit. We drove to Bjarnafoss, which I figured was just going to be a quick photo stop, but then we saw a small path to the waterfall, and we enjoyed the surroundings and newly decent weather so much, we decided we needed to spend some time exploring.

Anthony was so amazed by a tinier waterfall up over a different direction that just kept levitating up into a cloud, but of course, we couldn’t really get a picture of that. Bjarnafoss and its river, on the other hand, I got plenty of pictures of.

After that, we made our way to Budarkirkja, one of the first wooden churches in Iceland. It was awfully picturesque with the beach in the background, but it was starting to drizzle again and I was worried about my camera, so we didn’t stay long.

Our final stop for the day was Ytri-Tunga beach, where you can often find seals. We did see seals, but we only saw their little heads popping out of the water here and there. They were all too shy to come join us on the beach.

So we decided to call it a day and head to our campground. I had done a lot of research on campgrounds, and had found ones that were a bit more protected from the wind – which was clearly important for this particular night. Well, I thought I had anyway. We arrived at the campground, which was basically on the beach with no trees or mountains or anything nearby, and Anthony kept teasing me, “So this is sheltered, huh?”

We went inside the guesthouse to pay for camping, and I asked the guy working, “So is it supposed to be really windy all night?”
He kind of smirked and thought for a moment and asked, “Where are you guys from?”
“Kansas City.”
“Oh, you have tornadoes, you’ll live.”

SO with that reassuring assessment, we drove out to the field to park our car and set up our top-tent, but I, confused as to why I marked this campground as “well-protected,” decided to research. And that’s when I discovered that there are 2 campgrounds 10 minutes apart with the same basic name and I had meant to pick the other one, at the base of some mountains.

Anthony, being the sweetheart he is, decided he’d go talk to the guy to try to get our money back. We couldn’t admit to my research mistake, though, so he came up with some story of how we actually meant to meet up with friends at this other campground, and the guy didn’t seem to care about the story and said, “Oh, so you want your money back?” But then didn’t have exact change, so we ended up with an extra 100 ISK out of the deal (which is less than $1, but hey, we’re still richer).

We backtracked to the other campground… except it didn’t exist. At least, that’s what the people at that guesthouse told us. They insisted they didn’t have camping there. So BACK we went. But in-between the 2 was a different guesthouse, so we stopped there, and SUCCESS! They had a campground. Still not exactly sheltered, but we obviously couldn’t go back to the first one, and this one was cheaper anyway.

After getting ready for bed in the freezing cold, we popped open our top tent to test her out. It was perfectly comfortable up there, but it was still super windy out, causing the sides to flap around and be noisy. All in all, not our most restful night we’ve ever had, but we’ll do.