The only problem with doing a self-drive experience in Iceland is that you have to actually drive. The island itself isn’t hard to get around (providing the roads aren’t snowed out). Being able to pack up and move at your leisure, having access to any of the things you brought as you need them is wonderful (we’ve taken to keeping our snowpants on hand at all times in case the weather gives us a cold shoulder). And having the freedom to choose where and when to go places makes travel awesome.
We had to stop by the waterfall we spotted the day before and get a full shot of it.
The main “problem” is that when you wake up in Skaftafell after watching the northern lights through the new-born hours of the day, and you know you have a four hour drive a head of you, part of you wishes that someone had already created that teleportation machine so that you didn’t have to worry about the actual drive.
Of course that part of you doesn’t realize that the nice thing about a four hour drive is that you get four hours of beautiful scenery and the ability to stop and take pictures anywhere you want. Our approach was to stop every 30 minutes, get out, stretch, and take a picture because, we figured, that’s about as far as you can go before it looks like you’re somewhere completely different.
After we’d been on the road for about an hour, driving for maybe thirty minutes, and stopping three times off schedule to take pictures at whim, we realized the detriment to our approach was that we really wanted to take pictures every ten minutes or so.
Be sure to pay special attention to the times in the slideshow above. We tried to take one at least every 30 minutes, and in some cases much quicker. Hopefully this gives you a sense of the drastic shifts in landscape can be over the span of just a few minutes sometimes. The gallery should be in chronological starting with our first stop at 11:30am
Kirkjugólf
The church floor actually looks like it should belong to a church. Pretty awesome. Christina’s doing her best Indiana Jones impression.
Just west of our hotel in Nupar we came across a location known as Kirkjugólf or “The Church Floor”. This is a cluster of basalt columns nestled into the earth. Their tops are relatively even, giving them the appearance of a man-made cobble floor. For the record, there never was a church here.
The drive from Skaftafell back to Vik is full of numerous black desserts and lava fields. Some of which are now growing a sort of moss.
Near the glacier Myrdalsjökull there’s a ruin for what used to be an ancient homestead. It’s said to be good luck when traveling this route to add a rock. We both, of course, obliged.
When the government realized what was happening they trucked in many additional rocks to allow anyone passing by to partake in the good fortune.
The three trolls once again – near Vik.
We drove through the above lava fields and back down through Vik, where I talked Michael into taking even more pictures of the Troll Rocks, and our GPS tour guide returned to re-iterate all the facts we’d heard when we were traveling east into Vik on Monday.
Skogafoss
Mighty Skogafoss
Continuing west, we photographed the mountains and lava fields that cover much of the Southern Coast until we approached Skogafoss, yet another amazing waterfall. This one is tucked into the mountain range. Beside it is the troll face rock. Unfortunately from the ground his troll face is hard to see, but from a distance or above, it’s as plain as day. Just as we arrived the clouds began pelting us with frozen rain. We took our pictures and got back in the car before they unleashed the full force of their fury.
We continued our plan, stopping at slightly more than 30 minute intervals as we drove until the snow and frozen rain pellets began to homogenize the scenery.
As we passed over some mountains that separated the southern coast from Reykjavik and the western coast of Iceland, traffic began to pick up. Given the weather, the serpentine nature of the road, and the influx of cars zipping along with us, we had less opportunity to pull over and get out. A lot of our pictures had to be taken via camera phone or meticulously timed around the windshield wipers.
Snæfellsnes Peninsula
We approached Snæfellsnes peninsula, where our hotels for the next few nights will be, and the road led us into a deep tunnel which threw GPS girl into a frenzy of lost satellite signal concerns. But when we emerged it was like we were, again, in a whole new land. The sea washes across the beaches and the mountains stretch out to the water’s edge.
We checked into our hotel, delighted to find they had a hot pot (hot tub) utilizing the natural hot springs. It was even more delightful to look out our room window and see that it was right beyond our door.
After a delicious dinner of lobster pasta and ling cooked in a white wine ginger sauce, we ran through the snow and sank into the hot tub. A few northern lights might have danced across the sky, but they might have just been clouds. We were
too comfortable to jump out and find a camera.
Typical lap accessories for our trip… Camera, GPS, phone, scarf.
Here are few additional shots from the road (including a couple larger versions of the ones in the slideshow above).
