Traveling to Iceland everyone says a few things to you in advance. It’s expensive, it is beautiful, there are a lot of tourists and in the winter or course, it is cold. We found most of that to be true, barring the part about a lot of tourists. Maybe because we travelled in February, maybe because Cov-19 is giving people a reason not to travel, who knows. On a couple of occasions we even found ourselves totally alone, if briefly, at some of the most popular spots.
Anyways, on to what we saw. We had decided early on to rent a car and drive around the south and some of the west of the island. This is not too uncommon and most people view the things we did in what is called the Golden Circle. Certainly this is where we saw the most tourists, but even there, not a huge amount. We ended up getting a Subaru Forester, which was a good choice as it was big enough to get us around in winter, but not so big that it was a gas hog or hard to park. Gas is expensive! It was close to 120usd to fill the tank which we did a few times during the week. The first day we had just enough time to land, get the car, shop for a few things, and then get to our first airbnb. It was a nice little place and literally right across the street from the Secret Lagoon. The Lagoon was a fairly nice pool and it was cool to take the soak in the cold air, but its nothing like Japanese onsen with its many pools and so forth. Still, it was relaxing and how can you go to Iceland and not go to at least one hot spring?
The circle includes the Gulifoss, the Strokkur geyser, and the Kerid crater which we did not go to. At the waterfall there was a hard snow storm blowing. We arrived just about at 10am, sunrise was around 9am, and the tour buses seemed to roll in just as we were leaving around 1045. We found this most days, if we could start driving in the dark around 830 and get to places by 9ish then we would be mostly alone before tour buses were hitting the road. The falls themselves were massive and beautiful, but it was just too cold to stand around for a long time and even removing my glove to snap some pictures left me with a sting in the fingers. So, we headed to the gift shop for some warm drinks and to write postcards. Not nearly as beautiful, but a lot warmer than standing by the falls.
After the waterfall we headed to the geyser. I hear that the big geyser has stopped spouting, but the smaller of the two is still going and seems to blow every 5 to 10 minutes. It was here that I learned that Aya cannot take a selfie. We are not picture people, so it makes sense, but I thought everyone could do this much like eating with chopsticks (also not true, some people can’t). I’ve also since learned that geyser is an Icelandic word that we have adopted into English. Pretty cool. I wonder if there are other words that made it in? I kind of doubt it since Icelandic is a pretty hard language for native English speakers to grasp and while there are a lot of unique things in the country they probably don't cross over much to other places. Can you say, "Snæfellsnes"? How about Eyjafjallajökull?Well, that is probably why not many words crossed over. We did get a kind of selfie during the blow up, and then hit the road again.
Heading south now in the golden circle we stopped for a quick lunch at a Tomato Restaurant. Aya had read about it and when we arrived there we saw a group of Japanese tourists inside waiting for lunch. It was just the type of spot where Japanese tourists would flock to, cute little place with fresh veggies and high prices. We knew right away they were Japanese and not Korean or Chinese since there were about 20 of them at a long table and you could see the lips of some of them moving, but you could not hear them at all from even just a couple meters away. At first I thought, wow, the acoustics in this place really dampen your voice, but that was not so. There were other people stopping there too and there was a large greenhouse attached to the restaurant area we were in where you could see the production of the tomatoes everyone was eating. As we went among the rows looking at things an American just ahead of us commented on our yaktrax that we were wearing. How do I know they were American? Just like the Japanese there is communication etiquette that sets Americans apart. They are very likely to engage in small talk with strangers and are friendly, but they are not nearly as good at volume control as the Japanese are. Though a mere meters away I could have been on the other side of the greenhouse and still heard them. After poking around for a bit we had some tomato soup and bread (really delicious!). I was tempted to get a bloody mary, but I'm a responsible driver so I just moaned about not having one for a bit and then we hit the road again.
ON the way south we stopped at a foss just outside of Hella. I'm not sure of the name, but is was "foss"tastic. We had the place all to ourselves, though we did see some tracks in the snow so we knew others had been there in the morning.
Continuing south and east we stopped at the black sand beach (totally empty!) then went on just a bit past Vik where we stopped for the night. We stayed at Landabrot cabins, just past the Magma Hotel. The cabins were kind of in the middle of nowhere, but there were a few of them strewn about so it was kind of funny to see the other tourists like us come and go each morning and evening and get a sense of when people were traveling. We stayed there two nights, the first on arrival and then the second after hiking the glacier.
Our glacier hike went from 2pm to 5pm, but really it seemed a lot longer. We took a late start in the morning and due to snow ended up driving for about 1.5 hours before getting to the national park and the glacier. The hiking company set us up with helmets, harnesses and crampons. Otherwise we were well prepared with many layers and little heat packs we each put in our boots by our toes. As we later learned walking around Reykjavík the little heat packs in the boots are a good idea as with the packets, the layers, and the hiking around we weren’t really too cold during our hike but we were later in the city without the heat packs. In a group of about 20 we were lead up to the foot of the glacier and then we went to three different ice caves. The first and last were quite large and blue ice. You could easily stand in them and see the air bubbles and debris that was in the ice. The second cave was dark grey ice that our guide said was volcanic ash. I suppose this was true as most of the island is made up of volcanic ash so one way or the other it is everywhere. In this second cave we crawled through a claustrophobic passageway to really see the belly of the ice cave. After spending a couple hours in the caves we made our way down arriving to the parking lot around 530pm. How do I know the exact time? Because, in Iceland there are only state owned liquor stores to sell beer and they are only open from 2pm to 6pm. I knew it was too late to grab beers for the night. Life is hard, what can I say. From there we had another hour or so back to our cabin and an early night to sleep and get ready for the long drive the next day.
The next day we ended up covering about 300km. As with other days we started out early and made it to Dyrholaey peninsula where there is a beautiful lighthouse and rock formation. On the drive there we did not see many people and as we approached the bottom of the hill leading to the lighthouse we saw some knocked over sign on the road, but I figured it was nothing and drove on. The blue hue of the early morning light was so intense and we were the only people on the grounds for the whole time! Unbelievable... I thought, until we drove back down the hill and there was the same sign but now upright and it said DO NOT ENTER, LANDSLIDE. Oh well, we lived.
We had to do laundry this day and so made it a point to just drive as far as we could and get to the next place with enough time to spare in the evening for laundry. We thought it might be possible to do this and to get a few hours up to the Snaefellsness peninsula, but by the time we got to Bogarnes it was already later in the afternoon and I was getting tired of driving. We spent this evening just hanging around, watching Dr. Phil, and doing our laundry. Wow, I forgot how crazy the Dr. Phil show is. Dang America, you are giving Icelanders one hell of an impression of what American society is like!
The next day we were out early and on the road to get up to the peninsula. I’m a big fan of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and so I wanted to go see one of the places where it was filmed in Iceland. IN the movie it is supposed to be Greenland and really what is the difference in filming? As we were driving north we could tell that the wind and snow drifts were pretty bad, but having grown up driving in Wisconsin I was pretty sure of myself on the road. However, as we went through a mountain pass I nearly gave up and turned around as I couldn’t see more than 100 ft in front of me and the wind was really blowing hard. We kept going and eventually got to clearer weather. We did eventually get to Snaefellsness, found the scene from the movie and walked around the town for just a bit getting some good views of the sea before heading back again.
As we were leaving town a rescue vehicle nearly cut us off and I thought, oh shit someone got stuck in the pass we just came through. Sure enough when we took the pass again there was a line of cars waiting and as it turned out someone had gotten stuck in a drift that was covering the entire lane on a bridge, the drift being about a meter Deep. The rescue vehicle was really just a souped-up suv and as we passed it hadn’t made any progress yet on pulling the car out, but we did get past. As we made our way down the mountain visibility was nearly as bad and there was a caravan of about 5 cars, myself in the end position, making our way down slowly. As you can imagine, it didn’t take long for someone to get behind me and attempt to pass all 5 cars in the blinding snow only to have oncoming traffic block their way and to swerve into the line of slower vehicle causing me to have to jam on the brakes. I could not believe it, but this guy attempted a few times to pass all the cars and each time was rebuffed as there was oncoming traffic which any of us could see. I don't mind so much if people are suicidal, but when they are going to take me with them I get a bit irritated with them.
Eventually we came off of the mountain and lost of most of the bad weather continuing on our way to Reykjavík. About half way there, in the distant bay, I could make out some wakes in the waves that were just too big to be anything else than whales. Eventually we found a rest point and watched them for a bit. They never did breech, but watching the motions and size of the wakes we could also see their black backs sticking up a bit too. They did not seem to be in a big hurry so we made our way to the Hilton on the outside of town and got hunkered down for the night.
The following day we went on a walking tour of the town which didn’t cover all that much area. Reykjavík is not a big city, just about 200,000 people, but even at that size the downtown was not very big and most of it could be covered on foot within an hour. Our guide showed our group around to a few different spots, the parliamentary building, the courthouse, and some historical sites. What we did not anticipate was the cold. Like our glacier hike we made sure to bundle up, but we assumed that our toes would be fine and did not use the hot packets. That was a mistake! By the end of the 1.5 hour tour my toes were frozen! Feeling like we had pretty much seen everything we wanted to we headed back to the hotel to use their spa and get my little piggies warmed up.
That was pretty much that for Iceland though we did drive to the airport the next day and so forth. It is a beautiful place and now, sitting in Poland with the borders close, we are so glad we got to take such a great trip just as the door was closing.
