Iceland - West and Reykjavik

The next leg of the trip was a bit different. There's a huge bay called Breiðafjörður between the Westfjords where we had been staying and the western peninsula where we were heading. There are hundreds of islands in the bay but only one is inhabited all year round - Flatey island. There's a ferry that crosses the bay and stops at Flatey en-route and they have a cool system with the cars. Visitors' cars aren't allowed on the island so if, like us, you want to stay the night, you put your car on the ferry, hand the keys in to the cafe on board and get off at the island. Your car continues onto the other side of the bay where someone unloads it and hands the keys back to the cafe for you to pick up when you're ready. It's a fabulous system and it worked really well!

So we went to Flatey Island. What an incredible 24 hours we had there!

We arrived and walked 15 minutes to our hotel. There were a few vehicles around, mostly tractors.

An information board gave a few historical notes. We loved this pic of how they used to move cattle to other islands for fresh pasture. Yep, they just loaded them into rowboats!

I'm guessing that there were only 20 to 30 buildings on the island. Many of them are over 100 years old. They're heritage listed so they can be renovated but not changed. The main part of the town was a smorgasbord of colourful historic houses as we approached it.

We stayed in the only hotel on the island. Our gorgeous room was lined with painted timber boards and the windows looked out to different views. Ours is the room on the left of the picture on the bottom floor. I deliberately avoided the upper floor - those sloping rooves are head-bashers and apparently you have to lie down on the floor to look out of the windows!

One building had an earth roof although it wasn't in great shape.

I wanted to walk around the island but a section of the island is closed for two months as it's bird breeding season. Birds were everywhere! We saw more puffins but also many other sorts including snow buntings which I'd bever seen before.

The birds were very territorial. The Arctic Terns would dive-bomb anyone who ventured near their nests. As their nests were everywhere they were a bit hard to avoid. We watched as one dive-bombed John. This was an exceptionally clever tern though. When John didn't move it dived again and shat on him! That worked!

There were a few cute little earth-covered buildings. I tried to get close to one but there were heaps of terns there and I simply couldn't get any closer than this!

We visited the church and saw a group of people there as we approached. They were having a small drink outside the church so John made a comment about joining them. They were a chatty lot and it turned out they were an Icelandic choir and had just been singing in the church to see what it was like. They then offered to sing for us! It was amazing!

Did you notice the painting behind the singers? Jesus is wearing one of the local knitted jumpers! They are very much like the Fair Isle jumpers that were the craze at home in the 80's.

Like a miniature Sistine Chapel, huge paintings decorated the ceiling telling the history of the island. 

They choir group were a great group of people and were all staying the night. We seemed to have timed this visit very well as a famous Icelandic singer was playing in our hotel that night. When we asked if we would need earplugs to sleep we were told, "Don't worry - it will finish at midnight"! We're usually well tucked up into bed by then. The Icelandic Minister for the Environment was also there to sign a policy that has something to do with the bird sanctuary there. Needless to say our hotel, which is the only accommodation on the island apart from camping, was booked out. I'm glad I booked this ages ago.

Nearby was Iceland's oldest library and it's still operating today. I've heard that Icelanders are big lovers of literature. The library was in such a gorgeous building.

John was struggling with a cold so I went for another walk while he got in out of the cold weather. I saw lots of birds. A woman I met showed me where a seal pup was waiting for its mum to come back from fishing. I was amazed that it was a white colour. I'm guessing it's a grey seal.

We found this fish-drying rack that was well and truly being used.

The closest thing we saw to a garden anywhere in Iceland - colourful weeds against a red wall.

We had a sensational dinner then had a drink while we waited for the music to start. We got talking to the Icelandic woman who was working there and she was passionate about Icelandic horses ( they're horses, NOT ponies we were told!) She sometimes helps run horse riding trips where they spend two months riding right around Iceland! People can join in at any stage. They take maybe 100 horses so each rider can ride several horses a day to give the horses a break. Most of the unridden horses just follow freely along and we saw a video of them all trotting along a path. I don't think I've ever seen that many loose horses just freely following along before. 

We were shown a fascinating YouTube video showing the unusual gaits of Icelandic horses. For our horsey friends, you can see it here. It's amazing!

The show started earlier than we were told so by the time we got there, all the seats were taken except for a few in the front two rows. Consequently, there were the two Aussies front and centre at the intimate concert of an Icelandic pop icon. Her name is Ragga Gisla. 

The show was fantastic! She didn't speak a word of English during the show but we managed to sing along with a few bits here and there. "Ohhh, ohhh, ohhh" is the same in any language, haha. There were only about maybe 80 people in the room and the show was free for everyone. The hotel puts on shows like this so people come to stay. 

Ragga is apparently nudging 70 years old but you wouldn't know it. She was funny, entertaining and genuine. She's liked by young and old and is very much adored in Iceland. She's even been knighted!

She had an amazing range in the way she sung and she sang everything from pop to blues to an Elton John song in Icelandic. The crowd got right into it, singing along. Most of them were only on Flatey to see Ragga.

Afterwards, we got talking to people and found ourselves getting on very well with an Icelandic guy who turned out to be Ragga's husband. We talked for ages and only stopped because it was late (about 12.45) and we were standing outside under the light midnight sky and it was freezing. It wasn't helping John's cold at all. We learned the next day, after another long chat when we bumped into each other on a walk, that the husband used to be a famous football player, playing for the Icelandic national team. I think they found it refreshing that we were unaffected by their stardom as they're not famous to us.

Flatey was a really special place. It was small, windswept and isolated yet it was still easily accessible by ferry. It had a lovely feel to it but I think it was meeting so many wonderful Icelandic people that made it extra special for us. We really haven't met that many Icelanders on this trip which isn't that surprising as there are only about 350,000 of them, and most of those live in Reykjavik, the capital.

We kept bumping into the same people on Flatey as there is only one way to get on and off the island, and that's by the twice-daily ferry. Not surprisingly, we ended up on the same ferry with Ragga and her husband and by the time we finally separated, we were all good friends. At last we had met some Icelandic people that we could be friends with!

We also met an Indian lady who runs Reykjavik's best Indian restaurant. We were only a few days away from the capital so we booked a table. We might as well eat at places where we know someone!

When we travel, we rarely seem to time these events right but this one was perfect. It was such an incredible visit and one we won't forget in a hurry.

We approached the mainland again at a town called Stykkisholmur. Grey clouds loomed over the pretty old buildings that surrounded the harbour.

We stayed in another cabin about five minutes' drive from the town. It was set on a lake with spectacular mountains behind it. It was spacious, warm and very comfortable.

The weather grew cold, windy and drizzly though so I headed out while John stayed inside with his cold. There were lovely horses on the way.

Nearby was a small hill, called Helgafell, which is of great local importance. Local legend has it that if you climb the hill without speaking or looking backwards then get to the top and look east, you can make three wishes. I did this and looked to the east and was gobsmacked by the view over a maze of small islands in the fjord.

Nearby was a church with a graveyard. Traditionally, children's surnames are taken from their fathers. So if John was Icelandic he would be called John Robertson. I would be called Heather Malcolmsdottir (Malcolm's daughter). It all makes sense to me!

The weather soon turned for the worse. The wind raged around our cabin and the rain, although not heavy, was persistent. We hunkered down inside, snug and warm in our lovely cabin.

We had to leave the next day though so, being careful not to damage car doors when opening them in the wind, we loaded up and headed west. We only had an hour or so's drive which is just as well as we could barely see any of the scenery around us. One thing that did peer out of the gloom was Kirkjufell, a striking mountain formed by glacial action and featured in Game of Thrones.

Our that day destination was Hellisandur. We chose this because it sits beneath the mighty Snæfellsjökull Ice Cap. The National Park that surrounds it is supposed to be great for hiking. Unfortunately, not only did John still have his cold but the wild weather discouraged any walking and the we had no views whatsoever! 

We had glimpsed the ice cap from the other side of the bay two days previously. 

This mountain range sat behind Hellisandur. We stayed there for two days and didn't even glimpse the mountains!

Our old but amazingly sited apartment was perched on the edge of a small cliff overlooking the sea and would have had spectacular views if we could have seen them. We didn't step foot on the balcony the entire time we were there. Just before we left I opened the door, reached outside and filmed this.

It was so windy the entire time of our stay that I watched the terns get blown in all directions as they fished. They must have stomachs of steel to not get sick from the huge swings in direction as the gusts hit them from all angles

At one stage, in desperate need of some exercise, I decided to brave the elements. John dropped me off near the next town and I walked back. I walked through an area full of nesting terns and got bombed again and again. I held my camera over my head and filmed. 

It was like something from Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds"!

Hellisandur was a small town full of street art. Huge paintings decorated the walls of buildings.

I discovered a small walkway along the coastline where a few householders seem to have got together and made it all pretty. I even saw a small bed of planted flowers! These elf houses were outside someone's house. There's even an elf church!

We went for a short drive along a peninsula. Wild winds pounded the rocky shore. A rocky arch stood majestically in the background.

Two days after we arrived, we left, having not seen a mountain or gone for a proper hike at all. Oh well, this is Iceland!

Our next day was only an hour or two's drive but I had a number of things picked out to see along the way. First stop was a walk between one village and another. We drove to the car park and I took one look at the weather and changed my mind.

We drove past some photogenic volcanic plugs. I like to think the rain added atmosphere!

We drove up a really muddy track to a car park from where it's possible to walk to a cave that has 18th century graffiti inside it. John waited in the warm car while I explored. A cute sign showed the way but soon afterwards the track split into many small tracks. I scrambled around for 10 minutes trying to work out which was the right track but it was so misty that it was hard to tell. In the end I realised that I ran the risk of getting lost in the fog so I gave up and headed back to the car :(

Next stop was a canyon that looked like it would be fun as it was really narrow and you had to squeeze through it. The weather hadn't improved and I saw someone returning from the canyon to their car so I asked her what it was like. It turned out that she was Australian and was totally fed up with the weather. She only had six or seven days in Iceland and had had weather like this every day! It made me grateful for the first two weeks of reasonable weather that we had. She told me that the canyon was roped off as water was running through it so we gave up on that excursion too!

Without seeing a single sight that we were supposed to see that day, we made it to Borgarnes, a larger town only an hour or so from Reykjavik. I had picked out a room for the view of the mountains across the fjord. This is what we got.

There was a large museum there with great info about the settlement of Iceland. The thing that blew me away was that when the first settlers arrived about 1,100 years ago, Iceland was covered in trees! Yes, it was the settlers, and those who followed, that cut down the trees for firewood, building and ship building. We think it's really strange how there has been so little attempt to plant more trees. Most houses have no trees or even gardens around them. It's perfectly normal to just stick a house on a barren tract of land. The trees in the photo above were an anomaly.

It was Friday night and John was keen for a night out so we found a local bar. The meals were massive - they were fit for a hungry Viking!

There was a fabulous lady serving. She introduced us to the local liquorice firewater. It was a bit too much like cough medicine for me but John liked it.

As we were sitting there, we watched in amazement as three cyclists parked their bikes and came inside. It was so wet and windy! It turned out that they rode around Iceland in the same time as we drove around it. They had ridden until 2am the night before to avoid the worst of the wind but sometimes they simply couldn't ride. We had commented before on the number of crazy people riding bikes around Iceland. The Ring Road is narrow, busy and has no shoulders. Gusts of wind could blow you into the path of a car. I wouldn't do this in a pink fit but these young Americans looked happy.

A group at another table, locals I think, brought their French Bulldog into the bar with them. They sat it on a chair. Not just on a chair, but on a cushion they got for it from another chair. When their meals came out, there was a plate for the dog too. Not a dog bowl though - it was the same wooden platter that our meals came on and it had sliced meat, presumably lamb, on a bed of lettuce. The dog ate the meat off the plate on the table but left the lettuce. Oh my god!

We packed the next morning and headed to Reykjavik, our final destination in Iceland. We dropped off the car and sought out Asian food for lunch as we miss our Asian food and we don't think we're going to get much of it in Greenland. Over the next two days we ate Indian, Nepali, Thai, Vietnamese, Korean and Indonesian food!

We mostly just caught up on things like getting John a haircut and buying some wet weather gear for Greenland.

Our Icelandic singer friend and her husband had recommended a place to see live music. The bar was in a bookshop. It looked amazing! The band was an Icelandic cover band and they soon had the place rocking. John wasn't up to dancing so I asked a girl nearby if she wanted to dance. She was Spanish and said she didn't dance but offered me her partner! So a Spanish guy and myself hit the dance floor. It was fun! The next song was our wedding song so John had to get up for that one, haha. It was a great night but the place had large windows and it was weird dancing in daylight at nighttime.

The old town of Reykjavik still had plenty of gorgeous old houses. This is the oldest one in the city.

There were also ultra-modern places. This is Harpa, the huge concert hall where all sorts of shows are held.

I had heard about a stand-up comedy show called "How to be Icelandic in 60 Minutes". It's largely aimed at tourists and has been running for 12 years! We went to see it. It was a very funny way to learn some interesting things about Iceland. One thing I learned is that there are so few Icelanders that there is a risk of having sex with someone that you might be too closely related to! Unbelievably, there is an app to help. If you both have the app you can just bump phones and the app will tell you how closely related you are. Love it!

Another line I liked from the show was what the performer called "window weather". This is when you wake up in the morning and you see blue sky outside your window. You quickly get dressed and rush outside only to find that the weather has completely changed in the last five minutes and it's now horrible again. We can have days like that at home so I won't forget that one!

Amazingly, our "window weather" the next morning held and it turned into a cool but sunny day. It was our last day in Iceland. We checked out the ships at the port. I assume this strange-looking ship is an icebreaker.

The town sits around a lovely lake.

Our visit to Iceland has been incredible. Never have we seen such an array of natural attractions in such a small country. The scenery is stunning. Vast panoramas seem to go on forever and snow- or ice-covered mountains stand over them. We saw amazing birdlife, rocks sculpted by nature and a fantasy world of waterfalls. We hiked up ancient volcanoes and crossed recent lava flows. We saw colourful old buildings and acres and acres of lupins. And we often saw many of these things at the same time!

I know the weather was rubbish for our last week but that's part of Iceland. Imagine it in winter! Actually, winter is becoming a more popular season to visit as it's possible to see the northern lights and I guess everyone loves snow!

People often ask what our favourite countries are and Iceland has gone straight into the top three for me (with Nepal and Papua New Guinea). I know of no other country that offers such a variety of incredible sights.

We fly out to Greenland tonight. We really don't know what to expect!

Two Aussies squinting in the sunshine on our last day.

Hooroo!
Heather and John

Iceland - North and West

It was only a short drive of an hour or so to our next destination. On the way we passed lines of cairns marking the old paths before there were roads. We saw these a number of times around Iceland.

Our destination was Myvatn (pronounced Meevat). This name means fly lake. Apparently the flies can be horrendous there but the weather wasn't great which might have been a blessing as the flies weren't bad at all. We stayed in a hotel and it was nowhere near as good as the gorgeous cabins we'd been staying in. It was certainly comfortable enough but the noise from neighbours was such a shock.

Myvatn is literally a hot pot of volcanic activity. It sits on the major fault line that runs through Iceland and has had multiple volcanic eruptions over thousands of years, the most recent being in the 1970's.

First stop was Krafla, a site where steam hissed from the ground and the earth was scorched red.

Typically, there were no rails or anything to stop anyone getting into trouble which is fine, however the wooden boardwalk was quite slippery and if you slipped off here there's nothing stopping you falling into the hot crater!

Water boiled and bubbled.

Recent lava flows were amazing. This lava is probably from the eruptions in the 1970's. I read somewhere that it takes about 100 years for moss to grow on the lava.

To cross from one area to another we had to walk across snow. This sure is a country of fire and ice!

 A geothermal power station was set up nearby. There are many of these geothermal power stations in Iceland, plus they have hydro as well. This makes electricity cheap and plentiful, which means the houses are always warm! 

On that note, in a country where water pours out of glaciers, runs down waterfalls and is generally everywhere, water is also cheap and is excellent quality. Nobody buys bottled water here.

Viti was an old volcanic crater filled with brilliant blue water. Amazingly, snow still lingered around its edges. The weather was closing in though so we didn't hang around.

Back on the Ring Road, the site called Hverir was a popular place and we could see why. Pools of sinister-looking mud and water steamed eerily in the burnt landscape.

Thick mud boiled making big, fat, blobby sounds.

A couple of vents steamed furiously away. Piles of stones had been placed around them, presumably to protect us, but the rocks would have been so hot that they still would have burnt inquisitive fingers anyway.

The roar of the hissing was quite amazing!

Myvatn is a lake created by volcanic eruptions and is now home to thousands and thousands of birds. We climbed a relatively new volcano. There was barely a plant growing on it.

A walk along the southern end of the lake took us through weird lava formations.

Game of Thrones fans might recognise this warm pool inside a cave where Jon Snow lost his virginity! Sadly, we're not allowed to swim in it now. It would have been fantastic on this cold day.

There was a local farm that had a lovely restaurant. They milked their own cows and made cheese to use in the restaurant. We were amazed that they only had 16 cows plus calves. No wonder they have to run a restaurant to make a living. The weather had been so bad that the cows were still being shedded. I was upset to see that the milking cows were tied up and standing on concrete. They seem contended enough though.

We questioned what the harnesses and bags over the udders on some of the cows were for. A staff member with a sense of humour informed us that like humans, cows' boobies head southward as they get older. Sometimes the cows stand on their teats as they get up so the farmers put bags over the udders to protect them. They call them cow bras!

I'm going to interject here with a couple of very strange signs we saw. This one was on a toilet lid in a large hotel. Ok, we understand that we can't throw certain things down the toilet but do we need to be told not to throw shirts, bottles and engagement rings down them?

This was was in a public toilet earlier in our trip. At the risk of being seen as crass, what on earth are the middle pictures?

Those of you who have read Hannah Kent's "Burial Rites" will know the fictionalised story of the last woman to be executed in Iceland. The execution itself was real. Like so many other sites in Iceland, the site of the execution was right beside the Ring Road. A walk of 100 metres or so led from the car park to the site and it was lined with information about the events that happened and the execution. By the time we got to the mound where Agnes and Fridrik were executed, I felt sick. What must it have been like for them to be led along a track in this vast landscape to their place of execution? The place gave me the heebie-jeebies. 

A platform was built especially for the execution.

We had a very long drive that day, driving from Myvatn in the north right across to the Westfjords. As we approached the fjords, the scenery became more and more dramatic. 

A lonely church stood on a grassy plain.

Lush farmland was wedged between the sea and the striking hills.

A stunning beach sat near the turnoff to our accommodation. What a pity it was way too cold to jump in!

Home for the next couple of days was a cabin on an old farm. Kristinn, the owner, was about our age. He gave up farming sheep about 20 years ago and started farming tourists instead! He was an interesting guy. He had worked four winters in a row in Greenland building houses and government buildings. That's one tough guy to do that!

He told us quite a bit about Greenland but the thing that scared us is that he said it's so expensive! He's saying that and he lives in the most expensive country we've visited!

Kristinn was a great cook. The first night he served up enough food for 8 people and there were only the two of us staying there. It was crazy!

Our cabin was gorgeous but it had one problem - one window had no blind or curtain whatsoever. I woke up one night to find the bright sun pouring into our cabin straight through that window. It was 2am.....

One memory that will always live with me of Iceland is the sound of the Common Snipe. When it's mating season, which it has clearly been the entire time we've been here, the male birds dive through the air and use their tail feathers in a particular way to make this strange noise. Even better was when there were multiple birds doing this at the same time and the air would be filled with these weird 'whoop-whoop' noises. I hope you can hear this!

Bizarrely, nearby was a museum that had a couple of old planes. We were in the middle of nowhere! There used to be American forces stationed in Iceland. This plane had an interesting history as one of its jobs was to rescue people from the Vestmannaeyjabaer Islands when the volcano erupted in 1973. We visited the islands earlier in this trip.

Some pics for you dad.

Yellow flowers were a pretty change from the purple lupins!

There are often lights or cameras in remote areas that run on solar. We can't get over the angle of the solar panels! They are always on an angle like this.

We drove around the peninsula we were on and descended a steep, winding road. There were views at every turn.

Our destination was the Latrabjarg Cliffs. These cliffs are about 12 kms long and are absolutely covered with nesting birds! As we approached the cliffs, clouds started to roll in and the weather turned really murky. We walked along the cliff tops and the wind whipped so strongly up the cliffs that we had to be careful to not stray too close to the unfenced edges in case a sudden gust unbalanced us. It was freezing!

A razorbill

Birds nested in their thousands!

There were a few pretty flowers in among the nesting birds.

As soon as we headed away from the cliffs, the sun came out again. Weird. 

We needed fuel and the closest town was Patreksfjordur. We could see it just across the fjord but to get there we had to drive about 30kms back along our peninsula, drive around the tip of the fjord then drive 30kms back up the other side of the fjord. We can't expect them to build bridges across every fjord. There are so many fjords that the country would go broke!

At the tip of the fjord a beached ship sat dramatically on the sands. 

Lupins were everywhere. As beautiful as they are, apparently they're an introduced species and are considered to be a problem. I can see why as they've taken over huge tracts of land.

Patreksfjordur was a lovely little port town. The crazy thing is that it's named after an Irishman called Patrick! Apparently he settled here.

Even the sheds were cute.

There was an absolutely huge beach on our peninsula. It went for miles. 

We parked directly behind it and it was so wide that it took me about 15 minutes to walk across it to the sea. It was stunningly beautiful but freezing.

The nearby cliffs went on forever.

A gorgeous church sat beneath the cliffs.

We loved this part of Iceland. Those wild, windswept views were amazing!

Hooroo!
Heather and John