ICELAND

GSDY-Score:

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

We started our journey through Iceland on 18th of July 2018, going from Vienna to Frankfurt and further on to Keflavík by plane. For the first time ever, we had booked our flight in Business Class, because - and that's no joke - it was the cheapest flight available. To be honest, I wish we could start every vacation by sitting in that Business Class Lounge, where you can eat and drink as much of the finest stuff out there as you want for free. I think there's no way of travelling in a more relaxing way. Since our arrival was so recreating, we were sure this was going to be a fantastic trip - and we got exactly what we expected. We landed at Keflavík International Airport at 11:30 pm and tried to figure out where we would get our rental car, which we were able to pick  up after calling the company.

Whilst  there isn't really a difference between "daytime" and "nighttime" because, well, it just doesn't get dark near the arctic circle during the summer months, we started our first day after a short night by getting into our beloved rental car and heading to Thingvellir (Þingvellir), which is a historic national park in southern Iceland. This was the first time we really encountered the beauty of Iceland's landscapes, because honestly - the scenery between Keflavík International Airport and Selfoss is pretty boring. Directly at the Thingvellir national park there is the Silfra fissure, a rift caused by two tectonic plates (North American and Eurasian) which are diverging. The rift is filled with extremely clear freshwater so that there's really clear sight far down the riff. Actually, it is possible to go snorkeling or diving there, but we missed that because we had a lot more planned for our first day. 

As breathtaking the "Strokkur" (ha, now you know!) and the area around it might be, we had to go on. Up next on our list there was the "Gullfoss", probably the most famous waterfall in Iceland. This is the perfect opportunity to explain something about the Icelandic language: "foss" means "waterfall" and usually the part before "foss" is the name of the city near the "foss". Okay, that's not true in this case, because "Gull" means "golden", but it is true for 90% of all the other waterfalls. "Gull", by the way, isn't pronounced like "Gull", but like "Gutl", because "ll" is pronounced "tl" in the Icelandic language. Simple as that. Actually, we're pretty proud of the pictures we made of Gullfoss, because we somehow managed to make it look like there weren't thousands of people there.

On our second day in Iceland we had a very relaxing experience, which was really nice after we hiked for miles and miles on our first day. Also the weather wasn't too great, so the famous "Blue Lagoon" (Bláa Lónið) was the place to be on this day. Luckily we had booked our tickets before, so we were able to get in pretty fast - passing a lot of people in line for daily tickets. I have to admit that admission for the Blue Lagoon isn't actually cheap. We payed about €80,- to spend half a day there, but honestly, is there anything more famous in Iceland than THIS? We especially liked the limited admittance, which results in it not being too crowded. A special highlight was the bar where you can order drinks while bathing - unfortunately there's a limit of three beers per person. They obviously don't know Austrians. 

We started our third day by sitting in our crappy Suzuki Jimny rental car for 5 hours and we really hated it. Well, we hated it until we reached our destination: Jökulsárlón. Again this is pretty easy: "Jökull" is translated to "Glacier" (but don't forget the "ll"-"tl"-thing), "á" is translated to "River" and "lón" is translated to "Lagoon", so this basically means "glacial river lagoon" and it's pretty much exactly what it's called. It's just more exciting than its name. Much more exciting. Let me try to explain it: There's a glacier, which is actually the biggest one in Europe. Oh, and there's a lake. And there are icebergs in this lake. And these icebergs consist of very old ice, which is falling off the glacier from time to time. Did I tell you about the river? Yes, there's a river too, a pretty small river, but it's connecting the lake and the ocean.

The fourth day of our journey took us to an island. Yeah, Iceland is an island itself, but there are smaller islands which belong to the bigger island named Iceland. This  island is a part of a group of islands which are a part of the island which is Iceland and they are called "Vestmannaeyjar", which translates to "Westman Islands". Actually, this particular island which is a part of Iceland's "Westman Islands" is called "Heimaey" and it's the biggest and most populated island of Iceland's "Westman Islands". The island is connected to Iceland by a ferry and an airport, but none of this is relevant when it comes to the interestingness of this island! Actually, this beautiful place has a dark history which, again, is mainly affected by destruction. In 1973 the "Eldfell", a volcano on that island, erupted and covered a huge part of the island with volcanic ash and lava - it even made the island grow, because lava ran into the ocean, hardened and became land. Nowadays it is possible to hike up on the Eldfell volcano, and of course we did that. The really unbelievable part about hiking on a volcano which erupted in 1973 is that you're still able to feel the heat of the volcanic eruption by putting your hand into one of the little holes on that mountain. Just think about it, 45 years ago that volcano erupted and it is still possible to feel the heat of that eruption. For us, this was more than crazy. 

Day number five again started with a pretty long drive for us, followed by a hike for about 4 kilometres, until we reached the pretty famous "Plane Crash Site" near Sólheimasandur. Again, this is one of the sights you might have seen on social media before, but being there yourself is something really different. The story behind the plane wreck just standing there in the middle of nowhere isn't actually too bad: In 1973 a United States Navy DC Plane had to land there due to an iced carburetor (some sources say it ran out of fuel, but that seems to be false), but landing there didn't really went according to plan. Fortunately, everyone in that plane survived the accident. Due to the fact that they crashed pretty far away of any road or other infrastructure, the US just rescued the important parts of the airplane like the engines and the computer systems. The rest of the plane still stands there, in the middle of nowhere, being one of the most dramatic photography spots ever. Unfortunately a lot of tourists think it's a great idea to write their names or other very important stuff on the wreck, so basically they are destroying it for people visiting it in the future. Great job, Kevin. Anyway, after walking back to our car, which took us about one hour, we headed to our next destination: We wanted to get as close to the "Vatnajökull", which is the biggest glacier in Iceland. 

The next day we first went a little back in time: we visited Stöng, the remains of a farmhouse of Vikings, which was covered by volcanic ash in the year 1104. The foundation of this historic building was uncovered by archaeologists in 1939 and in 1957 a shack was built to cover the remains from the elements. We also visited the reconstruction of this building which is located only 7 kilometres from Stöng and is called "Stöng Commonwealth Farm" (Þjóðveldisbærinn). The admission fee for the reconstructed farm is 1.500 ISK per person, but it's more like a museum with tons of multi-lingual informative leaflets included. We really liked this experience and learned a lot about the Viking's life there, definitely worth a visit! 

That's actually something I really want to point out: When in Iceland, take care of the environment! I am truly worried about the way a lot of tourists are treating nature, and so is Iceland's government. The grass and moss is really fragile in Iceland, due to the fact that environmental factors are harsh and plants are only able to grow during a short period every year, which means that all the plants need many years to recover after being marred by humans. At some sights there are footprints visible in moss which were caused by tourists decades ago! Luckily, Gjáin is still pretty spared from harm and so is the "Háifoss", which is Iceland's second, third or fourth highest waterfall - that depends on where you look it up. We went there by car, starting from Gjáin and just following the road next to the river which flows through Gjáin. This was actually the first time we were a little happy that our car had four-wheel-drive. Okay, we didn't actually use the 4x4, but the extra ground clearance came in pretty handy on that road. Needless to say, our spines weren't too happy about us sitting in that Suzuki, erm, car-thing on that bumpy track. After straightening up our backs at arrival, we encountered the amazing "Háifoss", where water is going down a height of astonishing 122 metres. By the way, we think that it's the third highest waterfall in Iceland, but we're not sure about that. 

This day was the last day in Iceland for Martina's parents, her sister and her sister's husband who were with us (or had we been with them?) for this time. Since they had to leave early in the morning and Martina and I were starting our camping trip the next day, we wanted to explore all of Reykjavik together. First we went to the Hard Rock Café for a small beer, for which we only payed €12,-. Next up was the "Settlement Exhibition" (Landnámssýningin, good luck pronouncing this one), where there are remains of Viking's houses displayed too. Actually, archaeologists learned a lot about the first people that were living in Iceland by these remains. After that, we went to the oldest house in Reykjavik, mostly because the access to this one is included in the admission fee we payed for the settlement exhibition. Now we thought it would be a great opportunity for some souvenir shopping, but only passing by we spotted the "Icelandic Punk Museum" (Pönksafn), which is located in a former public toilet right in the center of Reykjavik. Of course we had to take a look in there. The whole story of Punk music in Iceland is displayed there, starting around 1900 and leading to modern days. Actually, the owners of this museum must be really anti-capitalistic Punks - the admission fee of about 1.000 ISK can be payed cash or by credit card. 

Our first day traveling alone! We got up pretty early in the morning because we had to go from Selfoss to Keflavík to return our lovely Suzuki Jimny, which we exchanged to a Mitsubishi L200 4x4 Camper. On our way to the rental car station in Keflavík, I got pulled over by the police who insisted that I was going 133 km/h while only 90 km/h are allowed (yeah, 90 km/h is the fastest you can go in Iceland...). Fortunately I didn't get a fine, because I was able to convince the policemen that our Suzuki Jimny wouldn't even make 133 km/h when it's falling down a cliff. They realized that there was an issue with their radar unit and let me go, so I was able to pick up our camper. We were so happy that the camper was in a very good condition, it was almost new and only had about 7.000 kilometres on it. The only thing that was missing was the license plate up front, but the guy at the rental company told us that it is fine as long there is one on the back of the car, so we trusted him. As soon as we got the camper, we headed north. Our first stop was at Hellnar, a little village with beautiful sights in the Snaefellsnes area. Next, we watched some seals near Hellisandur before we went on to Stykkishólmur, which is a port with a nice view on the little islands located in the Breiðafjörður. After looking for a campsite for a really long time, we finally set up our bed near Búðardalur.

Following our photoshoot, we stopped at Rauðisandur beach, which sometimes is called Rauðasandur beach and is pretty much what it's called. The name translates to "Red Sand Beach", so basically, it is a beach with red sand. After seeing beaches with black sand only (which is pretty extraordinary too), visiting a beach with red sand definitely was something new for us. Just don't think that it's an ordinary beach - the sea is way too cold to take a bath. Next to this beach we reached our first "checkpoint" on our not-so-well-planned tour, the "Westernmost point of Iceland and in Europe", called Latrabjarg. It is a cliff at a staggering length of 14 kilometres and 441 metres height. The main reason people go there is: Puffins. Puffins are those little clumsy birds I wrote about before, and there are many of them at Latrabjarg. When we were finished with observing Puffins, we went back the winding and steep gravel road which is the only way to and from Iceland's westernmost point, and we stopped once again at Garðar BA 64, the ruin of the oldest steel ship in Iceland. It was built in Norway in 1912 and beached in Iceland in 1981. Since this ship was used for whale fishing, we were pretty delighted that it is out of use since then. For our second night in our camper we chose to stay at an official campsite in Tálknafjörður, mainly because we really needed a shower.

The only really crowded place in the west fjords was the "Dynjandi" waterfall, which was pretty surprising for us after not meeting any groups of tourists for 2 days. As we came down the road to Dynjandi, we spotted the parking lot there and saw that there were many cars and buses. Nonetheless, Dynjandi is once again an impressive spectacle of nature. It's about 100 metres high and its width varies from 30 metres at the top to about 60 metres at the bottom. On the hike from the parking lot to Dynjandi we passed many little waterfalls which are very beautiful too. Due to the fact that it was so crowded there we didn't spend a lot of time there and continued our trip through the west fjords, heading to northern Iceland. After Dynjandi, we found a cute little coffee shop in a village near Ísafjarðarbær, where we stopped and had a cup of coffee. The village basically consisted of three little houses (one of it being the coffee shop), a museum and a church. There are churches in every village in Iceland. The rule seems to be something like: If there are more than two houses, it's a village and it needs a church. With 350 ISK (about €2,80), we got our cheapest coffee in Iceland there. Oh, and there's a thing with the coffee in Iceland: Usually there's always free refill if you go with a regular coffee, at least it was everywhere we had coffee. That's actually good to know, due to the high prices there!

Day number twelve started by desperately looking for coffee in the morning. All the villages in the west fjords are pretty small and coffee shops rather rare, but we found one in Sauðárkrókur, which was actually a bakery with lots of fine pastry too. After having 5 or 6 coffees (that's where the "free refill-thing" comes in handy) we headed north, had to go through a tunnel which was, like all the bridges, only wide enough for one car, which was pretty frightening to be honest, we reached Siglufjörður. Siglufjörður is Iceland's northernmost city and used to be the capital of herring fishery but they somehow managed to overfish the sea so that there weren't any herrings anymore. Nowadays, the facilities of these glorious times are museums, but we didn't go in there, because well, herrings aren't too interesting.

So we pretty soon got back to our car and headed towards our final destination for that day. Not that we didn't know about the masses of tourists all over Iceland, but we still were a little overwhelmed by how many there really are at some places. As we went to Skútustaðir, which is located in the Mývatn-area, the weather got a bit better and we were able to enjoy our first glances on the gorgeous lake before we went to the campsite to stay overnight. This is the right time for some facts about the area we now were in: Mývatn translates to "Mosquito Lake" and the name says it all. There are lots of different kinds of mosquitos in this area and there's even a species which only exists at this particular lake. All our efforts to exterminate these little flying bastards failed, so we had to coexist with them. The good thing about these mosquitos is that they form an attractive food supply for birds and ducks, and due to the diversity of bird species about half the lake is declared a bird protection area. Also the whole area is very volcanically active, which isn't the case for the west fjords. There are hot springs, lava fields, steaming rocks and holes as well as craters and grottos all around the lake. The whole area is a part of a volcanic system called "Krafla", which extends about 100 kilometres north to south with a width of about 10 kilometres in northern Iceland and is about 200.000 years old.

There's one more special thing on the way to the Viti crater and the lava fields: A shower. Whilst showers aren't anything unusual for most of us, this one definitely is - because it's just standing there outside, next to the road and continuously running on hot geothermal water. We've been told that this shower is often used by people who are traveling through Iceland by bike or on foot. Of course we stopped there to check the temperature of the water before we moved on to "Grjotagjá", a small cave with a lake  inside. The water in there is warm too and it was possible to take a bath in there years before, but the temperature has risen since 1975 and now bathing is prohibited. I'd say sadly it is prohibited, I think this would be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. After visiting Grjotagjá, we went on to Hverfjall, which is another crater but this one wasn't created by a volcanic eruption. The Hverfjall was created by a gas explosion which was caused by magna colliding with water below the ground about 2.500 years ago. The crater has a diameter of about one kilometre, is up to 150 metres deep and is shaped almost like a perfect circle. We hiked up the crater and walked all around it, which gave us a very nice view over the Mývatn-area. One thing that blew my mind was that the explosion sent an incredible amount of debris up in the air: 250.000.000 cubic metres of stone!

As our vacation was slowly coming to an end, we headed back south on our fourteenth day because of course we had to catch our flight back home from Keflavík. We chose to take a gravel road through Iceland's highland to go back to where we started two weeks before. There are only two of these roads through the country's center, the F35 and the F26 - we took the F35 which is located a little more east and after all the horror stories we heard about these highland-F-roads, we were a little afraid that our car won't make it. The sign which said something like "Only 4x4 jeeps are allowed to drive in the highland, no 4x4 or two-wheel-drive passenger cars! Note that driving in the highland can be dangerous!" did not really help us to feel better about it, but still we decided to go on. And then it happened: Nothing. The scary 4x4-jeeps-only-dangerous-highland-gravel-road turned out to be more like a highway through the highland and could easily be used by usual passenger cars. Honestly, some of the gravel roads in the west fjords were much worse than this one. Anyway, after driving on F35 for some kilometres, we reached Hveravellir, a geothermal area between two glaciers, Langjökull and Hofsjökull. Hveravellir is a really interesting place, especially because the landscape along  F35 is actually pretty monotonous since it mainly consists of red or black gravel. 

Our plan for our fifteenth day actually was just to continue our trip to the south of Iceland, but then we read something on the internet about a sight which wasn't too far from where we were and is said to be not really well-known by tourists: Kerlingarfjöll. Since we had more than enough time left we decided to check this one out, so we left the F35 and continued on the F347. At this point we were asking ourselves what kind of sight there could possibly be, because the road was getting worse with every metre, the landscape surrounding us was totally dull and there wasn't any car going that way except for ours. After about 15 kilometres we reached the "Kerlingarfjöll Mountain Resort", which is something like a little hostel with a campsite next to it. Oh, and suddenly the scenery has completely changed: It became very fertile land with lots of grass and moss and a river coursing right next to the campsite. Due to the bad condition of the road the ride was pretty exhausting, so we stopped there to get some coffee at the hostel's restaurant. Actually, I think coffee was what we typed into Google and this hostel was what we found, with some hints that the area around it is a beautiful sight. So, thanks coffee and Google for getting us there. While we sipped our brown elixir of life we checked the information panels to find out more about this region.

Finally at the end of the "road" there was a parking lot. We parked our car, stepped out and found ourselves at the most impressive spot in Iceland. Seriously, we both never had seen such beauty before. The variety of colors and landscapes is simply overwhelming. The region is constrained by a glacier on one side (I think it's the Hofsjökull) where the hiking trail ends - and we finally were able to step foot on a glacier. The territory mainly consists of loamy ground, but there's also a lot of moss, especially where the steam of all the hot springs hits the soil. Through the whole area there are numerous brooks, with some of them running hot, some of them running cold water. Overall, simply a breathtaking experience, which makes one human being feel pretty minor!

We chose to spend our sixteenth and therefore last day once again in Reykjavik. At first we went to "Saga Museum", which is all about Iceland's history and actually quite interesting. Some of the stories displayed (and told by an audio guide) are rather weird, but since "Saga" can be translated to "history" as well as to "tale", I'm not quite sure about the substance... After finishing the exhibition there are some properties from the Viking age for visitors to put on, which is pretty fun - yeah, you can look like the one from "Game of Thrones"... Because sword fighting made us feel hungry, we went to the Hard Rock Café once more. I traditionally go with the "Local Legendary Burger" in every Hard Rock Café I'm visiting and so I did this time. But to be honest, it was not even close to being as good as the "Animal Party"-burger in Akureyri. Of course I have to admit that "Hamborgarafabrikkan" has set the bar very high and it will be hard for any burger in the future to reach that level. Being pigged out, we went on to some souvenir shopping in the streets of Reykjavik. I bought a book called "The bright side of Iceland / The dark side of Iceland" in a little book store to have something to read while I'm on the flight home and I love this one! Actually I think it's hilarious to read it after being to Iceland, so don't just order it on Amazon now. Martina then found the probably weirdest shop in Reykjavik: Jólahúsið.

We had an amazing time in Iceland and both of us fell in love with this country. We spent 16 days there and we would have loved to stay even longer. We travelled 4926 kilometres by car and hiked 198 kilometres to discover all of the incredible places, and still we haven't nearly seen all of them. We tried to treat this unbelievable place in an appropriate way and we were really shocked by the number of tourists not doing so. We took an oath and we sticked to the Icelandic pledge. Very few words can do this kind of nature justice, so we won't say more.