Our Honeymoon – Part 2: Circling Iceland

Welcome back to the second installment of our walk down memory lane. Today’s post will be about the 3 weeks we spent circling around Iceland back in 2015.  Click here if you missed Part 1 of the Honeymoon series to start from the beginning. Enjoy!

The long awaited and incessantly planned – ICELAND trip! We’d both been obsessing for a couple years over this beautiful country that’s been only growing on the tourism scale. Instagram photos by a few of our favorite photographers, lead to google searches, every search resulted in increasing wanderlust to explore the “off-the-beaten-tourism-path” country. So many unique sights – our to-do list for our visit was LONG to say the least!

Iceland… what can we say?  It was incredible. If we were to make a tourism sign for Iceland, it would read:

RAW. POWERFUL. EPIC.

Our arrival in Iceland was as magical as we expected – the clouds parted, only to see barren lands of lush green countryside, contrasted by dark black lava rock, and mountains as far as the eye could see.

We landed at Iceland’s main airport, Keflavik International Airport – with “optional customs” – who’s ever heard of that?! – in the morning and picked up our rental car. The airport is situated 40 minutes away from the nations capital Reykjavik. Just a tiny little airport, and one or two office buildings, one of which is where we got our rental car, and a couple houses in the distance. With really only one option for a road – we easily found Route 1 and headed for Reykjavik. It was sometime during this drive that I (Nic) lost ALL sense of direction (what little I had) once again, and never got it back during our stay in Iceland. Luckily, my beautiful wife had it covered – maybe not the pronunciation of the street names, but the actual directions… she had cased, and she let me know it!

A temperature shift was noticed first, from Norway’s 80 degree farenheit days, to an average in the 50’s and rainy. We were happy we packed rain gear, a couple layers of shirts, jackets and pants but slightly concerned about our plans to camp for all but the first two nights and last two nights.

We were greeted by a city in full festival mode – it just so happened to be “Menningarnott”, Iceland’s biggest festival celebrating Icelandic culture.

Downtown was shut down for cars and there was a marathon and street party with music playing everywhere. We wandered the streets, took in some live music, got some groceries and just got used to our new surroundings.

The Golden Circle – best described as an introduction to what was in store for us over the next couple weeks. A one day drive that hits a few of Iceland’s most famous landmarks. First thing we noticed – sheep.. everywhere! Second thing we noticed – Icelandic horses! The horses were amazing, so beautiful and friendly (especially when you feed them the “good grass” that’s on the other side of their fence, just out of their reach).

The Golden Circle crawls with tourists, especially the geyser area. It’s proximity to Reykjavik means it’s the go-to thing to hit up on a tour bus. You’ve been warned.

Thingvellir National Park – a little sample platter of most of the Icelandic sights – waterfalls, luscious green moss on top of black lava rock, Silfra continental divide fissure (where you can scuba dive.. and FREEZE), tiny old churches and fresh Icelandic air (as a side note – this “Fresh Icelandic Air” was being canned and sold for $10 at souvenir shops, I kid you not!).  This is where Iceland’s history started and the first Parliment meeting was held.  Þingvellir is a geologically and culturally significant spot in Iceland. The ground is literally ripping apart in this rift valley as the North American and Eurasian plates are slowly drifting apart.

Geysir – AMAZING – watching “mother nature fart” according to Court, every ~5 mins. Water shot up into the sky and the breeze blew it one way or the other onto all the onlookers.  The original Geysir (which all other geysirs are named after) is now dormant – Srokker is the active geysir.

Gullfoss – Huge 2 level waterfall that was stunning and enormous. Rain gear was essential, the off spray was torrential.

Our initial impression of Iceland – it’s more then we expected, we LOVE IT!

The worst part about Iceland were the people. Don’t get me wrong, the Icelandic people were incredibly friendly. The hordes of tourists in the Golden Circle were just doing their thing. What I mean is that once you left the populated areas, people became few and far between. It became just you and mother nature. That magical spell of being on a geologically unique island, isolated from the rest of humanity was broken when in the large cities. Good thing isolation starts happening outside of the greater Reykjavik area (which isn’t very large relative to North American standards).  If you go to Iceland and only experience Reykjavik and the Golden Circle, you truly are missing out. Try to escape the tourist areas and you’ll see what I mean.

As we headed out on our long awaited “Ring Road, Road Trip”, we pondered how long it would be until we shower next and wash our clothes… The original plan was to stop at camp grounds along the way but we shortly nixed that plan as there really aren’t trees in Iceland so our idea of a campground is very different than an Icelandic campground. And we also learned that you could stop off anywhere along the road to camp overnight as long as it wasn’t on a farmers land.

Eldborg Crater – we walked along a flat trail, on a farmers land, for 2km to the base of the crater, the very first step up to start the climb to the top of the crater, Court fell. Wouldn’t be a real hike if Court didn’t fall. At the top, looking down inside the crater created a serious sense of vertigo.

We cruised around the Snaefellsness Peninsula, stopping to hang out with some seals at the Ytri Tunga Beach and admire the basalt cliffs of Arnastapi. We tried to test our strength like viking oarsmen on a black pebble beach – we aren’t fit for the job, but I DID get to chase sheep on the beach.

We went to sleep with the wind whipping and a chill in the air, and awoke to a beautifully sunny morning. To take full advantage, we headed immediately to Kirkjufellsfoss and Kirkjufell Mountain. It’s one of the most iconic landmarks, and most photographed sights in Iceland. It was not surprising that an Icelandic movie was being filmed during our visit – Court was obviously upset that her photos were ruined. A tourist who hates tourists, ironic.. We did manage to get some without the film crew though.

Driving through lava fields with thick green moss all over it, we decided that Trolls definitely live there and its no wonder Icelandic people have so many folklores and myths surrounding these Trolls.

We made our way to a unique farm specializing in the fermentation of greenland shark meat, called Hakarl Farm. They dry and ferment it for 6 months before it’s edible. The Greenland shark lives deep in the Arctic Ocean, with the frigid temperatures, they use uric acid as an antifreeze, rather than excreting it through their kidneys like most mammals. If the shark meat isn’t dried and fermented, the level of uric acid is toxic to humans. It tasted like rubbing alcohol, TERRIBLE.. not surprising as it’s essentially rotten. We chased it with rye bread which covered some of the taste. The whole farm reeked, but the experience was unforgettable to say the least!  Icelanders however seem to truly enjoy it and pop these bad boys like M&Ms.

Grafkirkja was a tiny old church in the middle of a farmers field, turf was used to insulate it, and the door was approximately 4.5ft tall. I had to duck the whole time we were in the elf church (as I so affectionately refer to it as) but it was ADORABLE, and we were the only people there!

The northernmost town of Iceland, Siglufjordur – 40km from the Arctic Circle – didn’t disappoint with freezing cold rain. Though we did make some time to visit the Herring Museum, that pays tribute to the past Herring fishing era that was booming in the 1950-1960s until the supply of herring plummeted from over fishing. The Icelandic people would export fish oil, fish meal, and salted herring to European countries and the USA during both world wars. The fishing market all but dried up in 1968, but there are still commercial boats that use the harbors around the Icelandic coasts.

We got up close and personal with Akureyri, for three days while a fog and rain storm passed. We became “regulars” at their amazing Sundlaug (hot spring pool), pirated WiFi from their mall, we watched some hockey in their rink, visited “The Christmas House” (a personal favorite of mine), and learned about Iceland life from an Icelander we met at the Sundlaug. We mutually decided that we were going to hit Sundlaugs for showers, since it’s cheaper for both of us to go to the town Sundlaug, sit with locals in the hot tub for however long we want, shower and wash some clothes – then it is for one of us to shower at a “campsite”.. simple math.

With all this spare time we were able to make a couple of Icelandic Fun Facts from our experiences up to this point:

– It seemed as though no one works, unless on farms or in tourism

– Stores have bizarre hours (ex. the liquor store in one town was open from 2pm-4pm...)

– the only sign of children is trampolines and bikes in yards, even the smallest of towns has a couple trampolines – gotta entertain the kiddos somehow!

– Sundlaugs (Hot Spring Pools), one or more in every town/village.. enough said.  We know what the locals do in their spare time.

Finally, some blue skies peeked through the clouds and fog (Court took at photo for proof, in case this was the last blue sky we’d see) and we were on our way again.

Near Lake Myvatn, we hiked through some lava fields and into lava caves which was very cool. We found Grojotagja Hot Springs hidden in a cave, they recreated this hot springs on Game of Thrones apparently, but we were sorely disappointed that there was “No Swimming Allowed”.

A huge surprise and highlight of the Ring Road was when we turned a corner and found ourselves on Mars. More accurately, Namafjall is where the green and black landscape vanishes, only to be replaced by red and orange soil, no plant life and huge amounts of geothermic activity. The earth was steaming from everywhere, and it smelled like a thousand boiled eggs. It was scenery like I’ve never seen nor will I ever see again and we couldn’t look away.

Driving through Iceland, you frequently are met with vast empty roads and tower mountains of ice and snow. Remember what I said about the isolation being our favorite part about Iceland?  We just loved it.

Dettifoss and Sellfoss, two giant neighboring waterfalls, we visited them twice. First in the evening when we arrived and couldn’t help ourselves, before setting up camp for the night. Maybe not the best decision, Europes largest waterfall off-spray got us SOAKED and we weren’t wearing rain gear. The next day, we figured we’d learned our lesson, so we returned, fully covered in rain proof gear, only to find the wind had changed directions and it was warm and sunny. We were unable to capture the full epic size of Dettifoss due to the fact that it wouldn’t fit into the frame of our cameras. We watched with our jaws on the ground, and listened to the thundering water.

The number of roadside, unnamed waterfalls we saw as we drove was amazing. Almost every 5km there was a new one. We stopped at a couple, to take photos but also just to enjoy it, most times there was no one but us there. We passed through several small fishing villages – all seemed to have been booming at one time but looked almost abandoned and seemingly frozen in time in the 1970’s. No lights on in any houses, no one around doing yard work, no kids playing outside, and rarely visible lights even inside stores/businesses.. bizarre feeling.

My inner child was unleashed at a black sand beach, skipping rocks. This was spurred by the fact that EVERY SINGLE rock on the beach was a perfect skipping rock. It was a rock skippers paradise – 5 skips was my max, I need practice.

We finally hit the glaciers along the southern edge of the coast, by Day 11 of our circumnavigation. Vatnajokull National Park, pretty much one giant glacier, didn’t disappoint. There were several turnoffs along Ring Road, to different glacier access points. We lucked out and the two that we chose, we had the sites to ourselves. We were able to stroll right up to the glacier and “walk on it” – I put that in quotations because we really just stepped foot on the edge. There were huge ice caves that would have swallowed us whole, so we kept our distance for our own safety.

One of the most unique and AMAZING parts of Iceland as a country to explore, is that moment when you find yourself somewhere absolutely breathtaking and you realize that you have the whole place to yourself. Sure Iceland has plenty of tourists, but there were some moments on our trip, like when you have a glacier that is several kilometers thick, to yourself, where you’re thankful that tourism is still just an “up and coming” industry in this beautiful land.

We stopped at Vatnajökull National Park to go check out the Iron Throne of waterfalls, Svartifoss. It’s almost a 3 km hike with a couple hundred feet of elevation gain from the parking lot in the visitors center, so keep that in mind.  About 3 km the opposite direction the the visitors center is the glacial tongue of Vatnajökull, one of the largest glaciers in all of Europe. It covers 8% of Iceland, which is pretty insane. No wonder they used the location to shoot some Game of Thrones here.

Jokusarlon Lagoon, where chunks of glacier break off into a 14 km long lagoon and the resulting icebergs float slowly out to sea. We watched seals prance around the icebergs and watched in silence as you could occasionally hear the crack of ice as new icebergs were created.

It’s funny to realize that when planning this trip we allowed ourselves so much time, so that we could take as much time as we wanted going from place to place, but it takes a conscious effort not to jump from one place to the next quickly. I had to turn off my North American “rush rush” brain, to be able to slowly relax and enjoy each sight and experience, instead of running to the next.  There were quite a few tourists here and we learned the Southern part of Iceland is where most tour buses go.  This was Court’s favorite place in Iceland.

We has a tough break, and got a flat tire… Luckily (and I stress the luck due to how barren Iceland is) we were, by some miracle, at a gas station, in a town called Vik, 1 block from a mechanic when it happened. This sounds like it could ruin a whole day, but fear not, this was an adventure in and of itself!

In all of 45 minutes, we had called the rental company (who provided no assistance whatsoever and said.. get it fixed yourselves), I put on the spare tire with Courts supervision, we drove it to the mechanic, got the tire patched and put back on the car, paid $45 for the fix and we were back on the road. Done and done at Nascar speed!

The town of Vik is centrally located on the south coast. Though it had some amazing landscape views and basalt caves, I think that one of the most bizarre experiences of our trip occurred here. They have thousands of these birds, that can be best described as looking like large pigeons, that live up in the mountains. We were in Vik during a time where these birds have their babies who don’t know how to fly yet but are born and quickly become the size of an adult bird. What we were told when we asked an Icelander about all these birds, is that they coast down from the mountains, it attempt to land in a river that will take them out to sea where they will test their wings to fly.

Now these birds, not the smartest of creatures, often mistake roadways for rivers, so they land in the middle of the road to “float” and are often times killed by motorists. These birds are also popular for hunting apparently, which leads to our bizarre story about them.

We were parked at the gas station contemplating our flat tire, when we spotted an elderly lady, with what looked like a broom stick, creeping up behind one of these birds. She successfully got within broom stick reach of it, and beat it to death with her wooden stick while it flopped around. A friend/daughter, came by with her jeep, tied the bird up by the feet and tossed it in the trunk and sped away. Not entirely sure if this was legal? Court and I watched the whole event, in silence, horrified. While driving around later we did see several of these birds tied up and hanging out a window of another car later on, who knows how those were hunted, we are hoping not with a broom stick.

While in Vik, we checked out the black sand beaches, Dyrhólaey which gave some impressive views atop sea cliffs, and the amazing basalt rock columns on Reynisfjara Beach.  The large, black rock formations that rise out of the ocean, just off the coast, are believed to be trolls that were caught by the sunlight and suffered petrification.

After Vik, we were officially back within a days driving distance of Reykjavik, which provided more tourists who were on busses taking day trips. Selandjafoss and Skogafoss waterfalls were awesome, except for the hundreds of other tourists and tour busses there.

Seljavalalaug Hot Springs was exactly how I pictured it. I’d found it on a list of “hidden Icelandic hot springs” while researching the trip and had been dreaming of it ever since. Nestled in the mountains, off the beaten path, it required a short hike to reach it. It’s officially Icelands oldest pool, but has since been forgotten and replaced by a newer pool closer to the nearby town. We lazed around here and had a couple of Icelandic beers, pure bliss.

At the end of our circle around the country, we were dying to sleep in a comfortable bed and the hotel didn’t disappoint. We spent our last two nights and days in Reykjavik recovering. We did run out for a hot dog or two, and went out to dinner at Islenski Barrin to to try “authentic” Iceland food – puffin and whale.

I would suggest, if you ever have the opportunity to travel to Iceland to take it. It was one of the best experiences of my life, so many memories and its a country like no other in the world. A honeymoon success!

People get their inspiration in different ways. We derive ours through seeing this vast and incredible planet of ours.

Have you ever been to Iceland? If you’re married and went on a honeymoon, what was your experience like?

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