When we decided to go to Iceland I did a lot of interweb surfing to find places that we would want to make sure and hit. What I noticed was there were a lot of pictures, a few blogs and one NY Times article about traveling Iceland. Don’t get me wrong Lonely Planet has never failed me but I thought there would be more. Hopefully this fills a little void and gives you and idea of at least another way to do Iceland in 9 days.
To give some background we planned to stay in hotels and camp. Coming from London we found tickets for just over 200 pounds each on Iceland Air. We each had a carry on and one checked bag. One of the checked bag was camping equipment and the other was our clothes. My carry on bag had my camera kit in it and Michaela’s had other odds and ends. The first half of the adventure after the jump...
Day 1-
We arrived late in Keflavik and had booked a hotel for convenience. This was about the same as picking the car up that night and trying to find a camp spot. Hotel Keflavik http://www.hotelkeflavik.is/en/ was about perfect for us with airport pick up and a great breakfast. The rooms were a little out of date but suited our purpose just fine.
Day 2-
After breakfast we were back to the airport to get the car. We got the standard compact, Toyota Yaris, with decent insurance cover for under $800 for the week. At this point we didn’t’ have a plan set in stone but wanted to head Northwest, having heard the fjords were amazing. We made a quick stop in Reykjavik to get some snacks and fuel for the camp stove, not knowing if we would be able to find this outside of a major city. Later we would realize that just about every town and village at least has a gas station that carries camp stove fuel and something that could go as dinner in a pinch. With food and fuel in hand we drove out of the city headed for the Snæffellsnes Peninsula, better known as the setting for "Journey to the Center of the Earth".
A road around Snaefell
After only a few hours in the car we had already reached the glacier-covered mountain Snaefell. We immediately put Yari the Yaris to his first test going up the side of the mountain to get as close as possible to the glacier. It was a little nerve racking at first driving the compact low profile Yaris on winding unpaved mountain roads but we got used to it pretty quickly. The cloud cover was really low so we were content to drive around Snaefell and not doing any hiking. Once we came out on the other side near the village of Rif we back tracked to Arnastapi so we could see the coast line and the weird lava fields and formations that litter the west side of Snaefell. From Arnastapi we drove back north with the idea in mind that we could get to Stykkisholmur to catch the ferry to the West Fjords. We had a pizza in Olasvik at a gas station where we realized just about everywhere was going to have camp stove fuel. After dinner a short drive got us close enough to Stykkisholmur to camp on a side road. A lot of Iceland is so remote even close to towns that you can camp out in a field if you can’t find a campsite. Typically though there are campsites for a few hundred kronas a night and even several free sites. After we had got into our sleeping bags that night we could hear/see fireworks and what seemed to be singing. We’d have to wait till the morning to see what the commotion was all about.
Snaefell covered by clouds
Day 3-
We broke camp early and drove into the town of Stykkisholmur, which seemed to be deserted except for Danish flags and the odd tent blowing across the road. As we drove towards the port to find the ferry we noticed it was “Danish Days” or what seemed to be the Viking version of Puddle Jumper weekend. We took a few pictures and then went to catch the ferry where we ran into our first problem. The ferry was already on a winter schedule so it was only running once a day at 3pm. We decided instead of waiting we were better off driving since the ferry ride was almost 3 hours giving us a 10 hour head start. The drive around the peninsula wasn’t back except for running into the first road that was listed as a major road on the map and turned out to be a dirt road. We made good time all the way to Djupadalur. From there on though we had to drive up and down the fjords. The driving was awe inspiring but just got to be pretty repetitive.
Abandon Steel Boat on the West Fjords
By 5pm we had reached the most Western point in Iceland Latrabjarg home to thousands of nesting Puffins. Home when it’s not winter that is. Not having done enough homework we didn’t realize that the Puffins had already go out to sea for the winter. What kind of animal spends the winter on the sea and the summer on land? The landscape out to Latrabjarg is breathtaking with huge wide-open beaches lining the way to huge black cliffs being pounded by the frigid waters of the North Atlantic. Even though we didn’t see the Puffins the drive and hike was worth the time.
Where the Puffins should have been...
We decided after seeing how long navigating the fjords took to skip past Isafjordur further to the north but what we could only estimate would be 6 hours plus of driving. The back track towards the ring road took several hours but we find a nice camp site at the Saeberg HI Hostel in Reykir just North of Staorskali on route 1.
We stopped to feed the Icelandic Horses on more than one occasion
Day 4-
We woke up and tried to go to the hot pools by the Hostel but they were closed for a swimming meet. We started northeast on route 1 that morning with the aim of making it to Akureyi. We made really good time as compared to driving in the West fjords. By early afternoon we had stopped for lunch in Akureyi at the Paris Café. Akureyi is a the second largest town in Iceland. Although very cosmopolitan it’s still a small town anywhere outside of this island. As we left Akureyi we for Myvatn we realized that Godafoss waterfall was the halfway point. There are hundreds of waterfalls in Iceland but this one stands out as one of the most beautiful, minus all the people since this sits just off route 1. The gas station also provides a nice place to refuel and pick up some authentic Icelandic goods from the coop attached. The landscape changes drastically as you approach the lake surrounded by lava fields. Once we reached the Northeast side of the lake we went straight to the “Little Blue Lagoon”. The milky blue pools and steam rooms are created from the geothermic activity in the area. We spent several hours between the hot pools and the saunas relaxing and watching the sunset slowly roll in. Although it’s the end of August the sun doesn’t really set until after 10pm. After a hot shower we were off to the campsite in the lava fields just off of the lake. We decided to hit the local hotspot The Vogafjos Cowshed for dinner. Icelandic cuisine isn’t typical to say the least when you get outside of Reykjavík . The Cowshed, was half barn and half restaurant, served primarily raw dishes from smoked fish to smoke lamb and I think I even saw some beef tartar in there too. Being adventurous we went with the smoked trout and goulash. Goulash was a good choice but the bone in smoked trout that tasted like wet ashes and nearly choked me to death was less than a good choice. I never saw the bones coming… I will say they make a pretty good ham and cheese toasty too as my second option. So 6000 krona roughly 30 pounds later I had learned my lesson and vowed to stick with the basics. Anything you catch in a lake shouldn’t be served raw anyway, shoulda known. A beer later and we were in the tent both fast asleep.
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