Nearly Neutral Travel

We had a lot of miles to cover yesterday and we knew we wouldn’t have time to stop everywhere that looked good en route, so our plan for today was to backtrack slightly to see more of what the south had to offer before our final push to Reykjavík tomorrow. This meant that for once, we had some semblance of a proper plan: a five-stop strategy, if you will.

🏎 Pitstop 1: The turf houses of Drangshlíð

We’d seen these old houses built into a rocky outcrop on the previous day and I was desperate to take a closer look, but it turned out there wasn’t much more to see – they weren’t structurally sound enough to go inside. Still, they looked like they would have been pretty cosy and a good place to see out Iceland’s harsh winters. In an effort to liven up this stop, we drove away with Alex’s bottle of milk perched on the windscreen. It’s hard to explain why.

🏎 Pitstop 2: The Sólheimasandur plane wreck

In 1973, a US Navy DC-3 suffered engine failure and crash-landed on the bleak expanse of volcanic ash at Sólheimasandur. Although any salvageable plane parts have long since been removed, the fuselage still remains and has become a tourist attraction. I had mixed feelings about making this stop, but we’d read that the whole crew survived the incident, which did ease some of my misgivings. To get to the crash site, we had the choice between a 7 km round trip on foot or a five-minute shuttle that would set us back 3200 ISK (approx. 18 GBP per person). I think you can guess which option we took!

Having seen this plane in several YouTube videos, I wasn’t surprised to have the opportunity to introduce Oli to the concept of @influencersinthewild. There were an awful lot of disrespectful photoshoots in progress! Despite this, seeing the fuselage resting in the arid landscape was a cool, if slightly eerie, experience.

The outbound walk was a bit monotonous, but on the way back to the car, we had a great view of the distant mountains but also a pretty extreme sidewind. It’s the most tired I’ve ever been after a short walk! Alex slept through the whole thing, cosily tucked into Oli’s coat.

🏎 Pitstop 3: Reynisfjara beach

Now firmly on the Instagram trail, we braved busy Reynisfjara beach. Although we’d already visited several black sand beaches, we were here to see the basalt columns at one end – remember Hallgrimskirkja? These are the ‘organ pipe’ formations that inspired its design. Although there were a healthy number of people on the beach, it was still easy to appreciate the beauty of the rock formations against the blue sky – we really couldn’t believe our luck with the weather. Even better, the payment machines were broken so parking was free for the day! 💰💰💰

🏎 Pitstop 4: Kvernufoss

In search of the path less travelled and with limited time before we needed to head back for Alex’s bedtime, we opted to skip popular Skógafoss and instead headed to neighbouring Kvernufoss.

This turned out to be a great decision – the waterfall may have been smaller (in both height and volume), but it was still absolutely stunning and there were very few other people there, save for a couple getting married up on a grassy ledge! We walked through a canyon formed by the river before reaching the base of the falls, and were then even able to walk behind the waterfall, which was both soggy and exhilarating. Alex once again proved difficult to impress, and observed nonchalantly from his spot inside Oli’s coat.

🎆 Brief interlude to watch the Northern Lights

The Aurora forecast was again looking promising and the skies were clear, so we spent the evening peeking out of the curtains and were so lucky to see another beautiful display. It felt a little ironic that we’d stayed in quite a few very rural and very dark places on this trip and then saw the Northern Lights when we were staying in an actual town with streetlights, but it was still magical!

🏎 Pitstop 5: Seljalandsfoss & Gljufrabui

The next morning, we couldn’t resist one last visit to some waterfalls. Like Kvernufoss (above), Seljalandsfoss is fed from meltwater from the glacial peak of Eyjafjallajökull. If that name sounds vaguely familiar, cast your mind back to 2010 and the volcanic ash chaos across European airspace – this is the very volcano that erupted! Alex was mid-nap so we had to take it in turns to walk from the car to the falls and the whole place was so crowded that I nearly didn’t bother. In the end, Oli convinced me on the basis that there were so many inappropriately-dressed people slipping around and getting soaked that I just had to go and see them, and this worked!

Once Alex was awake, we walked together to Gljufrabui, a rival waterfall less than a kilometer away. This was way more impressive, but also much scarier – with hindsight, probably not the best spot for Alex, although he didn’t seem to mind. The waterfall flows into an incredibly narrow canyon, and to get to its base involved a balancing act along a set of wobbly stepping stones through the fast-flowing (but mercifully shallow) river.

Once inside the cavern, the noise and spray from the falls in the confined space were a real assault on the senses. I didn’t capture it well at all (I was actually quite scared!) but the photos at the start of this post sell it much better.

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This marked the end of our time exploring the south of Iceland, and next we concluded our road trip by heading back to the capital to eat many baked goods and search for the cats of Reykjavík.

From our guesthouse in Skálafell we made two stops close to the Vatnajökull glacier, at the glacial lagoon of Jökulsárlón and the black sand Diamond Beach, before spending the afternoon hiking the river canyon at Fjaðrárgljúfur. This day already felt like we’d hit our stride travelling with Alex, before we peeked out of our window that evening and finally found the sky glowing green…

I wasn’t delighted when our Alex-alarm woke us at 6am, but we had a big day ahead of us and a beautiful sunrise outside the door of our wood cabin. Our guest house had also put on a lovely breakfast buffet, featuring more cold smoked lamb (my favourite 🤤) and even some pickled herring (Sara’s favourite 😬).

We spent the best part of this day circumnavigating the Vatnajökull glacier, which covers a rather unimaginable 7,700 km², equating to roughly 10% of Iceland’s land mass. Zoom out on the map above and you’ll easily spot the huge patch of white! The glacier extends down many of the valleys towards the ring road, re-appearing around the next corner almost as soon as it had disappeared around the last.

Jökulsárlón

Jökulsárlón is a beautiful lagoon that sits at the foot of the Vatnajökull glacier. While the main glacier has been steadily retreating, the lagoon has been increasing in size, with chunks of the glacier occasionally breaking off and floating around the lagoon for years before eventually finding their way out to sea.

We spent quite a while watching a herd of seals swim gracefully around the lagoon. Apparently the seals give birth to pups on the shore of the lagoon, although we were a month or two early to spot any.

As seems to be the case with many places we visit, this lagoon was the filming location for a Bond movie, specifically the opening sequence of A View to a Kill. In this scene, Roger Moore dodges bullets while skiing away from some baddies, before using part of a snowmobile as an improvised snowboard to music by the Beach Boys. As cringey as the moment appears now, it’s been suggested that this scene actually helped boost snowboarding into the mainstream.

Diamond Beach

Just the other side of the ring road from the lagoon lies Eystri-Fellsfjara, more popularly known as Diamond Beach. This black sand beach has recently become instagram-famous for the perfectly clear, car-sized icebergs that wash up on the beach.

Unfortunately our timing wasn’t the best, and instead of car-sized icebergs we were instead greeted by a huddle of photographers trying to make a small collection of ice cubes look as big as possible. We had a good chuckle at the scene, before joining the fray to get our own snap.

The beach itself was still beautiful, surrounded by the ice-capped mountains.

Still, we didn’t spend long here before continuing towards our destination for the afternoon. That is, once we’d given Alex one of his most scenic outfit changes so far.

Fjaðrárgljúfur

As if Jökulsárlón wasn’t intimidating enough to pronounce, we upped the stakes considerably with a stop at Fjaðrárgljúfur (see pronunciation guide for the curious).

To call this river canyon “dramatic” feels like an understatement. The canyon itself has been painstakingly formed by the flow of glacial rivers over thousands of years, leaving behind a 100m deep gorge. We were getting battered by the wind as we hiked up along the top of the canyon walls, so I’d zipped Alex right up inside my coat and tried to protect his face with his fluffiest trapper hat. He got a lot of smiles and laughs from the folks coming the other way!

At the top of the canyon we were rewarded with views across a waterfall, over which the river cascades before heading into the canyon.

It was a truly epic walk for relatively little effort (bar the wind!) and by far our favourite stop of the day. We headed on to our accommodation for the night expecting to turn in early, but the arctic skies had other plans…

Aurora Borealis

Finally, we were in luck, and managed to catch the Northern Lights without having to wake up in the middle of the night. Our first glimpse was through the window, when Sara had a bit more luck with her long-exposure technique than the previous night and we saw a definite green tinge in the sky.

By the time we’d got outside, the sky had exploded into a proper show.

For some reason I was expecting to be underwhelmed by the Aurora. In an age of colour-enhanced photos, I was expecting a static scene of barely visible light. However, we were both blown away by not just the colours and shapes cast across the sky, but also rate at which they changed. No sooner had we pointed out an emerging swirl to each other, a new ribbon of green would unroll across the sky and there’d be an even more intense display behind us.

We took so many photos that evening that Sara’s phone ran out of battery, but even that didn’t send her inside. The midnight air had become bitterly cold by the point, but a cup of tea was just enough to keep our fingers from going numb. It was a genuinely magical experience.

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Iceland’s south coast is so packed with big-hitting highlights that this post marks only our halfway point along this dramatic section. The next day we’d turn the corner at Iceland’s most southerly tip, and head along the south-west coast back towards Reykjavík once again.

From dramatic Dettifoss, we continued heading east along the ring road through the wildest and emptiest landscapes we’d seen yet.

That’s something I’m loving about Iceland – every few hours, the landscape totally changes, and not gradually either. We cross some invisible boundary, and suddenly a grassy plain turns to a mossy lava field, or rocky mountains turn to hills alive with autumn colour. My action photos are not the best on this trip as I’ve been busy juggling photography with sitting in the back and entertaining a baby, so you’ll just have to take my word for it!

Anyway, our destination was the small town of Neskaupstaður, with a dramatic fjordside setting that led out to the Norwegian Sea. I say small town – it’s actually the third largest in the region, but with a population of just 1500, it certainly didn’t feel that way. We were tempted to visit mostly because we’d read that Neskaupstaður sat right at the end of the road going eastwards, and for some reason, this appealed.

We slowed down for a day here, which was much needed after racking up well over 1000 km on our hire car already. Our first activity was a walk through a nature reserve to Easter Cave, trying (unsuccessfully) to spot whales on the way. This was a very pleasant stroll, but I think this Google review about captures it, “Since there is not much to see in Neskaupstaður, this is considered some kind of must see if you are staying in the area.” Hmm!

My second activity involved leaving Oli and Alex (who was supposed to be napping) and heading off to the local outdoor swimming pool. This might sound like an odd activity, but I’d read that swimming pools are a community hub and an important part of the culture here. It was great to experience yet another country’s bathing customs and etiquette, after some fun times in Georgia, Kazakhstan, South Korea, Japan and New Zealand. The pool (and whole town, actually) was so quiet that I had no witnesses to anything I might have been doing wrong but there was also no one to copy! Anyway, I think I managed not to break any cardinal rules by broadly following what I’d learnt in Japan:

1. Remove shoes at the earliest opportunity! (There were shoe racks outside the changing rooms so that was a fairly obvious hint)
2. Shower thoroughly without a swimming costume before entering the pools. (This was less obvious but thankfully I’d read about this in advance. The key difference to Japan is that you’re then expected to put on a swimsuit to go in the baths themselves – no nudity there)
3. Dry off before re-entering the changing rooms. (Why is this not a rule at home?! It makes the changing rooms so much more pleasant without a mix of mud and pool water all over the floor)

Anyway, as always it was a lovely experience, even if the main pool was inexplicably covered so I had to split my time between the hot pots and the sauna instead (nightmare).

The next day, we began our drive south. The ring road here traces the inlets of the Eastfjords region, which meant it was slow going, but we were rewarded with more beautiful scenery of wild rocky mountains running down to the calm blue sea. Once again, my photos don’t do the landscape justice at all! It was this day that we commented that Iceland is at least as beautiful as NZ, our nearest similar reference point.

As on previous days, we passed very few towns and so our stop for lunch in Djúpivogur was driven as much by necessity as any kind of planning, but it provided one of those excellent travel moments where we felt very pleased with ourselves and with life. We came across a food truck run by the loveliest man, who was reminscing about how he used to transport his son in a carrier just as Oli was carrying Alex. We ordered both items on the menu (a hot dog for Oli and a local smoked salmon roll for me) and then ate in the glorious sunshine with a view of the harbour. My roll was a thing of beauty, topped with raw and fried onions, pickled radish, rocket and remoulade. Oli’s hot dog was so good that he went back for a second one! (I may have talked him into this so I could have a bite). Buoyed by our success, we then came across a cosy cafe where we shared a coffee and delicious slice of carrot cake.

To round off an excellent day of food (which, frankly, has been tricky with a restless baby who doesn’t like us to sit down to eat), we stopped for some dinner in Höfn. The fish and chips were predictably excellent, but the view across the fjord to the Vatnajökull ice cap really claimed the prize.

We ended the day in a guesthouse in the shadow of the huge Vatnajökull ice cap that takes up pretty much all of the south-eastern corner of Iceland. The aurora forecast wasn’t looking that promising, but the skies were clear and there was very little light pollution so it seemed worth popping out at midnight. I’d read that using a long camera exposure can help you to spot the Northern Lights even before they are visible to the naked eye, and there was something light on the horizon so I was feeling pretty excited and gave it a go. Anyway, long story short – I didn’t see the Northern Lights and instead you can enjoy a picture of what turned out to be a lorry approaching on the ring road in the distance!

Now firmly back on the tourist trail, we took the next couple of days to enjoy the sights of southern Iceland.