31.07.2015 / Mordor, frazzled tires and another beautiful waterfall. North we go!

We left our comfortable place in Egilsstadír to drive towards Myvátn area where we would for once stay for two nights. Looking forward to that.... The landscape changed from grey-green moss, flowered hills to an undescribable odd and bizarre landscape. This was Mordor at its best. Whereever you were looking: nothing but plain Lava fields in dark and grey colors. Such a fascinating surrounding.

After some time 'green' returned back and we went for another small road besides the #1 main road. We passed former stone houses and discovered at the lake Sænautavatn a small museum of old turf houses. Inside one of the houses was a lovely Kaffi where we had hot chocolate, coffee, homemade bread and excellent pancakes with selfmade jam.

These kind of places can only be found when off the main road and we were happy to have made this detour.

The wash house was quite a highlight as well. 

Next sight on our list was the famous Dettifoss waterfall. The Dettifoss is the greatest and most majestic of Iceland's waterfalls, 44 m high with the average volume of 212 tons per second , so the ground shakes with the force of it. It can be viewed from either bank and took a side road to come up from the non-tourist perspective. The road turned out to be pretty bad with many deep holes on gravel. We drove by a car that had two tires completely ripped apart. That looked scary. The Dettifoss was amazing. We have made the better choice on the right side and could get totally close to it. Unfortunately, the sun was not shining and we did not get to see the two rainbows that in general show when sun is on.

After the Dettifoss waterfall, we continued via the coastline to Húsavík. I dont know what happened but all of a sudden my blood pressure went totally down and I felt like I was going to faint. Jens had to stop and I desperately needed to get some air and water. Good enough, I felt better soon and we continued our way to Húsavík where we had some Hot Dogs and took another detour to get to the area of Myvátn. We crossed a stunning landscapes pointed out as a restauration area. One could tell plants of wild flowers well structured in order to grow new fields of green in the devasted lava landscape. The road was crowded with sheeps.

We reached our accomodation in Myvátn and were surprised as we seem to have gotten an unexpected upgrade. We moved -this time for relaxing two nights - into a newly built house with heated floor, a seperate sleeping room for Kjell AND our own bathroom with even a bath tub. This was heaven!!

The beds again were a dream and we fell asleep straight away....

30.07.2015 / F-roads in x-modes and horse hair allergies don't fade...

We left in time this morning to pick up our exchange car in Höfn at the given address and to our surprise no Europcar station had popped up over night. I asked a friendly neighbor for support and he explained that this was indeed the private address of the Europcar Manager at Höfn. We waited for a couple of minutes and then the Manager showed up with an unexpected upgrade car. A 4x4 Subaru Forester. We quickly exchanged the car, tried to inform him about the issues but got the impression that his English was not the best. 

So, we left, happy, for our next stay close to Egilsstádir.

Jens and the car were getting along well and we decided to give an F-Road a try.

F-Roads in Iceland are an interesting category. You are only allowed to drive them with 4x4 cars as they might lead you over high mountains, small roads, steep roads, gravel roads in all sizes, curvy roads, bumby roads with rocks, rivers to cross,.... anything that a normal car would not be able to handle. An F-Road is clearly marked and even your GPS navigator asks you whether your car is ready to go for a F-Road.

So, we chose a small one of only 15km. At the beginning, we were still making fun of it but it turned out to be a tough one after 5 min. The road got extremely difficult with large gravel, steep climbings and a difficult serpentine. After 30 min we decided to go back. It is known that many tourists just overestimate their own ability of driving under such conditions and cannot handle their car. I was worried about the steepness of the serpentine but Jens was more worried about the tires of the car. We found out about the X-mode support of the Subaru (a button to press for additional support in hilly situations). We decided to go for safety first and turned around to get back into normal driving mode. Phewww.

We continued safely our trip to Egilsstádir when I spotted Islandic horses on a paddock close to the street. We jumped out to cuddle them. Such pretty and friendly horses.

Two hours later in our modern, clean and very cosy accomodation Jens' old allergy to horse hair broke out again and for another three hours he was unable to see clearly out of his swollen red eyes. Poor boy, we thought he had grown out of it....

So, no horseback riding for him during this trip!

29.07.2015 / Of Puffins, the most amazing 'Black Beach' and glaciers

The next morning we woke up quite early and drove down to Vik. Vik is special because it is the most southern city in Iceland and it has an extreme speciality: the Black Beach ! We got there quite early in the morning and therefore were lucky to miss the bunch of tourist buses popping up during the day and ruining the beautiful landscape.

To describe the beach is not possible if you have not seen it yourself. The shore crashing on the beach which consists only of black sand and stones in all sizes. Directly on the beach sharp stones pile up and above we could see hundrets of puffins living and breeding their pufflings. The scenary of this beach is both: bizarre and beautiful.

Puffins? Such lovely, cute little birds. Extremely colorful with a red peek and very short little wings. They come here during summer time to raise their pufflings and then fly out to the open sea for the rest of the year. Compared to other birds they look rather funny when they fly due to their short wings.

At this point in time we were pretty sure that we would not continue to drive with the Kia ceed. The clutch was getting worse, the tires in bad shape and so I contacted our Travel Agency to arrange a car exchange for the next morning in Höfn.

We had to be in Skaftafell Visitor Centre by 12:45 am as we had booked the "Blue Ice Experience", a glacier tour for 2,5 hours. We rushed through the landscape to make it in time. On our right the sea, on our left big Jökulls, glaciers and prosperous fields.

The glacier tour was a highlight!! Kjell was the most happiest person with his ice axe and the spikes under his feet. We were driven in a small bus to our starting point, got a quick introduction in how to wear and walk with the spikes and how to behave during the tour.

Off we went with our guide Anna. She explained a lot about "our glacier", the Svínafellsjökull, its age, the reason for a glacier, the disappearing, its dangers,... it was extremely interesting to listen and to translate in parallel into German for Kjell. We hiked for 2 hours and made some experiments to show the nature, the power, the danger of such a glacier. It was truely a stunning experience. And afterall not that cold. ;-)

We continued our trip towards the next accomodation near Höfn and arrived at the glacier Breidamerkurjökull. At the foot of the glacier is the deepest lake of Iceland, the Jökulsárlón (250m deep). Icebergs of all sizes float on the lake. Kjell was asleep and on a small parking lot we climbed up a small hill to see the beauty of the lake (which actually was the lake where James Bond crashes his Aston Martin in 2002). We sat there all alone when suddenly one of the icebergs calved. This incredible sound of cracking and whooshing will stay with me forever. What a special moment - truely. 

A few minutes later we got to the official sight of this lake. It was amazing to take a closer look at the Icebergs in all sculptures and forms. Even a seal popped up... 

This lagoon definitely is worth a visit, even though again crowded with other tourists.

Our accomodation close to Höfn was simple and clean but not really worth mentioning. We changed our clothes and then went out to look for a restaurant in Höfn. We ended up in a lovely, very pretty small restaurant in the harbour of Höfn, called New Haven, Nyhöfn. I had excellent lamb and Jens was happy with his cod. Besides, I kinda fell in love with the waiter, a typical Icelandic young guy with shaved backsides and a tied knot. ;-) We also realized that in general the Restaurants don't really provide extra kids' dishes, which I think is ok as I like our son to try new food and not only rely on french fries and nuggets. 

By the way, did I mention that in Iceland no McDonalds is available?!?!? Such a good thing!

On our way back to our place, we tried to find the Europcar station according to the address that our travel agency passed to us. We found each other in the middle of a normal private house area, with no house numbers and were curious on how the exchange of the car would work the next morning...