Day 70 Iceland – Waterfalls, moonscapes, canyons and dirt roads....out of this world

Day 70 Iceland  - day 1....

Approaching the west coast of Iceland in the very early morning

Although we had an inside cabin it did have a window on the world outside; channel 1 on the TV  was the live web cam from the front of the boat.  And so it was that when the alarm went I immediately turned the TV on to reveal calm water, sunshine and a distant view of the snow covered mountains of Iceland’s fjords. I was up and out like a shot.....

It was genuinely exciting being there and as you looked around the deck you could see others feeling the same – arriving in Iceland is something special in itself but to do so by ship in glorious sunshine ..... we knew we were lucky.  We took photos and took it all in as we made our way slowly up the long fjord to the dock at Seydisfjordur.

We stocked up on cash from the bank machine and were off up and out of the valley, stopping at our first waterfall to look back down at the Ferry port before heading over the road pass and into Iceland’s interior.

Now that we are here it is very obvious that we are not properly equipped for this last part of our trip. We have packed for a summer in southern Europe and not really thought about places with wet ground or rain. The Ferry shop had some pac-a-macs ( glorified bin bag ponchos really ) so we acquired 3 more for Susan, Kate and Jack as a starter then we were in the very first shop in Iceland searching for wellies....this is where we discovered that Iceland is really not cheap - £ 35 a pair so being of my father’s making I convinced them all that we should see just how wet the country is before equipping ourselves with a full set of new rubber footwear....my dad would be proud :-).

Iceland is a big country, you can drive 20 km, pass a solitary house and then drive another 20 km to the next one. We drove through some phenomenal  countryside – desolate moon scapes, lava ash fields, mountains with ‘ice-magic’ snow caps, waterfalls and rivers....rivers that are powerful with grey green melt water. There is the occasional small holding with a few fields all just of grass. Hardy very small black and white sheep are out in the wild but they are few and far between and god knows how they go about rounding them all up in the autumn.

We headed to Dettifoss ( Foss = waterfall), the most powerful waterfall in Europe. You hear it , then you see the spray arcing up into the sky before you crest the small rise in front of it and it is before you. Tonnes and tonnes of dirty grey water falling 150ft into the spray filled and invisible chasm below....the power in it is massive, the tourists on the opposite bank appear the size of ants. We walked upstream 1 Km to the smaller waterfall of Sellfoss before returning to the van

Sellfoss

In for a penny .........Iceland has many dirt roads, it is just a few years ago that the 1000+ km road around the island was fully metalled – so there are many places, that to get to, require ‘off-roading’ and hence why the Icelanders are well known for their 4x4’s, low pressure studded tyres and bizarre off road vehicles.  A 35 Km gravel dirt road journey down through the Jokulsargljufur National park was our first of these routes we took as a trial to see how the van would cope for a possible later trip across the interior of the island. It was a lovely, if not a bit hairy, drive dodging the pot holes in a much greener than expected area of land.

As we emerged unscathed we called in at the small park’s visitor centre where we paid for camping.

The campsite was in a canyon and I could go on and on about how the canyon was formed and when but it was something very different - a giant horseshoe cliff with a tongue shaped cliff in the middle.

Katie doing her 'Lion King' thing

Our van was just below this 'tongue' cliff made of pure lava about 4 Km from the head of the Canyon... a massive 90m wall ( Malham cove’s very very big brother) with fulmars nesting on the orange lichen covered cliffs above a still green lake.

K on the handlebars

The 'tongue' cliff in the middle of the pic,

We cycled up to it in the evening  - now without a bike each we had to improvise to go and see it. After tea and at well after 11:00 pm K, J and I got up on to the Lava cliff and watched the sun as it tracked across the horizon. Midnight, and still properly light, we went to bed. We had packed a lot into our first day.

The van from the 'tongue' cliff

Day 70 Seydisfjordur ( IS)    to Abuyegi  ( IS)        230 Km       Total    10257 Km