Shoes off! You’re in Iceland

Our Gatwick flight was delayed by 90 minutes due to strong winds. We enjoyed our delay though. The best thing about our flight was a prolonged break in the Gatwick, discovery of a public footpath around a small lake with water lilies and harvest of blackberries. 

Starved by the flight, we bought super healthy bread with walnuts at the Keflavik airport. Fair car Rental Companypicked us up. Gave us printed maps and weather focused. We opted for a used car with “Scratches and dents all over the place”. We managed to drive the 200km to be in the Skógar hostel just before the bedtime. The hostel was very basic, with dorm rooms only.

Nothing is better than a room on your own, especially after the first night in a super basic hostel. Hiking around the Skogar waterfall wasn’t really great fun. After about 2 hours, we finished the hike, exhausted and wet. The wetness wasn’t obvious until we came down and rested for a while when the high wind started again.  The rest of the day, we spent in the Skogar folk museum – a safe haven while the elements had their time outside. 

There were so many things in the museum that we wondered whether they know about all of them. You could spend hours learning about Iceland across several themed buildings plus an open air museum. The Vik finished our day with my hot pool treat and a quick stop in the Icewear which proved to be too expensive for our budget. Missing the grocery store just by 20 mins, we went on a scenic journey by the sea, crossing lava fields under the Laki volcanoes.

After half an hour driving from the Hvoll hostel to the Skatfafell national park, we headed for the looped walk. The walk was well marked with knee-high yellow-end-painted poles. Also very busy with other hikers, especially at the start and end.  The Skatfafellsheiq loop was 15.5 km long and we had about 7 showers on the way, we thought there was no point in taking our raingear off. It took us about 5.5 hours to do the loop walk. At times, we had luck to see bits of the huge Skatfafell glacier pushing its way through the valley. The glacier greeted us with cold wind, the descending side of the walk and mountain Kristínartindar was colder. The trail was rocky at times, especially going down.

On our way to Sellfoss,we stopped to take pictures of the Skatfafell waterfall – foss in Icelandic. We gave a ride to a couple of hikers from France, only to Skogar; happy to see it again in the daylight, we said bye to the youths right in front of the campsite. They told us that they had to stand only 20 mins in the rain and their rides were mostly tourists. But the guy had rides by locals in the past.

Listed in the sub-heading above are the 3 most popular attractions in Iceland.  

The underwater tunnel to Borgarnes was surprisingly long. We went all this way to find that all we needed was in the Borgarness– a great hostel, beautiful town with sunset and a hot tub. Was it safe for women? We asked twice, they immediately replied yes, without even thinking about it. A natural reaction. A well hidden secret which we discovered was the 90.50 FM RUV R2 Radio with programmes for all hard rock lovers. The local settlement museum below the restaurant with a gift shop offered 1 hour tours and good insights into early history – the first 60 years and the Icelandic sagas.

Our car engine oil started to drip. We went into a garage and they called the car rental company to replace our car. The new car arrived very quickly, in about 3.5 hours. We gave a ride to another couple, they were Germans. We learned from them why there were so many German tourists in Iceland; the return flight from Berlin was only 120EUR.  “Come back next year!” said the notice on the closed restaurant in Hellisandur. The next seafood place in Ólafsvík was served by very young women. Even staff at the gas station was the same age, we wondered why? The explanation came later in the evening.

On the way to Reykjavik, we stopped in the Stykkishólmur for a brisk walk around the harbour hills; everything else was closed for season. The farm in Erpsstadir was supposed to be opened from 1pm, but when the farm lady saw us coming, she opened the shop at 12noon. They have woofers through the helpex.net site every year. Their strawberry ice cream tasted like it was made just yesterday. The dirt road to the farm was safe enough for the maximum speed of 80 kph.

In the capital, we saw an exhibition of arctic photography by Rangar Alexonn. It documented a slowly disappearing world of melting glaciers and shrinking communities of Inuit. The Flora café in the Botanic gardens, with their resident cat, is the 2014 best kept secret in the town. In the past, women used to wash the clothes in a nearby hot spring which is commemorated by a volcanic sculpture and information boards.

We couldn’t leave Iceland without Bjork’s early and rare GlingGló (1990) album. 

Hope you found this short narration useful. If you’re planning a longer trip to Iceland, check out my friend’s, John Fitzgerald’s blog. It inspired our journey a lot.

John Fitzgerald Images