The next morning we headed for the Barnafoss waterfall. This is well worth the 40 kilometer detour, (one way). Tam says that this is one of her favorite waterfalls, (out of thousands in Iceland). What makes this one so special is that the river is forced through a small gorge in the volcanic rock field. The water is forced into small fissures in the rock, and the result is water being forced out of many places in the canyon walls. It is an extraordinary sight.
Backtrack time. We wound our way the 40 kilometers back to Varmaland, then took a right to head north once again on Highway 1. Feeling the need to stretch our legs, we stopped at the inactive volcano, Grabrok. They have a good trail to the top, with many wooden steps to help you get to the top. It didn’t kill us off, but riding in the car didn’t seem quite so bad anymore.
This seemed like a long day of driving. It was about 216 kilometers from Varmaland to Drangsnes. There are several routes to get there, but we took route 68. There was a nice gas station/cafe/store before the turn off. Our rule in rental cars is to never let the gas get below half, because you never know when you will find another gas station. The Westfjords were very scenic, but we did get tired of driving in, around and out of all of the fjords.
Drangsnes wasn’t exactly a busy town, but they did have a nice little campground. Take advantage of the free hot showers in Western Iceland, because in Eastern Iceland you have to pay for showers at the campgrounds. In the west, they have so many natural hot springs that they take the water, and pump it to the homes. They don’t have to heat their water! What a great idea.
The next day we wanted to drive around and explore the Westfjords. Here are a few driving tips. First, fill up with gas again. Holmavik has a good gas station, store and car wash. Go ahead and wash your car, it’s free, but of course you have to do the work. It just keeps things cleaner when you are camping. Now a word about the gravel roads. If you haven’t driven on gravel roads, don’t let them worry you, just slow down. The speed limit on gravel roads is usually 80 kph, (about 50 miles per hour). At times it seemed a little fast to us, so again, just slow down. Watch for people behind you that may want to pass, but that wasn’t much of an issue in the Westfjords.
One more word about driving. You do have to watch out for sheep. We were warned when we picked up our camper that if you hit a sheep, it will cost you 500 euros to pay the farmer, and then there is damage to the vehicle. The simple solution is that when you see sheep along the road, slow down! They do sometimes run out in front of you. Get your passengers to help point out sheep along the road.
After driving around the Westfjords for the day we headed to Hvammstangi to camp. Remember, distances are not great in Iceland, so a 200 kilometer drive will take less that three hours. We really enjoy taking photos, so we make a lot of stops. Again, don’t be afraid of the gravel roads. Just slow down to a speed where you are comfortable. Something else to remember when wandering the Westfjords, there aren’t a lot of restaurants or gas stations where you can stop to use the restroom, so try to take care of that before you travel. They prefer that you do not use Icelandic nature as your toilet.
Today we decided to really get off the beaten path and explore a little. That of course means more gravel roads. We headed north on Highway 711 from Hvammstangi, because we had heard that you could see seals along the coast. Well, we saw one seal, and we had to use the big telephoto lens to take this photo. There may have been more places to see seals, but we didn’t find them.
That doesn’t mean the ride was disappointing. We did come across this interesting corral.
Then we saw this huge rock bridge formation on the beach. You could climb down to the beach. They had a trail, but the trail had lots of warning signs. It was more adventurous than we felt we could do. Plus, if one or both of us had fallen, it might have been a long wait for rescue to arrive. This was a very desolate area. It was also very windy. I had some trouble putting my wind-breaker on over my jacket.
Eventually we found Highway 75, and headed to Glaumbaer. We wanted to see what a “turf house” was like, and this turf house museum was a really good example of what life was like in times long past.
Inside, after you pay, you are transported back in time. We enjoyed our visit.
The staff speaks English, and they are very knowledgeable. They answered all of the questions we could think of to ask. For Iceland, this was a long travel day for us. It was time to move on and find our way to the next campground at Dalvik.
Dalvik was a picturesque little fishing village. They had a great grocery store. In the evening we walked down to the dock and watch them unload the day’s catch from the fishing boats onto trucks. Not very exciting you may say, but it was peaceful and relaxing. (We weren’t the ones working with the fish.) Dalvik has a very nice campsite with good facilities. The hot water for showers was still free of charge.
Our next stop was going to be the town of Kopasker. On the way, we passed through the city of Akureyri, the second largest city in Iceland. Driving in the city was not difficult. The Glerartorg mall was right along the highway, so we stopped and did a little shopping. We also stopped at the Akureyri Tourist Information Center, in the Hof Cultural and Conference Center. The tourist information centers are always good to visit, if for no other reason to get some maps of the immediate area, and they generally have clean restrooms.
Continuing on Highway 1, in about 50 kilometers we stopped at the Godafoss Falls, one of the great waterfalls in Iceland. We parked on the side with the gas station, but walked across the bridge and viewed the waterfall from both sides of the river.
We headed off to the town of Kopasker for the night. Their campground seems fairly new, but the rain made it difficult to fix dinner, and breakfast the next morning. The “kitchen” area was outside, and it wasn’t enclosed, so it was cold, windy and wet. We left Kopasker, and headed north on the 870 Highway. We made a circle, and came back almost to Kopasker. For us, it really wasn’t worth the drive. Since we really enjoy the waterfalls, we headed south to the Selfoss. Remember, “foss” in Icelandic means waterfall.
Selfoss did not disappoint us. There was the big main waterfall you can walk to, but the water also spread out over a flat area on the other side looking for a place to flow down the side to join the main portion of the river. This created dozens of smaller waterfalls. It was very scenic! This was a long travel day. We ended the day in a town called Seydisfjordur. This was a good campground, with a small inside area for food preparation. The quiet town was wonderful for walking after a long day in the car. I said this town was “quiet”, and it is, except when a ferry has arrived from Denmark, or the Faroe Islands, but the town isn’t busy for long.
The next morning we were up bright and early heading to the town of Borgarfjordur Eystri. Actually, you drive right through the town until the end of the road. Our mission, we wanted to see Puffins! If you want to see Puffins, this is the place! The area wasn’t very large, but it was very well set up for tourists with lots of stairs and viewing platforms to get you up close and personal with the Puffins. At times, they were no more than four feet away, so everyone could get good photos. This was really one of our favorite stops in Iceland.
A couple of hundred photos later, we were back on the road. It was lunch time, and we decided we needed a break from driving, so we headed back to Seydisfjordur to take the afternoon off.
Like I said in the beginning of this blog, we didn’t have much planning time before we started this trip to Iceland, so the next day we did some backtracking. We decided to stop at the Dettifoss Waterfall, which is really the name for the other bank of the Selfoss Waterfall. If you can only visit one side, we would chose the Selfoss side.
This day was full of backtracking. We really wouldn’t recommend all of the backtracking, so plan your trip more carefully than we did this time. Backtrack, backtrack, backtrack…we drove to the Namafjall Hverir. Here they have hot springs, that boil up into bubbling mud pots. On a clear day there are lots of colors, but we weren’t there on a clear day. If you do much walking here, wear your boots. You will get muddy.
Time to look for a campground. We decided to go to Modrudalur Fjalladyrd. Backtrack, backtrack, backtrack… This campground was out in the middle of nowhere, but very quiet, calming and picturesque.
