Monday 11 July 2005

It’s a gray morning and it is raining cats and dogs. We have breakfast in the tiny breakfast room of the guesthouse. We go to Kasko’s supermarket to buy some food for the day. We are early so we have to wait a while, before can buy some drinks and ready made sandwiches. We drive to the North out of town along the north coast. It is very foggy and visibility is less than 50 metres at times. Iceland looks a lot less attractive like this. The road is fine and sealed (contrary to what the map indicates) and within an hour we arrive in Asbergy , the gateway to Jökulsárgljúfur National Park. The park ranger at the information centre explains us extensively what our walking options are. We decide to take the 864 to the waterfalls. And to walk from one set of falls to another and back. It keeps on raining, which does not exactly lift our spirits for a long walk. We take route 864 on the east side of the canyon, which, according to the ranger, is much better than route 862 on the west side. How bad that road would be we do not know, but 864 starts easily enough, but gradually turns into a track full of potholes mud pools. We are not to be deterred but at times we can only hope not to get stuck in the mud. After 45 minutes we arrive at Hafragilsfoss. We get out of the car put on our waterproof gear and head for the Dettifoss. The walk takes along the edge of the canyon through lava fields with little vegetation. Only some moss and a few tiny flower manage to grow here. After an hour and countless vistas we reach Dettifoss. It is fairly busy here (most tourist approach this site from the south). Dettifoss is very impressive. With lots of noise the water falls 45 meters down

We walk back in an hour and drive back towards Húsavík. At Asbergy we pick up two hitch hikers from Berlin who traveling through Iceland for 6 weeks. They make long trekkings through the interior and cover some larger distances by bus. Today is a bad day: it is raining and they have waiting for a lift for 45 minutes. We drop them at the supermarket in Húsavík.

In the afternoon we visit the whale museum. It was set up by an Icelander who has devoted his life to the protection of the whales around Iceland. It is nice enough, but a lot of the same. They do have skeletons of five different whale species. There are also a number of TV documentaries on show about the hunting and protection of whales.

At night we eat a Gamli Baukur. Fairly good quality at hefty prices. We make an evening stroll through boring Husavik and make some photos of the magnificent scenery of snow capped mountains around the bay.

Weather: rain and fog; 11°C / 51°F

Tuesday 12 July 2005

 Húsavík - Myvatn (Reykjahlíð) : 53km / 85 mi

After breakfast we leave for Myvatn, Iceland’s biggest lake. The journey takes us along road nr 87, a partly unsealed road through a moonlike landscape. Very impressive. It is not far to Myvatn, about 53km. In Reykjahlíð we have booked a room in the Elda guesthouse. We have coffee in the Reinihlíð hotel and rent bicycles there. We buy some food in the supermarket for the bike tour we are about to make around the lake, a 35 km tour. The weather is fine. That is: 16°C and sunny. The is a strong wind. First we have to climb a bit and ride against the wind. It is a lovely route along volcanic craters and such. We see lots of birds in and around the lake. Half way on our tour we get tailwind and the cycling becomes that much easier. We stop for picnic at the banks of a little stream and are promptly visited by the infamous Icelandic flies. They do not sting but are very annoying. We are back around 3pm. Later in the afternoon we visit the Myvatn nature baths or: Jarðböðin. It is a kind of  Blue Lagoon: an artificial bath filled by a thermal well. The sediment contains all kinds of health stuff. It does have a heavy sulfur smell (like rotting eggs) but you get used to that after a while. From the baths we have a good view of the mountains and on the lake.

At night we eat at the café next to the Reinihlíð hotel. Fine food. After that we take the car for a spin to Vogar to have a look at the Cowshed café. Which is indeed a café in a cow shed. From the café we can watch the cows in the stables through a window. But most of the cows, but one, are  now outside in the field. We take a beer.

Weather: sunny; 16°C / 60°F

Wednesday 13 July 2005

It is  a bright and sunny morning again. The sky is blue and sunny. Just like in the hotels before this one, the hot shower has a sulfur smell. This means that even the warm tap comes directly from the thermal wells. After breakfast we head for a leisurely ride with the car around the lake. Our first stop is Hverfjell. A volcano that really looks like one: conic in form and dark in colour. After that comes  Dimmuborgir. This is a formation of lava towers. From a view point you can look over the area. Signposted walks of various lengths (from 15 minutes to 2 hours) lead you through this wonderful phenomenon. We continue to Höfði. This is privately owned nature reserve on an isthmus stretching into the lake. Lots of birds here. We walk around, climb a hill and enjoy the piece and quiet. A bit further on is Stukkustaðir. A hamlet with some hotels. Here we find some pseudocraters. These are not real craters, but solidified lava and formed when lava stream hit the cold water of the lake. The pseudocraters form a ring in the lake and are connected to each other by stretches of land. We walk around them in an hour and see lots of birds among which the hectic arctic stern.

We finish our tour and return to Reykjahlíð . We do some shopping for tomorrow and have lunch at Zanzibar restaurant. In the afternoon we drive to Krafla. We first stop at a viewpoint just outside Reykjahlíð , with a nice view of Myvatn. Than across the mountains at Grótagjá we see a plain with steaming holes in the ground. The steams smells of sulfur and phosphor and make a noise. Ropes are put around the patches that are too hot to stand on. We carry on to Krafla. Here the soil is very active too. So much that a power plant was built here to gain electrical power from the escaping heat. An impressive complex. A bit further on is the Viti, a lake that was after a big outburst in the late 18^th century. I walk around the edged. Here too the soil is very active and some patches are dangerously hot. We return to Reykjahlíð where we take a drink at the outside tables of the café. The weather is so good that we are sweating in the heat of the sun with just our t-shirts on. We give the car a wash and drive out to Leinhrjúkur. This too is very active with smelling and smoking pools and lavafields formed in the 1980s. We walk around a bit over a mountain ridge with beautiful views surrounded by pitch black lavafields and lots of steamy holes.

At night we eat pizza at Zanzibar and watch a TV report on today’s stage in Tour de France on a British tv channel. Amstrong is in the lead and has survived an attack by Botero and Vinokourov.

Later that night we drive to a lookout and enjoy the midnight sun. The sun is low, but does not go under. This time of year it never gets dark in Iceland. This takes some getting used to. The curtains in the hotel rooms are nothing special and Erik has to improvise every night with towels and clothes and such to make the room a little bit darker. We end the day with a cold drink at the Cowshed café.

Weather: sunny; max. 18°C / 64° F.

Thursday 14 July 2005

We rise early and are the first to have breakfast at 7.15 am. We walk to the supermarket where the super jeep (a modified 4WD car) of Fjallasyn, Highland Expedition Tours picks us up at 8am for a day tour to Askja. There is one other passenger, Stefan from Germany. We drive along road nr 1 out east and turn off to the right into F88. Road numbers starting with 'F' indicate that the road is only suitable for 4WD cars. We stop for the first time at a dead volcano where can drive into. We walk up to the volcano’s edge for a good view of the area. We continue to follow the F88 along the Jökulsa a Fjöllum river. At a cataract we get out of the car and walk a bit along the river. After a while we arrive at Herðubreiðarlindir at the foot of the Herðubreið mountain, also called the Queen of the Iceland mountains. Here we find a simple campsite and a hut. We take a look at a cave once used by the villain Eyvinður who hid here during the winter of 1774-75 on a diet of dried horse meat and roots of the Angelica plant. It is fine weather and we have a clear view of all the mountains in the area: Dyngjufjöll, Snææfell (very special, because usually shrouded in clouds) and a offshoot of the Vatnajökul glacier. At Drekkagil (dragon canyon) we make a stop for (our own packed) lunch and a stretch up the canyon towards a waterfall. We carry on to Askja. This is  an enormous caldera (a collapsed volcano), formed by an eruption in 1875 which sent clouds of dust all the way to Denmark. From the car park we have to walk some 30 minutes to the Askja lake (Öskjuvatn) at the center of the caldera, which beautifully mirrors the snow capped mountains around. Next to it is a smaller lake called Viti (hell), to which I descend by a very narrow and steep path to have a swim. According to the tourist brochures it is a place for skinny dipping, but non of the tourists here seem to bother with that principle. The water is luke warm. The lake was formed when a magma chamber exploded and the bottom sank. The water in the lake is still warmed up by the magma underneath. The water has been cooling off the last couple of years. We walk back to the car. The car ride back is along the eastern shore of the river Jökulsa. We drive through some kind of moonlike landscape formed by various outbursts. Nothing ever grows here and the land is covered in pumice.  This is where the astronauts trained with their moon vehicle before they were launched up there. Later they said that Iceland looked more like the moon, than the moon itself. From the pumice we drive into the sand and it looks – certainly with this hot weather – like entering the desert. We meet an (East) German family  from Brandenburg (Barnim) who are stranded with their old VW-bus in the middle of all this. We tow them to the next hamlet of  Mödrurðalur. There they phone for assistance We have a look at the small church which was built by a farmer in memory of his deceased wife. The church is no bigger than a average living room. We drive on towards road no. 1 and on to Reykjahlíð , where we arrive around 8pm.

Weather: warm and sunny; max. 22°C / 71°F.