Final Iceland Installment - Days #8-11

Whoa, it has been a hot second since I've posted! Work got busy, we bought a new house to flip, decided to move into said flip, started working on said flip. September and October flew by! Sorry guys! Life happened! You all know how it goes, I'm sure. But, welcome to the final Iceland post!

Before I dive into the last couple days of Iceland, we need to talk about something. Before Iceland, I may have been the only adult that did not realize that lamb is just another name for baby sheep. While I don't particularly enjoy it, I have eaten lamb before. We bought sliced lamb at the grocery store to have on sandwiches during our trip. Somehow, I had never put two and two together to realize that when eating lamb I was, in fact, eating baby sheep. Early in our trip, a sudden thought occurred to me; Mary had a little lamb. Mary's lamb was a baby. LAMBS ARE BABY SHEEP! I'm not sure why this hit me so hard; probably because the thought of eating any kind of baby animal is horrifying to me. Regardless, I spent the remainder of the trip apologizing to every sheep I saw for eating it's baby relative. I'm not sure if you know or not, but there are lots of sheep in Iceland. I mean A LOT. I did a lot of apologizing. Corey still makes fun of me for it to this day and I have not eaten lamb since.

Now, lets talk about our last couple days in Iceland! Day #8 was a bit of a roller coaster! Our first stop was to another waterfall, Dettifoss, located about 1 3/4 hour from Myvatn. Dettifoss is known for it's power instead of it's beauty. It is the most powerful waterfall in Europe. Though it may not be as beautiful as some of the others we saw, it was still stunning. It sits 145 feet tall and 330 feet wide. Dettifoss is located in the Jökulsárgljúfur canyon and fed by a glacier river. The river is fed from the Vatnajokull glacier, which as I mentioned before, is the largest in Europe.

Dettifoss is accessible from both sides of the river, though there is no easy way to get from one side to the other while at the waterfall. During peak season (Summer/Fall), the waterfall has a flow rate of 14,125 cubic feet per second. While smaller than Niagara - for anyone who has been there - it is still impressive. The waterfall sends lots of mist up into the air. In clear weather you can see the mist for miles.

Fair warning to anyone considering visiting: getting to Dettifoss requires A LOT of dirt road driving. And few dirt roads are well maintained in Iceland. Be sure to take the drive SLOW and be careful of pot holes!

Our next stop was Selfoss, another waterfall located in the same canyon as Dettifoss. To get to Selfoss you hike past Dettifoss about 1km along the rocks. Selfoss is also accessible from both sides of the river. However, unlike Dettifoss, it is much easier to see Selfoss fully when viewing from the east side so I recommend planning accordingly.

My favorite part about Selfoss were the areas where small portions of the river flow over rock forming small waterfalls leading up to the main waterfall. Only 45 feet tall, this waterfall is much shorter that Dettifoss. However, it is wider than Dettifoss when all of the small falls leading up to it are included. You can also get up close and personal with Selfoss. You can walk right up next to the fall.

Located about 45 minutes down more dirt roads from the parking lot of Dettifoss is Asbyrgi Canyon, our next stop. Asbyrgi is a large horseshoe shaped canyon that was believed to be formed from massive flooding 8-10 million years ago. The canyon is 2.2 miles long, 1/2 mile wide, and surrounded by cliffs that are up to 330 feet tall.

Inside the canyon is a forest with a pond. Several hiking trails exist throughout the interior of the canyon, as well as around the rim. Most of the trails within the canyon are shorter while the rim trails are much longer. Unfortunately, we only had about an hour before we had to move on so we spent our time wandering the trails inside the canyon. Because it was early fall, all of the trees were yellow and orange, which was beautiful in contrast to the gray cliffs.

Next stop, whale watching! This was something I had been looking forward to a lot. I remember going whale watching as a kid and absolutely loving it. We had booked a tour out of the town of Husavik, known as the whale watching capital of Europe and I was super excited.

Husavik is a cute town of 2,300 residents. Several of the itineraries I made it had us spending a night there, though unfortunately that didn't work out in the final one. The town is known for fishing and whale watching. If we had more time I think we would have enjoyed checking out the town.

Looking back I should have known this trip wasn't going to be what I expected. All the signs pointed that way. When we arrived at 2:30pm to check-in we found out I had accidentally scheduled us for the 8am tour instead of the 3pm one, like I thought. At the time it seemed like good news when they told us the morning trip had been cancelled due to weather. In fact, all of their trips that day had been cancelled. They rescheduled all of them for the 3pm tour and were taking out a larger boat instead.

We were advised that if we had any tendency to get seasick, we shouldn't go. The water was rough due to the storms earlier that day. While I get carsick easily, I have never gotten seasick. I've been on small and large boats in small lakes, large lakes and the ocean and have never gotten seasick before. I was confident I'd be fine. Corey, however, has been seasick before. Since we had already paid for the trip, we decided to risk it and go anyway. I'm sure you can see where this is going.

We were told to dress warm, though they would give us jumpsuits to wear. I put on LOTS of layers. I think I had multiple pants and shirts on, as well as my winter jacket, gloves, and a hat. Once on board they gave us large green and black jumpsuits to wear to keep us warm and dry.

At first it didn't seam bad. The motion was more of a rolling than anything else. However, after an hour, the rolling started to get to me. By this time, one or two people had already gotten sick over the side of the boat, including Corey. Corey was one of the first to get sick. He got sick once and while he didn't feel good the rest of the trip, he didn't get sick again. I wasn't so lucky. During the first hour of the trip I overheated. I was sweating because of all the layers I had on. I had to unzip and remove the jacked part of the jumpsuit in order to cool down. Once at open sea, between the breeze, the spray from the waves crashing over the boat, and my now wet, sweaty clothes, I started to FREEZE. Add the rolling / motion sickness in and I was pretty miserable. I ended up getting sick over the boat multiple times before we got to where the whales were located (about 1 1/2 hours later). Thankfully, I was able to enjoy the whales a bit, but not nearly as much as I would have preferred.

By the time we were on the way back, I was so sick and shaking so bad from being cold that I had exhausted my body and could hardly keep my eyes open. At one point I had fallen asleep sitting up and the boat hit a wave. If Corey hadn't grabbed the back of my jumpsuit as my body flew towards the railing, I may have gone over board. Overall, it was not the fun, relaxing experience I thought it would be.

With all that being said, the whale watching itself was pretty awesome. We saw a couple different whales. They all spent time diving down and surfacing several times around the boat. We also got lucky and picked the right side of the boat and most of them surfaced right in front of us, and my sick self didn't even have to get up. While I myself wouldn't recommend the trip based on our experience, we did hear from others that in good weather and on a smaller boat the experience was amazing.

After we got off the boat we stopped at a coffee shop and got some hot beverages to help warm us up. I was still shaking from the cold! Then we headed to Akureyri, about 1 hour and 15 minutes from Husavik, where we would be staying for the night.

Akureyri is often considered the 'capital of the north'. With a population of 18,000, it is the largest town outside of the Reykjavik region. It was huge compared to all the other towns and villages we had been through since leaving Reykjavik. We checked into our lodging for the night and then walked around town hoping to check out a brewery or two. Akureyri was very cute. I could have easily spent more time here and even liked it better than Reykjavik.

At a brewery we ran into a woman from Louisville, Kentucky. Small world right?! We spent the evening drinking beer and swapping stories about our trip so far. She was staying in Iceland for several weeks and was towards the beginning of her travels. She was going around the country in the opposite direction as us, so she was heading to Husavik next while we were heading south towards the Snaefelfoss Peninsula. She had been up in the Westfjords earlier in her trip and was telling us how amazing it was. Unfortunately, that was the main regions we cut out of our trip because we would have lost a full day just driving to and from the region, something we couldn't afford on our tight itinerary. This woman told us something I somehow missed in my research; there is a daily ferry from Snaefelfoss Peninsula to the Westfjords! In total, we spent 4 1/2 hours driving on Day #8.

On Day #9 our first priority was looking into the ferry. While driving to the first stop of the day I made some calls and got us some ferry tickets for the next morning. This meant we had to now combine Day 09 and Day 10 itineraries.

Our first stop of the day was about 75 minutes from Akureyri. We stopped at Glaumbaer Farm Turf House. Originally everyone in Iceland lived in turf houses. Many still exist around Iceland today. It is believed a farm was originally developed at Glaumbaer in 874. As it sits today, there are 13 total structures that are part of the farm. The 'newest' structure on site was built in the late 1870s. The farm was occupied until 1947 when it was taken over by the National Museum of Iceland and declared a protected site. We did not pay the tour fee in order to go into all of the turf houses, but we did spend some time wandering around, poking our heads in, and exploring the grounds.

About 75 minutes from the turf houses was Kolugljufur Canyon, our second stop. This canyon is very close to the Ring Road and easily accessible but is often overlooked by tourists for some reason. There are several waterfalls in this canyon. The main one is named Kolufoss. The gorge is .6 miles wide and up to 37 miles long. Corey and I spent some time wandering around the gorge and checking out the different overlooks.

About 2 hours and 45 minutes away was our third stop, and our first stop on Snaefelfoss Peninsula. The cool thing about Snaefelfoss Peninsula is it is known for being a 'mini Iceland'. It has all the cool things about Iceland in one small peninsula; mountains, volcanoes, waterfalls, beaches, historic buildings, etc. The little black church, known as Búðir Church is located in the tiny town of Búðir. The only other structure in this town is a small hotel.

The original hotel was built in 1703 and the church standing today was built in 1987. The church sits in a lava field with a historic cemetery. Throughout the cemetery are relics from the original church. Behind the church is the coast. We wandered the site for a bit and then headed down to the beach to stretch our legs and have a picnic lunch.

Next up was Arnarstapi. During the 15th and 16th centuries, Arnarstapi was an important trading post and was actually much larger in size than it is today. Now, with the economy depending on tourism more than fishing and trading, it has developed into a small and quaint town. An old ancient tale talks of a half-human, half-ogre who once lived in the area. He has been guarding the site in spirit since his death. A sculpture is one of the most recognizable images of the town. It stands guard at the entrance to the beach. The beach is beautiful and characterized by basalt columns and grottoes and lava formations.

Our final stop of the day was Kirkufell Mountain and Kirkjufellsfoss waterfall. Kirkufell is believed to be one of the most beautiful mountains in Iceland. The mountain stands 1519 feet tall. Nearby the mountain is Kirkufell waterfall. Together the waterfall and mountain make up the most popular photography spot in Iceland. As can be expected, the area was packed. Both were beautiful, but in my opinion the shear amount of people took away from the natural beauty of the area. One of the most popular photos of this area you may see is one at night with the northern lights in the background.

As far as I know there is no trail to the top of the mountain, but there is a short trail around the waterfall with a bridge at the top. Overall the waterfall has two drops and is not overly impressive when compared to the other waterfalls in Iceland. The nice view comes when the mountain is viewed in the background of the waterfall. It was difficult to get a photograph without a ton of people in it, but we managed to get a couple good ones!

After checking out the mountain and waterfall we spent some time driving around the peninsula and checking out the town of Hellnar, where we were staying for the night. Once we made our way to our lodging, a small two bedroom apartment, we settled in for the night.

This night was the closest we came to seeing the Northern Lights. Around 10pm I wandered outside to check the sky, like I did most nights. The sky was relatively cloudy and seemed to be glowing a little green, but I didn't see anything that would lead me to believe it was the Northern Lights. I went back inside soon after we went to sleep.

Upon waking the next morning we found a message, from 11pm the night before, from our AirBnB host letting us know the Northern Lights were out. The message had to have come about 5 minutes after we fell asleep. While I was super disappointed we didn't see the Northern Lights, I was also very excited we were going to get to check out the Westfjords after all!

Day #10 may have been my favorite day of the entire trip. If not my favorite, then definitely in the top 3. Thanks to our new friend telling us about the ferry, we started the day off with a 2 hour ferry ride from Snaefelfoss Peninsula to the Westfjords. The Westfjords are a mountainous region in northeast Iceland that is sparsely populated and absolutely stunning. The ferry itself was not overly exciting. There was a small café where you could get drinks/snacks. To be honest, I slept through most of the ferry ride.

We didn't really have much of a plan for the day as it had not been part of our original itinerary. The goal was to see as much as we could before making the 4+ hour drive drive to our lodging for the night, which would put us back on track with our planned itinerary. While we didn't have a lot of information on the region, I did have couple of items on my list of things to do that were in the region.

The main thing we both wanted to see was the Dynjandi Waterfall. Turns out this was the waterfall Corey had been looking forward to the most. I think it is safe to say it ended up being our favorite waterfall as well.

The Dynjandi Waterfall is the largest waterfall in the Westfjords and is nicknamed 'The Jewel of the Westfjords'. The nickname is fitting as this waterfall is stunning. The waterfall drops a total of 325 feet. It is 100 feet at the top and widens to 200 feet at the bottom. To get an idea of just how big this waterfall is, take a look at the photo below. You can see Corey standing on some rocks.

It is a short, but sometimes steep (and slippery) hike to get close to the waterfall. And man can you get close! If you climb up the rocks you can get right next to the waterfall! There are also 6 additional smaller falls on the walk from the parking lot to the highest point of the trail.

Dynjandi means 'thunderous' in Icelandic and it is clear why the waterfall holds that name. You can hear the thundering of water from quite the distance away. This spot was the most touristy spot of Day #10, but since the Westfjords are a more remote location within Iceland, even though it was the largest crowd we saw of the day, it wasn't bad overall.

It is pretty well known that Iceland roads aren't great. With the exception of the Ring Road, many, if not most, roads are not paved. I can definitely say the worst roads we experienced were in the Westfjords. Given that all of the region is mountainous, there was a lot of going up and down on very steep dirt roads with no guardrails or protection. One time we hit a pot hole and the tires slid and for a brief second I pictured us driving off the side of the cliff for a split second before the tires caught traction again. The driving was definitely not for the faint of heart, but as long as you went slow and paid attention to the road it was totally doable.

It was nice to have gotten the most anticipated stop out of the way first, as it allowed us to take the rest of the day easy. Our next stop was the Gardar BA64 Shipwreck. This ship is thought to be the oldest steel ships in Iceland. The ship originated from Norway in 1912 as a whaling ship. It was equipped with both sails and an engine. Something that was, at the time it was built, considered to be state-of-the-art. The hull of the ship was specially reinforced so it could easily, and safely, sale through the icy waters of the Southern Seas.

The ship had several owners in it's lifetime and was sold to Iceland, after World War II, to be a fishing vessel. In 1982 when the ship was deemed to be at the end of it's life, instead of sinking the ship at sea (which is apparently common ???) the ship was rammed ashore, where it has sat ever since.

Corey and I were the only people at the wreck for most of our visit. Since it had turned into a gorgeous day and the sun was shining, we decided to picnic at the shipwreck for lunch. My one comment would be that the picnic table placement was poor. There were a couple angles of the ship you couldn't get photos of unless you wanted picnic tables in the photo (see the first image above).

Next up was Raudisandur Beach, also known as the Red Sands Beach. Most beaches in Iceland have black sand, so a red sand beach is a sight to see. The colors of this beach shift and change between red, brown, and yellow, depending on the lighting, weather, and tide. In order to see the red sands at their best, it is important to visit on a day that is sunny and while it is low tide. The dryer the sand, the more red they appear. Unfortunately was wet while we were there and we did not get to see much of the vibrant red you see in some pictures. The site is still beautiful with the green grass and mountains in the background. There is a quaint black church nearby as well.

Iceland is known for it's natural hot springs. As discussed in an earlier post, throughout Iceland there are large man made pools heated by hot spring water, such as Myvatn and Blue Lagoon. It is also possible to find natural pockets of water heated by hot springs. Some are more popular than others. One of these natural pools is called Hellalaug. Located right off the highway in the Westfjords, this was the perfect final stop to relax and unwind before making the trek South.

This hot spring was not as easy to find as we anticipated. The location that popped up on google maps was not where the hot spring was. It took a couple wrong turns and a bit of off-roading, but eventually we found a parking lot off the highway with a path that led down to the hot spring.

There are no facilities around this 'pool' so we did have to change into our bathingsuits in the car before walking down to the hot spring. The best part about this hot spring was it's proximity to the coast. While sitting in the hot spring you could gaze out over the ocean.

This particular hot spring was not all that large and there were other people there at the same time as us, but I do not think it detracted from the experience at all. In fact, I loved talking to people we met along the way and hearing their stories. We spent some time talking to two women from the US. We also met a lovely couple from Canada and spent some time picking their brains on best places to travel in Canada (we are always looking for our next adventure!).

It was now time to head back down to catch back up with our planned itinerary. I think the most stressful part of the entire trip was the part of the drive back South where I thought we were going to run out of gas. We had left the Westfjords thinking we had plenty of gas to make it to the next town to fill up. Turns out the next town wasn't much of a town at all. We kept driving and finally found a 1 pump gas station in the middle of nowhere right as I was convinced our car was about to run out of gas and were were going to be stranted. All ended up being okay, but it was stressful for a second!

We made it to the quite town of Borgarnes at about 10pm that night. We stayed in a cute little mini-cottage that was one large room with a bed, kitchen, and dining area and a bathroom.

Day #11 was our last day in Iceland. We started the day by climbing Mount Esja, part of the Esjan mountain range. The hiking trail up Mount Esja is probably the most popular hiking trail in Iceland. This is partially because of how close the mountain is to the capitol of Reykjavik.

From the parking lot, the trail to the summit and back is 3.7 miles and climbs just under 2,500 feet. The hike was more difficult than I was anticipating. After 10 days of constant walking and activity we were exhausted! We had to stop and to take breaks more than once on our way up. The view from the top was beautiful. On a clear day you can see Reykjavik in the distance.

Our flight home was not until 9pm so we didn't need to be at the airport until about 6pm. For the rest of the day our plan was to check out the town of Reykjavik. The population of Reykjavik is roughly 122K, so in terms of size, it is relatively small. However, the total population of Iceland is roughly 356K, so Reykjavik is home to almost 35% of the entire population of the country.

Once we arrived in town and found a parking spot we immediately headed to Hallgrimskirkja, one of the most famous pieces of architecture in Iceland. Standing 242 feet tall, this church is the tallest church in Iceland and the 6th tallest building. The Lutheran church was inspired by the volcanic form. Completed in 1986, the design is complete with a 50 foot tall pipe organ on the interior. The church is free to visit with the only charge being a $6 fee to ride an elevator to the top of the tower for panoramic views of the surrounding area.

My favorite thing about Reykjavik were all of the unique buildings and houses. After Hallgrimskrkja we wandered through the city to Lake Tjornin. From the lake we meandered down to the water front and into the City Center.

After spending a couple hours wandering around the city we made our way back to our car. Unfortunately it was time to head to the airport. The flight home was uneventful. We dropped off the car and headed to the airport for our direct flight back to CVG. We made it back to Cincinnati around midnight.

The only downside to the entire trip was that we did not see the Northern Lights, something that is on both of our bucket lists. This simply means we will have to plan another Scandinavia trip in the future! We were hoping to go in the Summer of 2021, but that is not looking so likely right now. We are hoping to plan a fun trip for January or February though! More on that later!

Iceland is easily one of the coolest and most beautiful places we have ever been. Very few other places exist where the landscape changes from volcano to mountain to beach to glacier the way it does in Iceland. Unfortunately WOW Airline no longer exists and easy/affordable trips to Iceland are now harder to find, especially from the midwest. However, I still recommend every person reading this put Iceland on their must travel list! If you do end up planning a trip let me know and I am happy to share all of our resources!!