Wednesday 4 September 2013

A wasteland, a glacier and the Highlands

Moving on through flat lands, slowly melting ice caps and greenish pointy mountain tops, our way through Iceland continued to change radically every few km.



After having spent a blissful night at a guest house we encountered our first wasteland - a black flat piece of land that didn't seem to end in the distant horizon - and having slow and thin rivers cross it.. the only way to enjoy that place is to stop moving, sit down, and just feel the world around you.



It's not the easy to comprehend the view and beauty around you, especially if you are a person that is used to places not flat, over crowded and full of constant movement.
This is one of the reasons why Iceland is so spectacular: everything is so quiet here. (Except of course when the sky decides otherwise!)


One of our next stops was the famous Jökulsárlón, a site, where you can watch pieces of ice cut off from the glacier slowly to make their way into the ocean. It's entirely amazing, and cold! 
I even put my hand in the water to see how cold it was. It froze after a few seconds! But it was nice to feel pure glacier water! ^^

Like a pro! picture from inside the car!


And after that, we drove across the coast once again and then moved up to the highlands, moving now north-east of the island. If the coastline is nice, the highlands are not bad either! And we were feeling lucky that we chose 4x4 vehicles so that we could enjoy the spectacular view and places, that one reaches only by gravel road.

At this point a joke also came about, regarding drivers. It was fairly easy to distinguish Icelanders from regular travellers on the road. The difference: Icelanders were driving fast even on gravel roads! 
So it became a bit character-like to imagine Icelanders as being these hardcore and strong people that know how to cope with nature and gravel driving.


The next town we came across was Seyðisfjörður, and we where a bit disappointed, because it looked rather dead, and slightly abandoned. But it's location looked rather ethereal, and fairytale-like. ^^

Soon it was time to set up camp, and since the weather was acting up once again, we moved to camp at a nearby town, and eventually had our very first party!


A few of us wanted to visit a local bar/pub after dinner, so we left the camping searched for one, without any success. So, while walking around and dancing and singing on our own in the middle of the street, we come across 5 Icelanders from Reykjavik wearing their traditional Icelandic jumpers and looking for the same thing as us: a bar.

Of course now, having the help of natives, we found one rather easily, and it was not long before we entered a basement full of young Icelanders and loud music. We tried 'Grandma shots'(try it!) and icelandic beers and got an idea of how locals party. :P

But unfortunately that bar closed rather early, so we went for an afterparty at the art building just next to the camping(!) with the help again of our new Icelandic friends.
Needless to say, we really didn't sleep much that night. xD


Places we visited:
- Thorsmörk

- Skaftafell
- Svartifoss
- Jökulsárlón
- Seyðisfjörður
- Egilsstaðir




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