Just as I was getting used to Reykjavík, it was time to head south.
As I said earlier, my first day in Iceland was a bit disorienting. Things started to feel almost normal once I’d gotten my room, a nap, and a look at the fireworks. But I didn’t really feel together until the next day, once I was well rested—I woke at 1:30 in the afternoon, after a pretty solid twelve hours of shut-eye—and had explored the city by foot.
Walking is a great way to get to know a city, at least one the size of Reykjavík. All the places I’d seen the night before, driving aimlessly in the dark (often in circles) began to fit into a cognitive map. Ah! Here’s that church, and down the street–wait, this is the street with the American, English, and French bars! And this street takes me to the waterfront road that I must have driven fifteen times…
As I’d learn later, the sun never strays far from the horizon, so nightfall begins early but extends for hours. By 2:00, when I made it to Tjörnin—a lake completely frozen over, except a small area at one end, filled with ducks and geese—it looked like the sun was about to set. But I got a good four hours of wandering in before actual darkness, just taking any sidewalk that looked like it would take me closer to the water.
I stopped in at American Style, an Icelandic version of an American diner, complete with posters of punkers and rockers, and ’80s rock on the speakers. I had a comforting burger (the Kevin Bacon) and fries and $6 beer (it was happy hour!), and warmed up before heading out to the wharves to catch the moonrise.
I snagged a few hours sleep. I woke at midnight to peer outside, hoping to see the Northern Lights, but the sky was cloudy. I tried again early the next morning—I even drove out to a lighthouse at the edge of town—but it turns out the moon was not only full, it was a supermoon (at its closest to the Earth, and thus bigger and brighter than usual). And with the light dusting of clouds, the sky was bright enough to read by. Not the ideal situation for seeing the Northern Lights, which requires three things: a clear sky, darkness, and solar winds.
From the lighthouse, and after a brief stop at a grocery store, I drove south toward my Airbnb farmhouse just south of Eyjafjallajökull, an ice-capped volcano that erupted in 2010.
On the way, I stopped at Seljalandsfoss, one of the famous waterfalls in Iceland (“foss” means waterfall). Tumbling nearly 200 feet high, it’s awesome, in the original sense of the word.
During the summer, you can walk behind the falls, but in winter it’s just too icy. It was precarious enough crossing the little footbridge that crossed the stream at the base of the falls—I saw several people scrambling for the guardrail as they their feet shot out from under them.
And if winter in Iceland weren’t cold enough, the mist from the falls and the rising wind made it absolutely freezing.
All of which made the wedding photography at the base of the cliff seem nutty.
Down the way a few hundred icy meters, there’s a second famous waterfall, Gljúfrabúi. I made it over there just as a gaggle of Asian teens arrived, taking all kinds of pictures of themselves pretending almost to fall into the stream (though one of them didn’t need to pretend). They were noisy and inconvenient and having just too much fun, as if traveling in freezing weather was meant to be enjoyed.
I should have learned from them. Like them, I could have slipped into the little canyon and gotten much closer to the falls. But I was chicken–I didn’t want my feet to get wet.
I left the falls and headed to the farmhouse. I had originally planned to hit the next falls the same day, but it would have required driving past the Airbnb and back, and I was concerned it would be too dark. It took a few days to adjust to the prolonged dusk.
On the other hand, the wind picked up during the last few miles of my journey, trying to blow my rented Suzuki Jimny (I’ve been calling it a Jimmy this whole time) off the road. For pretty much the whole night, the wind howled, even shaking the farmhouse at times… but it did not clear the skies of clouds, so despite a long night of wandering from window to window on in all four directions, I saw no Northern Lights.
My host, Snæbjörn, and his new assistant François (a French guy on a workaway) fed me well the next morning, and I hit the road with a couple recommendations of things to see.
I dropped in on that third waterfall, Skógafoss, which was every bit as awesome as Seljalandsfoss, if not more so—awesome enough, anyway, that I forgot to take video.
This waterfall had a steep, relentless staircase leading up to the top of the cliff. By the time I reached the top, I understood fully the concept of dressing in layers.
I was also grateful that I had no one to complain to—I’m so out of breath, my thighs are burning—because on my way down I passed woman carrying what must have been a forty pound daughter up the staircase, and graciously refusing help the whole way up.
Sometimes you realize you just have nothing to complain about, really.
From Skógafoss, it was a short drive and a fifteen-minute hike to one of my favorite sights of the trip, the Sólheimajökull glacier. A big, blue mass of ice decends on a long, flat frozen lake (if it’s a lake). And where the two meet, the ice is cracked and broken and shoved out of the way. No motion, no sound (other than the tourists), but a sense of pent-up power. Wonderful.
From there, I drove down to the south coast, to another breathtaking sight that Snæbjörn had recommended: the lighthouse at Dyrhólaey.
The lighthouse is on a tall cliff, from which you can see in all directions—south, over the North Atlantic; east and west, along the black-sand coast; and inland, to long stretches of flat ice butting up against the flat, snow-covered volcanic mountains.
It was also the windiest I’d experienced. I was glad that rental car guy had warned me to hold onto the car door when opening it to avoid damage from the door whipping open. I also wished I’d backed into the parking space, like everyone else did; it took most of my strength and an open window for me to pull the door shut when I got back in the car.
From there, it was a three-hour-or-so drive in the slowly fading daylight back up to Reykjavík. After a $16 bowl of noodles and a $14 beer—separately, as the noodle place didn’t serve alcohol—I slept in a room at another Airbnb, where someone ate the food I put in the refrigerator.
Damn tourists.
This is one in a series of six posts about a 10-day trip I made to Iceland in early 2018. The first four describe the actual trip; the last two reflect on my experiences:
- Iceland: New Year’s in Reykjavik
- Iceland: South and back
- Iceland: A Taste of the north
- Iceland: The last leg of the journey
- Reflections on my Iceland trip, part 1: Some good choices
- Reflections on my Iceland trip, part 2: Some room for improvement