Iceland driving adventures

A Slight Detour

(Saturday 7th September, 2019)

Just a little stop on a black gravel road on this rainy, rainy day.

We got up early by 6:45 in order to book a space on the shuttle bus from the hotel back to the airport, which is where we would meet with the people from the car rental company. The shuttle wasn’t free but rather cost 600 ISK per person. The impression is that things in Iceland generally seem expensive, but the judge is still out on that.

The weather is still quite horrible, the promise of a full day of heavy rain and lots of wind ahead. Driving to the airport, you could not see many meters ahead because of the heavy blanket of rain, the visibility over the landscape being extremely poor. Most other people waiting for the shuttle bus fell into the type of people wearing expensive, good outdoors clothes, which I suppose fits my idea of an Icelandic tourist.

At the airport we had an expensive breakfast consisting of a coffee and a sandwich (albeit a good sandwich), then we had to call the car rental agency as they didn’t show up as anticipated. They sent a shuttle car, drove us to their office, we signed the papers and we went out to meet our car for the week: a white Dacia Duster from 2019.

As it turns out, there’s a whoooole bunch of Dusters driving around on the Icelandic roads, seemingly one of the more popular cars to rent out/rent. K started driving today; it is with manual gear so it took a bit of an adjustment after having gotten used to the automatic in his hybrid back home. For me too, when the time came to drive – although overall it went pretty well. No stalling the engine, yet!

Anyway, the plan was to drive to the historic village of Reykholt (in a northbound direction) and then to the warmest hot spring by the village, then continue on towards Snæfellsness peninsula and maybe spend the night up in Olafsvik.

We drove on the ring road going around Reykjavik and from there into the Icelandic landscape. A vast blanket of black lava fields, looking pretty special, with mostly yellow/orange colours, naked mountain sides, and small rivers/brooks breaking through. Impressive; certainly, although to me perhaps not beautiful as far as I’ve seen today. Though, to be fair, better weather would help improve the looks of everything, as the rain lasted all day and was so dense it was like driving in heavy mist at times.

Well, we arrived at a small village called Reykholt but the most interesting thing here was the greenhouses (powered by hot springs), so we figured we had set the GPS to the wrong Reykholt. Herp derp, we were now verging the Golden Circle instead of moving northwards. So, after a visit to the convenience store and the toilet, we decided to find out way back towards the intended Reykholt.

This time as we drove past a lake we saw the sun struggle in vain to peak out through the clouds for a few minutes, which was very pretty. K’s GPS – brought from home – for whatever reason guided us onto the gravel roads of Þingvellir National Park (featured image is from there). It felt like a real adventure, driving rather slowly along the black gravel road, tall mountains rising on the sides, strange rock formations and yellow/orange grass and shrubbery. Definitely good to have a 4WD, though the roads were a lot better here than in Africa. It was quite enjoyable to see the national park from “the inside”.

However, after many kms we reached a dead end! The road had been closed for some reason. We had to drive back a while and then turn down another side gravel path to get to a main, paved road. This road lead us along the shore of Þingvallavatn for a while.

We made a short stop at a parking lot, but it was a “pay to use” parking, despite seemingly being a centre for different hiking routes, so this combined with the rain made us drive on after a short leg stretch.

By now we had decided to aim for Borgarnes and find accommodation there, so that we can drive around Snæfellsnes tomorrow. This took us a bit back in the direction towards Reykjavik before turning in a northern direction. The coastline around Hvalfjordur was very pretty. And I drove through my first tunnel – quite a long one, almost started feeling claustrophobic as it seemed neverending.

When we got to Borgarnes, we walked into the first B&B that we saw, and although K thought it was expensive (150 euros for a room fitting 4 people, nice view over Borgarfjörður, which would surely be epic on a fine day), he booked it. Nice room, I liked it.

We relaxed for a little bit before going out to dinner in the neighbouring restaurant. Had a lovely fish dish and a lemon posset for dessert. We than took a short walk around parts of the town, but it was still windy and there was a cold drizzle so before long we went back to the room for the night.

I took a shower and the water smelled kind of like rotten eggs, aka sulfur. It’s like I don’t smell clean but instead just of farts, and even worse, the whole room smells like a rotten fart now.. still. Part of being on a volcanic island, I guess?