I Was heading West across the north part of the Island. To be honest there wasn’t much to see up here. There was an option to do some rafting but the videos looked pretty calm and not worth the $300. I raced across to the town of Stykkishholmur on the Snaefellsjokull peninsula
The First stop was Raudfeldsgja Gorge.
You cound not go too far, but it was good to get out of the rain. Oh, did I mention it was raining! I continued on to hike along Arnarstapi. I was planning on hiking 3Km along a cliff wall but the rain was brutal and almost broke ankle on slick rocks so I turned back a bit early.
Djupalon Beach was pretty cool with the black sand. Would have been nice to sit and watch the waves but the wind was very strong. It was interesting to see all the rounded black stones and sand from the volcanic erosion
I skirted past the last couple attractions because you could not see more than 10 ft in front of you anyway. I ended in Stykkishólmur for the night. I was a short walk from the harbor and a nice seafood restaurant where I had a pasta full of mussels, fish and clams.
It was probably my best meal of the trip. I did not think I would taste a meal like that again anytime soon, but unfortunately I only had to wait about 4 hours before seeing that meal again in the bottom of my trashcan. I got food poisoning that night and was puking all night. This has been happening to me a bit more often of late and very frustrating as it can ruin the next 48 Hrs.
The next morning I headed out to my next stop in Borgarnes where they were kind enough to let me check in early. I slept the whole day and only went out for some pizza that evening.
On my back to Reykjavík I stopped for a short hike to Glymur falls. They are the highest falls in Iceland. I made it a short hike as I was still pretty weak from expelling most of the contents of my body the other night
I got into the city and dropped off my stuff at the AirBNB I had rented. The owner was still at work so I walked into town. It was packed with people. As I said. About 2/3 of people in Iceland live in Reykjavík. I had heard about these hot dogs on some travel show and decided to try one
They were terrible. What was I doing? I was recovering from food poisoning and now I am eating hot dogs from some food truck.
I was not feeling good, but I soldiered on and did the sites. I stopped at the famous church that is modeled after the basalt columns I had seen earlier on the trip
The building below was meant to look like fish scales and was cool to see when the Northern Lights shined on it. Of course it was raining again. So no chance of that. I am sure a buzz kill on the second half of this trip. I need to shorten them up a bit as I think the novelty wears off about day 7
All the restaurants changed into night clubs around 10pm and since that was not my scene on this trip I would head back to the place around then. I spent 3 days in the capital. I did get to see most of the museums and found those fascinating
One day I did head out to the “Golden Triangle”. It is three tourist sites near the capital that everyone hits. Most people on stop overs from transatlantic trips will come and rent a car and do the triangle. One stop was the Mid Atlantic Rift where new crust is being formed and moving apart on plates toward North America and the other to Europe. It is not anything cool like lava spewing forth. I also thought it might be one big trench kinda like the final scenes of Star Wars before he drops the Photon Torpedo, but it was spread out in little chucks.
The next stop was a geyser. The best part about this was watching people stand facing away from the geyser, holding up their phones trying to time the geyser with a perfect selfie. Ridiculous.
This guy had a drone for the event
Just a quiet afternoon out enjoying nature
The final stop was a waterfall.
It was cool, but I had seen some better ones along the trip. It was hard to get back to the city with only one main road covered with tourist buses and people in rental cars that were clueless what was going on.
Don’t let the last few days fool you, I did enjoy the trip, but if I had it over I would fly across to the East coast and then take 5 days driving back along the south loop. The best parts of the trips are the times when crowds are at a minimum and nature is in its full glory.
I would still choose Alberta over Iceland, but those glaciers in the lagoon may have been worth the trip alone.
Until Next Time
Darren
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