We slept in. This was actually the only time on the trip I slept in given the early sunrise. But we didn’t think we were going very far this first day so we didn’t worry about it. We ate breakfast in the hotel, this time right before breakfast ceased. Then we packed up the car and headed out of town.
For the beginning of the drive we did the exact drive as the tour had the day before. We began by heading to Hveragerði, a town on the plain of the south coast that benefits from geothermal activity and so is a centre for greenhouses. We drove by it the previous day but the reason we stopped this time was for Reykjadalur, which is usually done as part of the Golden Circle (Gullni hringurinn). (Much like we didn’t go to the Blue Lagoon – Bláa lónið – we didn’t go to the Golden Circle. Shock! Horror!)
Reykjadalur is a valley where a hot spring meets a stream. Much like Landmannalaugar, the water is only cool enough to soak in because another stream dilutes the heat. It’s a “short easy” walk to the stream which is actually a 3km climb up a hill and then up and down through the valley. We did it in dry weather so it was fine but it wasn’t as short as as implied and Jenn didn’t necessarily find it as easy as implied. But there are a bunch of vents on the way up and the views are great.
But it’s worth it as once you get up to the top you get this incredible experience of lying in a hot river.
Much like Landmannalaugar, you just change with some boards nearby.
It was a really unique experience, unlike anything I’ve ever done before. It’s worth the hike and most people should be able to do it, you just need to realize it’s not just climbing up the hill at the beginning and is another 2k beyond that.
This took a fair amount of time so it was the afternoon when we finished. We headed over to Selfoss, the 8th largest “city” in Iceland, and back to the bakery we went to the day before. We ate there and then headed east again. It would be days before we were in a community that big again.
A little bit after the place we turned off for Landmannalaugar we arrived at Urriðafoss, the “most voluminous” waterfall in Iceland. It looks much bigger in person but it is one of the lower waterfalls in Iceland you’ll see, even if it beats them all by volume. (It’s a very wide river for this country.)
We drove across flat, open landscapes with the odd farm and ranch for what felt like quite a long time. Eventually we started to see a rise in the distance, the same one which we drove up the day before as part of the tour. As we got closer to it, we could see waterfalls. We would see hundreds more as we drove, but these first few were bigger than we could imagine. They were part of this crazy wall of cliffs which turned out to be the edge of the Highlands we drove up the day before. We would spend much of the next two days driving along the edge of it.
On our drive over from Selfoss we hadn’t seen many cars. And there were only a few parked at Urriðafoss. But at the parking lot Seljalandsfoss was just absolutely jammed. One of the things we would experience throughout the south coast was basically empty roads and absolutely full parking lots. Everyone goes to the same places.
And, as you can see in the photo above, the path behind the falls was an actual line up. But we did go under
A few hundred metres down the road is another waterfall, Gljufrabui. Despite being told it was the better of the two waterfalls – and one of the best in the country – we didn’t go into it. It was clear we would have very wet feet if we did. I did have a second pair of shoes but I don’t believe I had an easily accessible second pair of socks so I decided not to go through the canyon and into the falls.
We made our way back to the car and drove 20 minutes down the road to our hotel, as it was around 6PM. One of the things it took us a long time to get used to was that we had hours more of daylight here and could, in theory, see more.
Our hotel was next to Drangurinn í Drangshlíð, a monolith that has turf houses at the base of it that is on private property. Both it and the hotel have similar names so we accidentally drove onto their property instead of the hotel’s.
The hotel room was meagre, with two single beds (!!!) and no TV. The bathroom was small with no barrier between the shower and the rest of the bathroom, like so many hotel bathrooms in Europe. The rest of the hotel – the lobby and the breakfast room – was much nicer. We’d later learn that “guesthouse” and “hotel” are kind of on a continuum in Iceland. Just because one place is a “guesthouse” and another is a “hotel” does not really guarantee a certain level of comfort or amenities.
This hotel was in the relative middle of nowhere, about half an hour outside of the tourist town of Vík and not really close to anything the direction we came from. Their restaurant had long closed – though they failed to update that online – though there were restaurants back the way we came. The plan all along had been to go into Vík if there was daylight so that is what we did.
We went into town (basically a village) and ate at a cafe, one of the seemingly few restaurants in a town that appears to thrive entirely on tourism. At the cafe, there were literally zero Icelandic customers – well, there might have been two in the back, I didn’t hear them talk – and we were lucky to sit down when we did because it got completely full of tourists, presumably all coming back from day tours in the area. I had a lamb sandwich – so many sandwiches! – and Jenn had a traditional lamb soup, which was just not substantial enough.
After dinner we walked over to the brewery and picked up some beer to drink back at the hotel. Much like here, the markup between beer at the store or brewery and the restaurant/bar is substantial. Anyway, then we walked back to the car and drove over to the gas station to get Jenn some ice cream. They actually had really good soft serve. There hadn’t been sun for much of the day today and it was drizzling off and on.
On the way back to the hotel, despite there being roughly 30-60 minutes left of sunlight, there was just this truly bizarre perma-twilight that didn’t feel like night or day. I’m sure this is common in northern countries when it’s cloudy but I had never seen anything like it. (I also didn’t really see it much for the rest of the trip.) It was super eerie and felt like I was driving at night only I could see way farther.