Road trip day 7! Our longest (and most boring) driving day yet. No weird Mars scenery today... mostly just small towns and open roads. The plan was to round off the northwest corner of the country and head to the Snæfellsnes peninsula. This journey is a long one.... we took turns driving, packed sandwiches and more pringles and just settled in for the long haul. The goal was to make it to Kirkjufell by mid afternoon and Aranstapi by late afternoon/early evening.
Here is the distance we were covering today -- we started in Akureyri and headed straight to Kirkjufell and then on to Arnastapi. We were staying at a farmhouse Airbnb just 15 min from Arnastapi. The google time for this drive was about 5.5 hours total... however, google has no idea what a gravel road in Iceland is like :P Also, see that large fjordland that we're completely cutting off in the northwest corner? Those are the West Fjords, and I wanted to go SO badly. It's supposed to be so incredibly beautiful up there. However, it would have added another 6 hours or so of driving and we didn't have enough time to make it worthwhile. If I had had 2 or 3 more days, we would have driven up there.
Oh god why is this our life. Again.... this poor Prius.
Motorcycles! It's a miracle that one of them didn't catch a pothole and flip over their bars or slip on the gravel. Seriously, these roads were NOT friendly for 2-wheel vehicles. Do not recommend.
#drivinginIceland
OMG this guy is on a BIKE. I should note that by this point, we are pretty far off the ring road. I know it's kind of hard to see, but if you look at the map above, where the main highway diverts south towards Reykjavik (right at the start of the West Fjords), but we continue westward into the peninsula - which was where the roads really took a turn for the worse. We came across this guy pretty far from the ring road... super ambitious. Pretty crazy to be honest.
Just endless terrible road
BAHHHH
Made it to Kirkjufell! This is Kirkjufellsfoss
Kirkjufell is the most photographed mountain in Iceland. It was also featured in the latest season of Game of Thrones!! It's just a bit snowier as it's "beyond the wall" :)
Kirkjufellsfoss and Kirkjfell
I made Andy do some of this treacherous driving. It was seriously no fun. If you have a better budget when we did, just rent a nice lifted jeep or SUV and save yourself this headache.
A paved road and a gorgeous view!!
#stilldrivinginIceland
Made it to Arnastapi! First stop... ice cream! Iceland has the best soft serve EVER. We drowned ours with chocolate and caramel per recommendation of the lady serving us. AND we ate it outside!! It was about 50 degrees and sunny :)
So there's a beautiful hike along the sea cliffs in between Arnastapi and another small town called Hellnar. Both these towns basically operate on tourism; there isn't a whole lot going on outside of hotels and restaurants. This kind of unique statue/monument is where the walk starts in Arnastapi. You can't miss it driving into town.
If you neglect the direction of the hike and walk about 5-7 min in the opposite direction, you'll find this "secret bridge"! You can go walk onto it but we're not really cool with tempting death by ocean, lol. I'm normally not fearful of heights but this looked narrow and the winds were high today (as they are every day in Iceland).
Just... I dunno. This is us. haha.
Okay, now we head back in the direction towards Hellnar (east) and these are the views we're greeted with.
I was obsessed with the level of the sun here (it was about 5pm) and how it's casting shadows on the cliffs and the mountains in the distance.
This trail is full of volcanic rock and super weird squishy earth! Again it doesn't feel like we're on the same planet.
This view. I've never seen anything like it.
Iceland makes awesome beer btw. Sooo good.
Sheep butt!
This Airbnb was just in someone's guest bedroom. It was a little awkward as our hosts were not as social as the ones we had when we stayed in Washington's Olympic Peninsula (that was the only other time we've done this style or Airbnb). This was also the only room we scored on this vacation for under $100/night. Iceland is so expensive. All well, at least their kitties were adorable!
Daw kitty
Day 7 was loooooong but beautiful. Lots of Iceland vacationers who use Reykjavik as a home base rather than driving the entire country will take a trip to Snæfellsnes as a day trip from the city. It is less than 2 hours north of Reykjavik, and as we found out the next day, the roads in that direction are in much better condition.
After dark, I went out looking for the northern lights again, unsuccessfully. In the morning, we made some coffee and had cereal with the farm fresh milk before heading out for our shortest drive, but longest hike and most difficult hike of the trip... gotta save the best for last, right? We also had a finite amount of time to get the hike completed so we could get cleaned up in time for our engagement photo session! Woo! I had plenty of time scheduled for all this.... but what I didn't know was how long this hike would actually take and what was actually involved....
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