Chasing Waterfalls: Iceland Part 3

Day 5

Today was a collection of little roadside stops as we drove back Westward towards Myvatn. I think we’ve become spoilt with all the waterfalls we’ve seen on this trip. Mom kept pointing out waterfalls that we could see from the road, but interest remained minimal and was reserved for the big ones. We stopped at a traditional turf house that was beside the road for another round of “My Tall Mother Being Tall Next To Things.” Another stop was a short basalt column hike at Fljotsdalsherad.

The main highlight of the day were the two waterfalls, Dettifoss and Selfoss. These places don’t look possible. The sound of the waterfalls could be heard a long time before you beheld the sheer majesty of thousands of gallons of water just surging down a chasm. The slippery rocks made scrambling around with a tripod a bit tricky but I managed and was having a field day taking as many photos as possible. Dettifoss is the first big one, then after a short hike, Selfoss looks like a place where an evil villain would have a secret lair, a chasm of waterfalls that disappears into the distance.

Some photos may need a bit of cropping- I hear some families can take normal photos.

We did a quick drive through Huskavik, a Northern fishing town, and had a beautiful meal of lobster soup. The food in Iceland is amazing. It’s a lot of seafood; Arctic char on mushroom risotto, lobster pizza, and many other delicious dishes, but their main traditional foods are lobster soup and mashed fish. I haven’t tried fermented shark (do do do doo doot).

Now this is the tragic saga of the Peter’s Parking Lot Pasta. I do not raise my head with pride at the remembrance, but it is a story that, alas, must be told. As previously stated, most of the nights we had planned to camp, however, this evening the clouds had decided to absolutely dump it down. No one was too eager to set up in the rain so we decided to get a hotel. Despite already having had dinner, the boys were still hungry. Previous times, we had been able to get rooms with a kitchenette so that we could use the food that we had bought, but these rooms were smaller than university dorms, which meant that that was not an option. So instead, I received a text telling me to bring the cheese down to the car, and there I beheld a sight that I will never forget. My beloved mother and brothers were hunched over a camp stove, sheltered only by the open trunk. looking like trolls cooking a hapless traveller, as the Icelandic rain poured over their heads. Dad was, mercifully, taking a nap in his room.

The pasta was delicious and I did the washing up in the shower. Not our proudest moment but a testament to the Mennonite will.

Day 6

We started at the day at Dimmuborgir, a lava field that looked like the ruins of an ancient civilization. The black rocks looked like once tall towers, graceful arches, and domed rooms that had then been destroyed in a siege or dragon fire. Of course Günter felt like he was right back home, post-asteroid. A German tourist was delighted when he saw Günter’s bearded head bobbing around the trails. He said that his guide had told him that palaeontologists had never found a dinosaur on Iceland but now he could say that he had.

We did a short hike to a hidden hot spring that had been buried in a recent earthquake. Of course, once we’d already hiked there we realized it had a parking lot right next to if and you could just drive. You had to scramble down the rocks a bit, but once you were inside, you were sat next to an iridescent, steaming, pool. We managed to get in there when there when there were only a couple people around, right before a tour bus full of people pulled up. We had quite decent timing this trip, usually leaving right as the grey-haired hordes pulled up.

Now I haven’t talked much about the smell. I have yet to see it mentioned on any Icelandic tourism ads, but let it be known that while Iceland is jaw-droopingly gorgeous, the whole country smells like a fart. A very eggy-fart. Most of Iceland’s energy is geothermal, they have hot springs everywhere, but this means that every time you are outside or turn on a faucet or a shower, it smells like someone’s ripped one. Admittedly, a small price to pay. However, Námafjall brings this to another level. I have NEVER smelt something so awful in my life. Bubbling pits of suffer unleashed such a rotten stench that I was dry heaving in my mouth. The smell clung to you, it wriggled its way into your shirt and stuck itself to your boots. The landscape the smell emanated from was amazing, it looked like the surface of a distant planet, bright orange with grey-blue pools of frothing sludge and you could feel the heat that was desperately trying to escape the ground. The beauty and the vile stench about evened out.

One of my absolute highlights of the trip was Goðafoss. The foss of fosses. I could spend years taking pictures there. It’s called the God Falls because, legend has it, that as a symbol of Iceland making Christianity the official religion in 1000AD, a Viking law speaker, Þorgeir, threw his statues of the Norse gods into the churning falls. Of course the Viking dress came out and I think I have the best photos I will ever have of myself. Ever. Hence new profile/ cover photos that will likely stay put for a very long time.

Day 7 - Last Day

This last day was a wander around the Snaefellsness Peninsula, looking at the Raudfeldar canyon, the Búðakirkja, the beautiful Arnarstapi coastline, and the Vatnshellir caves. Today was so windy we didn’t want to walk anywhere near the cliffs, you could jump and be moved over or a sudden gust would send you flying. My hair was completely untameable, and I wouldn’t be able to comb it out until I was back in the UK. To get out of the wind, we did the cave tour, which are the same caves featured in Jules Verne’s novel ‘Journey to the Centre of the Earth.’ The caves had been carved out by lava flows, creating a large pocket that has been there for millennia. We had the moment where everyone turns out their lights and you just stand in silence, listening to the echoes of dripping water, in a darkness that swallows you whole.

That is until Steve starts Gollum breathing in your ear.

We knew we were coming the end of our journey as we had finally run out of chocolate bars and custard cremes. We drove back to Reykjavik, had dinner at an amazing free-refill Icelandic local restaurant, and then accidentally broke into the wrong cabin for the night.

This whole trip was amazing and it was such an amazing time to spend with my family.