I woke up early, not for the last time, due to the light and, this particular time, due to the animal noises. (As was often the case, we had the window open. Indoors in Iceland is hot! They love their heat here.) Once we dressed, Jenn took some pictures of the incredible surroundings – somehow more incredible than the night before – and we had coffee and tea. We then headed into Höfn for the morning tourist ritual of visiting a grocery store.
Because food is so expensive in Iceland and because not all guesthouses give breakfast, a grocery store in rural Iceland at 9AM is just chockablock with tourists. Netto, our favourite chain of the trip, has very good pastries and decent premade sandwiches at prices that are reasonable for Iceland. So you get there right before 9AM and there’s a line. Höfn is a town of 1700 people and the grocery store was a zoo.
We also did our daily constitutional of filling up our tire with air. I don’t remember if it was here or at the next stop but at some point we managed to fill it up enough for the sensor to stop causing an alarm for two days.
The east coast of Iceland is the one place where the Ring Road sticks right to the coast, at least for the first 225k. Because of that the drive is very different than throughout the rest of the country. Instead of long stretches of straight or big, slow swooping curves it is windy with plenty of minor elevation changes. That’s in part because there are a lot of fjords and the roads follows them for around 200k before heading inland. But, much like the rest of the country, the scenery does change constantly- one fjord does not look like another.
The road has very few guardrails or fences. Consistent with Iceland’s general attitude towards safety, it’s on you to not do something stupid. But what I can tell you, if you’re worried about driving this part of the Ring Road – far and away the longest stretch of “difficult” driving during the summer – is that it isn’t really that hard of a drive and it’s very pretty. It would not rank in my worst drives and I know bad drives. Last year I drove California’s infamous Route 1 and this was nothing in comparison, though I will say that the arbitrariness of the guardrails and fences was reminiscent of that road. Eventually we did figure out that if there was water next to the road you’d get a fence at least, but a cliff without water doesn’t really merit more than reflectors.
After driving along the beautiful coast for about 90 minutes we came to Djúpivogur, picturesque town at the mouth of a fjord. We stopped to go to the toilet and discovered this rather incredible free washroom that was big and clean. (Weirdly, in Iceland there are more free washrooms on the east coast than anywhere else. We got used to it and then went back to the rest of the country where you have to pay.) We were surprised to see a cruise ship in the fjord and suddenly realized why there were so many more people in this tiny village (population 348!). Having driven nearly halfway across Iceland at this point we thought a cruise would be a really strange way to see this incredible country. Of all the things we saw on this trip that were worth seeing, only a few of them were directly on the coast. But apparently that’s how some people like to see it, or at least the fjords. (I’m sure you could say similar things about Norway.) There was a brewery here too but they didn’t have anything interesting in their fridge, just on tap, and it was too early for Jenn to have a drink.
At some point before or after we arrived in Djúpivogur we stopped to take a picture of this really uniquely coloured mountain, reminiscent of some in the Highlands.
On the other side of Berufjörður from Djúpivogur we stopped at Blábjörg to see the cliffs.
Not long after that we got flagged down by a cop with his lights on. We pulled over and he told us that there would be five oversized trucks coming and that we needed to stay pulled over. Fortunately, there was a little bit of a pull-off up ahead. I say fortunately because there are no shoulders on the Ring Road so pulling off isn’t always an option.
We then drove to Breiðdalsvík (population 130) in a little bay around the headland as there is a brewery there and we thought we could stock up on beer. However, like many breweries in rural areas, it had very short hours and it was closed. So instead we went into the local store – the only store? – and I got to try fish jerky. It was too fishy even for me. Though the store had some food we thought there was an open restaurant 40 minutes down the road in Fáskrúðsfjörður so we headed there instead.
After more of a scenic drive we arrived in Fáskrúðsfjörður to find the restaurant we were seeking out was closed. We could drive a little bit out of our way to another restaurant or we could go to the gas station. We decided to go to the gas station and there finally had a famous Icelandic hot dog. Jenn liked hers and I thought mine was fine. I have no idea how close they were to the ones people get excited about in Reykjavik but Warren didn’t enjoy his when he was here so had decided to not bother with it. These $5 hot dogs were our cheapest lunch outside of the time we bought some stuff at a grocery store. (Actually that may have been more money.)
Fáskrúðsfjörður is the point at which the Ring Road departs the coast, not to return for 440km. (The whole northeast is even more rural and even less populated, though Iceland has introduced a tourist route in part of it to try to encourage tourism of these far-flung villages.) There is a 5km tunnel from here to Reyðarfjörður, the next fjord over. It was our first experience of a tunnel in Iceland and so I had no idea that 5k would actually be the shortest of the tunnels we drove through. It was well lit but more impressively full of pull-offs and turn-arounds, even some big enough for trucks. It was so well thought-out we were kind of shocked. It felt safer than the road itself.
As with everywhere else in this country, the moment we emerged from the other side of the tunnel we were confronted with a different landscape than when we entered. But that didn’t really prepare us for what we found inland, over the next pass, which really felt like an entirely different country. There aren’t a lot of trees in Iceland but it feels like most of them are in Múlaþing. At times it looked like Canada, not just Labrador or Newfoundland but even northern Ontario or Quebec. The only real difference was that the trees were really short in comparison. (So more like Newfoundland or Labrador.)
We followed a stream (with tons of waterfalls going into it) down to our destination for the night, Egilsstaðir. Egilsstaðir is the 17th largest community in Iceland (2300 people) but it feels like a metropolis compared to the communities on the east coast. Jenn spotted a 7 storey apartment building and we just couldn’t believe it. Egilsstaðir is located on Lagarfljót, a river that feels much more like Iceland’s equivalent of a Finger Lake, as it’s extremely wide and in an uncanny valley version of a Finger Lake valley.
It was too early in the day to stop or to check in so instead of exploring Egilsstaðir we headed to Seyðisfjörður, an apparently picturesque town in a fjord that serves as ferry port for Iceland and also served as a shooting location for Trapped. The drive to Seyðisfjörður is something and considerably harrier than driving the Ring Road up the coast. There are these massive switchbacks up to the pass and back down again with few guardrails, as is typical of the country. The pass itself is pretty barren and feels like another planet, though you do get to drive along the side of a reservoir for a bit. (There are reservoirs everywhere in Iceland due to their reliance on hydroelectricity.)
On our way into the town, we noticed a waterfall. Because we were no longer on the Ring Road this one had few cars in its pull off. We walked by a few people but they soon left and it wasn’t long before it was just us.
In Iceland, there are so many waterfalls and so few people that sometimes you just find one and it’s just you and nature, even though the road is only 25 metres away.
We headed down into Seyðisfjörður and parked. We wandered out to the ferry terminal to see if we could use the washrooms but they were closed. (Ferries only seem to leave first thing in the morning.) However, we noticed another waterfall.
We walked up to the bridge at this one and the trail was hilariously steep. In Iceland, if they can avoid a switchback, they will do it! Anyway, it was a pretty good view of the town.
I guess I should mention at this point that we had pretty great weather this day. The weather had been hit or miss the previous day – though very cooperative with our stops in terms of us not getting rained on – but on our drive up the east coast we had decent weather.
Unlike many towns in Iceland that are surrounded by scenery Seyðisfjörður (population 658) is actually a pretty town.
We wandered around, Jenn bought a hat and then we headed back over the pass as we had a dinner reservation. We headed back down into Egilsstaðir and realized how small it was because our Airbnb was literally a couple of blocks from the main road. We met a very nice couple and discovered were were staying in a tiny cabin in their backyard. However, unlike the guesthouse the previous night, we had our own bathroom and fridge. It was very small but much more nicely appointed than the previous place.
After we unpacked we walked to dinner for the first time since we left Reykjavik. I had a birthday this past week so, ahead of this, Jenn took me out to dinner at Nielsen, a tasting menu restaurant in this town of 2300. We had 7 courses, including some excellent lamb (my second favourite dish of the trip) and some smoked reindeer tongue. It was not on par with the nicest restaurants in Toronto but it was still pretty tasty and kind of incredible for a town of 2300. After dinner we headed down the street to Austri, a brewery. It was virtually empty and then empty so we had a quiet drink. It had the weirdest list of beers of any brewery we saw however most of them were not currently on offer. (It’s more of a nanobrewery than microbrewery.) It’s too bad (or maybe good) that they didn’t have more because we would have bought one of everything. We did take some bottles with us, though.