It's very peaceful driving in Iceland. Mostly Shaynie drove, because she likes to and I don't. I took photos of the snowy plateaus and DJ'd more ethereal indie folk.
We didn't have real concrete plans though. All we knew was where our accommodation was each night; accommodation was our anchor. But it wasn't too anchory as everything was surprisingly a lot closer than we expected.
We were staying in Horgsland Guesthouse that night, about a 3 and a half hour drive from Reykjavik. We had picked a couple inbetween stops. We were aiming for Þórsmörk, a stunning valley according to google images.
Shaynie and I were driving along, looking for the turn off for our intended stop. We saw a bunch of cars congregated in one area. "What's that?" Shaynie asked. "I dunno. Wanna check it out?" It felt so quintessentially road trip. Just stopping wherever we felt like. There was a stand near the parking lot that we bought doughnuts and hot chocolate from.
We had unintentionally stumbled across Seljalandsfoss, which ended up being one of my favorite stops of the whole trip. Seljalandsfoss has a giant misty waterfall that you can hike behind. The mist from the waterfall freezes against the sides of the plateau.
We climbed up some stairs and followed the ant trail of tourists along a muddy path behind the massive misty waterfall.
There was a tiny fork in the path that led down to the base of the waterfall. I couldn't resist getting closer to the water and hiked down. I am in awe of the power of water.
Me, for scale
I was getting soaked where I was standing. The water roared and the mist splashed my face. I felt like I was five inches tall when I looked up at the wall of white water rushing over the plateau.
So the ring road runs right up against a plateau to the left and then it's flat as far as the eye can see to the ocean to the right. On top of the plateau are volcanoes and glaciers and a shit ton of snow that melts and runs across the plateau where it spills over the sides before running back across the flat land to the ocean. That's why there are so many waterfalls.
When we hiked back, the path went left back to the parking lot and right along the edge of the plateau. "Where do you think it goes? Want to check it out?" I asked. We turned right. There were tiny sporadic waterfalls spilling over the side of the plateau. It didn't look like there was much more, but we saw some people climb up the side of the mountain along a steep, zig zagging tiny muddy path and we decided, why not, let's follow them.
We climbed up to a small platform where everyone was gathered. There was a razor thin piece of mud that people climbed up. When you peeked over the edge you could see the waterfall falling to 100 feet below.
We kept walking further down the path. From the path, it didn't look like there was much else that direction, but we decided to keep exploring.
That's seljadsfoss in the background
We were goofing off taking pictures. There was a group of New York dudes on a birthday trip who we took a photo for. We saw some people disappear into a gorge behind them and decided to follow them.
There was a shallow stream leaking out of two very narrow walls. We followed it deeper into the gorge, stepping cautiously on tiny stones trying not to dunk our snow boots completely.
We felt the mist before we saw the waterfall. The water hit the ground with immense force and rushed out the narrow gully, hosing us down with glacial melt.
We of course still stopped for some photos
Soaking wet and giggling giddily, we walked back to the car. "That was awesome!" We exclaimed and warmed our fingers on the heating vents. "I'm so glad we stopped!" We didn't have time before it got dark to make it off the main road to get to our original destination, so we continued on the Ring Road to our hotel. But, we found out later, it was actually closed for weather reasons.
We stopped in Vik for dinner, a little town on the black sand coast. We ate at a little roadside gas station restaurant that served 'curry' and looked out over Reynisdrangar, and outcropping of rocks that we planned to visit on our way back. We got back on the road, made it to our guesthouse, and checked in.
Our guesthouse heavily promoted their hot tubs while we were checking in. Although we were tired, we invoked the YOLO argument to motivate ourselves to change out of our pjs into bathing suits, bundle up, and trek across the guesthouse's property to their hot tubs. It was eleven at night but still dusky looking. Behind the guesthouse was the distinguished ancient plateau that ran for miles along the south coast and formed a backstop to the meadow that dissolved into the sea somewhere beyond the horizon. The guesthouse was nestled up against the base of the plateau and faced the meadow toward the horizon. It looked like it would be incredibly peaceful to sit in the hot water and enjoy the outdoors.
We pulled back the spa covers and stripped quickly; it was 1 degree Celsius outside. Freezing, I hopped in without hesitation.
Unfortunately, the hot tubs weren't on, and the water was butt ass cold.
Shivering, we redressed and went sprinting back to our room, where we flipped through a few channels of nothing but static, tried to connect to some nonexistent wifi, and went to bed.
We ate the complementary breakfast the next morning and discussed our game plan. We were staying in Skógar that night, which was actually an hour and a half west on the way back to Reykjavik.
"Want to see how far east we can make it?" Shaynie suggested. "Yeah, why not," I agreed.
So we got in the car and instead of turning right on the ring road, we turned left. We drove an hour an a half and made it to Diamond Beach. While I bitched about the cold for the entire trip, Diamond Beach was the place where I was the most uncomfortably cold. The wind ripped across the exposed coast. It was bitingly cold; it hurt to breathe.
There is a giant glacier behind this beach that spills and breaks into chunks in to Glacier Lagoon, which we went to after this. The glacier chunks float through a canal into the ocean where the waves beat the glacier chunks back in to shore, breaking them up into little chunks that scatter up the coast. I'm pretty sure these are ten thousand year old pieces of frozen water, shattered on the shore.
All I could hear was the wind. I walked a ways down the black sand until the ice chunks thinned out.
I picked up a piece and showed Shaynie.
We then went across the street to Glacier Lagoon. It's a big lagoon of water filled with chunks of glacier that break off from the full glacier.
It was surprisingly loud there. It wasn't like this still, peaceful lagoon. The current tugged and pushed the chunks of ice back and forth and they crackled as they bumper car-ed against each other. There were seals bobbing up and down and barking loudly and there were bird perched on strips of ice squawking.
It was still so cool though. It was a little more secluded from the wind, so it was not as cold as Diamond Beach. Shaynie and I went for a hike along the shore. Some enthusiastic Spaniards took photos of us. We climbed up the hill and had a peaceful vantage point over the lagoon.
As like much of Iceland, there were crazy strongly worded warnings about how this beautiful lagoon could kill you.
"You Only Survive Few Minutes"
We tried our best to be careful, but like always, tried to push our limits.
Californian Encounters Ice for First Time
We then started heading back west, back towards the North American plate and back towards Vik. Along the way, just off the side of the road, we saw this huge twisted piece of graffitied metal with some picnic tables nearby. We decided to stop and check it out.
Known as the Skeiðará Bridge Monument, it is a piece of a long metal bridge that got slammed and warped and flung miles downstream by a volcanic eruption and subsequent flood in 1996. Just another friendly Icelandic reminder of how extraordinarily powerful nature is.
We met two German dudes there and raced them to the top (Shaynie won). It was incredibly slippery and hard to climb in clunky snow boots. And then we slid down the steep pieces of metal like a slide.
On the other side of the road from the bridge is Vatnajökull, an ice cap that casually covers 8% of the country.
We continued on our way along the Ring Road (sans volcanic eruptions and glacial floods) to Vik. In Vik there is a tiny white church with a red roof on a hill. It's perched overlooking the tiny town and the greyblack sea.
More golden moss and snow patched peaks above Vik
Just on the other side of the giant rock wall behind Vik is Reynisfjara Black Sand Beach.
Here is us sitting in our car in the parking lot working up the motivation to face the cold
We parked and had a short walk down to the beach. There are some very aggressive warnings here too.
Bonus! Photo evidence of a tourist getting knocked out by the waves (I'm pretty sure she survived)
The beach had black lava sand and stunning beige basalt columns. There were jagged rocks jutting out of the grey sea and grey waves rushing rapidly up the black shore. The damp black sand, rumbling grey sea, and misty light grey formed a gradient. The greyscale was stunning and ominous, but it still reminded me of that Conan Visits Intel video: "I think the grey works very nicely with the grey, which works well with the greyish blue."
And the beach was packed with tourists.
Vik is the southernmost town in Iceland and, according to Wikipedia, there is no land between here and Antarctica if you go in a straight line. There is nothing but ocean for over 10,000 miles, which, hoo boy, if you want to feel small and vulnerable, stand at the edge of the beach facing south and think about this.
My back is to Antarctica. Also, did I mention it's freezing in Iceland?
We hiked back and got back on the road. It was a short twenty minute drive west from Vik to where we were staying that night. We were driving along, looking for the turn off for our hostel.
"Oh my God, I think that's Skogafoss!" I pressed my finger on the window in the passenger seat and pointed. Skogafoss, an iconic waterfall, was the main thing we wanted to see the next day.
"I think that's the turn off for our hostel," Shaynie said. "No way," I replied, and kept repeating as we drove along the path to the small, flat building located between us and the waterfall.
Shaynie managed to accidentally book us a hostel right next to the most famous waterfall in all of Iceland.
We ate our breakfast the next morning while looking out at Skogafoss. It was so peaceful. First of all, have I mentioned how much I love breakfast and coffee? Second, we could see this giant waterfall while we ate quietly and there were these birds just floating back and forth over the cliff. It was amazing.
We walked over after breakfast. Before going to the base of the waterfall, we decided to hike up the hundreds of steps to the top. It's amazing, the water is not deep at all, it's very thin, and it rushes over a wide chunk of flat slate rock. We just watched the water for awhile.
Then we hiked back down the stairs and explored the base of the enormous waterfall.
So, Shaynie and I have always gotten along well because we are both 'yes people' and we kind of egg each other on, a dangerous combination.
"Let's get closer," I kept suggesting.
I cannot emphasize enough how soaked we got. We would have been equally soaked had we swam in the pool and stood directly under the waterfall (which might have killed us given the force, we discussed morbidly later). We soaked ourselves all the way through, through our waterproof jackets, through both pairs of leggings, through every layer of clothing we were wearing, all the way through our waterproof boots. My feet were literally sloshing around the tiny pools of water inside my boots. (That might have been because I got too close to the pool of water at the bottom of the waterfall and slipped on a rock and partially fell in the pool.)
Remember how my 'waterproof' jacket used to be purple?
We walked back to the car, turned our boots upside down to dump out the water, and got back on the road. We had time for one more stop, which we found by simply typing in 'sights' into google maps, which dropped pins at nearby locations. We picked a pin dropped at a hot springs in between Skogafoss and our hotel for that night. A few miles up the road, we turned off the ring road on to a gravelly nondescript exit.
It was beautiful. As is often the case in travel, the unexpected and unplanned places were often the coolest and best surprises. We hiked along a bright copper blue river slicing through a narrow valley between two steep mountains. The mountains were covered in that distinct Icelandic golden brown moss and the peaks were patched with snow.
Selljavallalaug!
We set our stuff down next to the edge of the short concrete wall. We took a few deep breaths in preparation. As quickly as we could, we peeled off our wet leggings and multiple undershirts until we were standing barefoot and in our bathing suits. And it wasn't too bad to be honest. Hiking to there wearing wet clothes in the ripping wind had been colder. We took a few instagramy photos sitting on the edge of the cement wall, shivering, until we slipped into the green-black water. It was lukewarm.
At one end the water was about shoulder deep, so we stood on our tip toes to keep our head above water. At the other end, we had to tread water, but it was warmer because it was closer to the source of the geothermic water runoff that filled the pool. It also was better to tread, I found, because the bottom of the pool was covered in a thick layer of slime that squidged between your toes. I tried not to put my face in or get any water in my mouth.
The water was fed into the pool by a pipe at the far end. We clung to the wall at the other end to be near the hottest water. The water also dripped in from the rocks on the side. We sat on the sharp rocks for a bit to be near that warm water.
We swam up and down and splashed around. It was so relaxing. Floating in the warm water, breathing the cool clean air, and being surrounded 360 degrees of snow covered golden mountains and grey skies. It was relatively quiet in the pool too, despite being mostly filled with foreigners. There was an English couple, a few separate families from Spain, Japan, and the U.S., and a pair of Swedish friends.
Eventually we were shivering in the pool. Despite it being fed by volcano water, it really wasn't that warm. It was harder getting out, and putting on wet clothes over wet bodies is not very comfortable, but we did the best we could. We hiked back to the car, stepping on rocks to cross shallow but wide streams. We hiked alongside a crumbling rock cliff face.
We drove one hour to our last stop, a little town of 7,000 right off the ring road, about 50 minutes outside of Reykjavik.
Our last night in Selfoss was an incredibly pleasant surprise. Selfoss was a very lovely town and the guesthouse we stayed at was very modern and clean. We immediately put our boots under the radiator and took hot showers to get the pool slime and sulfur off of us.
Most homes in Iceland had these little greenhouses for patio furniture, I assume so people can sit outside even in the winter. This was the one at our guesthouse.
We enjoyed walking around in the drizzly evening in Selfoss, me wearing Shaynie's spare running shoes. Oh my God, there is nothing nicer than having warm toes. We splurged on dinner for our last night. We got pizza and wine and split cake for dessert from a cute local restaurant.
We then climbed into bed after one last attempt to see the Northern Lights again, but it was too overcast. We watched some Danish TV show and tried to guess the plot and then the Russell Howard stand up special on Netflix and we almost peed ourselves laughing.
Our last morning we walked around the drizzly, grey town to a tiny bookstore cafe. It was adorable. The owner was engaging and interesting, and the coffee was the delicious European kind, made with real cream and care.
We shopped around the used books in various languages. Shaynie bought some records. We finally got in the car and headed to the airport.
I have this condition colloquially called 'chronic rain dome'. This essentially means that wherever I go, there is no rain. I am the harbinger of drought. Despite being April in Iceland, at the 66th latitude, despite it being balls cold, there was incredibly pleasant weather all week. For a country known for it's unpredictable, sudden extreme weather events, the worst we saw was a vaguely overcast sky. Until the last day, luckily.
It had been drizzly in Selfoss, but not prohibitively. We were going to stop along the way to the airport at some other sights, but when the rain started coming down it did not stop. It poured. The fog was thick and visibility was only a few feet. Thank goodness the conditions of the road were so good. We decided to just go straight to the airport.
It always piles up at the end. We were tired, hungry, our flight was delayed four hours. Despite all of this, we hung out pretty relaxed and quietly (although exhausted) awaiting our flight. And then, Wow upgraded us to business class. We watched Mamma Mia and ate the copious amounts of chocolate we had bought and slept in our extra wide and cushy seats.
I was very surprised to find that Iceland was a very relaxing trip. Even though we were gone less than a week, slept in a different place every night, and drove over 1,000 kilometers in a tiny car, I never felt rushed or stressed. It was calming, and beautiful, and awe inspiring. Listening to Sigur Rós and Arcade Fire driving along the ring road, surrounded by 360 degrees of awe inspiring nature was so relaxing and peaceful. And it doesn't hurt when you have kick ass travel buddies.
