Robert's Travels

We started our morning a bit later than usual, setting the alarm for 8:00 AM instead of the 7:00 AM that had become standard. We had a long day of driving ahead of us, with not many sites to see, so we decided to get a bit of extra rest. We were up and packed by around 9, then walked to a nearby grocery store to pick up breakfast and lunch. We ate quickly, packed up the car, and left Akureyri just after 10 AM. Our destination was the west end of the island, near the Þjóðgarðurinn Snæfellsjökull national park.

The drive went well, unfortunately there wasn’t much to report. We saw a fair bit of the northern part of the island, and it felt a lot like driving in Alberta. We saw a lot of cows being farmed while driving in the morning; sheep farming appeared to be much less common here than in the south. There was a lot of brown, flowing grass, as compared to the mossy green ground cover predominant in the south.

We stopped for lunch at a gas station in Búðardalur after about 3.5 hours of driving. Our lunch was simple - sandwiches that we had picked up in the grocery store in Akureyri. Susan bought some fish jerky in the gas station after lunch - she had been eyeing it up all trip and was curious about the taste. I gave it a try; it wasn’t bad, a fishy flavour that was very dry. The taste was reminiscent of the smell of fish food. After lunch we got back into the car and switched drivers; I gave Dave the keys and I went into the back seat. I spent the next hour or so updating this journal, then enjoying the views.

We arrived in the town of Grundarfjörður at about 3:30 PM. We stopped at the town grocery store in order to pick up some ingredients for dinner, and picked up some liquor for the evening at the local Vínbúðin. Just like in Ontario, Iceland only sells liquor through government-run liquor stores. Unlike Ontario, the hours of the Vínbúðin are quite restrictive, so we had to wait until it opened at 4 PM. This gave us a chance to stretch our legs a bit, and nobody was really bothered by the small delay.

After we picked up something to drink, we got back into the car for the short drive over to Kirkjufellsfoss. Here we were greeted with the view of the imposing Kirkjufell, a mountain rising up between the road and the ocean. This particular mountain is somewhat famous in that it appears in the later seasons of Game of Thrones as the ‘arrowhead mountain’ located north of the wall. We took a few photos of the mountain, then turned around to see Kirkjufellsfoss. It is a two-tier waterfall, with a small island located on the small part of the river between the two sets of falls. We walked up and around the waterfall; there is a bridge that crosses the river just before the beginning of the waterfall which gives you a great view downstream of the falls. We took several photos, then got back into the car and continued on.

By this point in the day we had driven almost halfway across the island, and had reached the western peninsula. We were still on the northern side of the peninsula, and our destination was on the southern side, so we started driving south across the peninsula. We reached our destination of Arnarstapi around 6 PM. We were staying in an AirBnB just outside of town, in a cute little cottage. We unpacked the car, and settled in. Kate started making dinner, her famous chili, the rest of us read a bit. We ate dinner around 7, then had a few drinks and just relaxed. By about 9 PM Dave, Kate and I decided to get into the hot tub and enjoy the clear night sky. Shortly after getting in, we started seeing the first faint traces of the northern lights. As the evening went on they only got stronger, and by about 10 PM they were fully visible. They were much more vibrant than our last viewing of them - greens and pinks were fully visible, and they danced around the sky. At one point they were radiating out from a central point almost directly overhead, and it provided us with a fantastic show. We stayed outside until about 11 PM, as the clouds had started rolling in and obscuring the lights. It was a much more impressive show than a couple nights earlier, and it was very fun to be able to enjoy them from the warmth of a hot tub.