Northern Iceland Means Whales and Puffins and Volcanos, Oh My!

From the East Fjords we headed to the wild and remote north and west of Iceland, a much less visited part of the country, but as you would expect, amazing in its own right.  Heading northwest from Seydisfjorder, we drove through Egilsstadur and out into a vast volcanic wasteland, punctuated by scenes like this:

Our first real stop was mighty Dettifoss, the largest waterfall by volume in all of Europe.  The Jokulsa a Fjollum (don't ask, I have no idea how to pronounce that) river carves a canyon through thick basalt in Jokulsargifjulfur (ditto) National Park. 

The fall is only 44 meters/130 feet high, and only about 100 meters/300 feet wide, but so much volume pours over, the misty plume that shoots up can be seen a mile away.  It is no Niagra, but it is beautiful in its starkness and power.  Here are a few photos:

That last photo is my favorite version of a selfie -- can you see my shadow in the middle of that beautiful, amazing scene?  It was awesome!

 The surrounding area looks like a wasteland because it is where the Atlantic rift zone passes through the northern part of Iceland, which gave us the chance to see more fun volcanic features in an area known as Krafla.  While it is not Yellowstone (nowhere is) you can feel (and smell) that the bowels of the planet are quite close there.  Here are the kids, as we left the car:

And here in part is what they were smelling and hearing:

So much steam escaped from this odd pyre that it sounded like a jet engine, and the smell of the place was the most intense sulfur I have ever experienced. I am quite sure it would be lethal over the medium and long term, but thankfully, the location is relatively small, and did not take that long to walk around.  Here are a few of the scenes: 

There were mud-pots and sulfur ponds everywhere.

Kathleen and Kate wandering the wasteland.

Volcano in the background looks kind of ominous, no?

This is how unsupervised this place is. You could walk right up to this massive steam fumerole.  Keegan decided that the smell was so bad, he had to faint.

I think that boy may have acting in his genes somewhere.

One of the many craters in the area, this one filled with a luminescent lake.

Rainbow over the whole mess made it feel a little like OZ or something equally surreal.

From Krafla, we headed north, to the northernmost part of Iceland that we visited: Husavik.  A port on the Greenland Sea, we came to find whales and puffins, and to see what it might be like to sail so close to the arctic circle.  We were not disappointed.

First up they outfitted us with these giant, insulated jumpsuits, telling us that not only would we need them to keep us warm (true dat) but that they had built in flotation, just in case (yikes).  Fortunately seas were relatively calm (though it did not keep poor Kate from feeling sick almost the whole time), and off we went, northward in the Greenland Sea.

It did not take long for us to find whales. While not quite the experience we had in Baja, it is kind of fun to see whales from two different oceans in the same year!

Plus, they threw in some dolphins to keep us entertained on the trip.

If you click on the above and blow it up, you will see thousands of black dots in the air. What might they be you ask?

Puffins! They estimate there are over a million that come to this island in the summer to mate, lay eggs and hatch little puffins.  The darn things are way faster than they look, reaching speeds of between 40 and 50 miles an hour (unless they have a belly full of fish, of course, in which case they sometimes can't even get off the water, and their efforts to do so are hysterical).  It made them pretty hard to photograph, but this was the best I could do from a moving boat. Pro photographers have nothing to worry about, obviously, and are amazing in the images they can produce. But it was fun to see those happy little faces, even if they are kind of blurry.

We circled the island for perhaps 30 minutes, just taking it all in. The amazing thing is that puffins are quiet. For all those birds, there was so little noise it just astounded me. Maybe they are secretly telepathic, who knows?  The best part of the voyage though, is that just three or four hours on the Greenland Sea left me looking like I belonged with all those grizzled seaman. Who knew?

Following a nice lunch in town (really good fish and chips from a harbor side hole in the wall), we headed to our next destination: Godafoss (literally: God Falls) the stunning waterfall that opened this post.  Here are a couple more photos of that remarkably beautiful place:

Time began to run short on our trip, and so even though we had not really scratched the surface of the great north, we left Godafoss to begin a mad dash west and our two final destinations: the remote Westfjords, and the Secret-Life-of-Walter-Mitty famous Snaefellsnes peninsula (go ahead and pronounce that, I dare you.  We just took to calling it the snuffleupagus peninsula -- it was way easier). That will be the subject of our next, and final, Iceland post.

Go East, Young Man (or Woman), For A Great Time In Iceland

Heading Northeast from Jokulsarlon, it was foggy and felt very mystic, as we stumbled first upon one of the cooler black sand beaches in Iceland. I wish I could remember what it was called exactly, but it started out with large pebbles, looking like this:

and they just kept getting smaller and smaller, until you got out to the shore, where they took on the look and feel of fine sand.  

We collected bottles of the stuff, it was so pretty, and brought them home -- they are sitting on the desk as I type this. We continued northeast toward Hofn, our evening destination, skirting the perimeter of the vast Vatnajokull ice cap, which gave us scenes like these:

Naturally, we had to get out and explore.  One of the great things about hiking a bit in Iceland is that while there are no trees, the trails generally look like this:

With so many colors in the details, it is hard to take it all in.  Kudos to Kate, who took the pictures below, for capturing the wonder of looking down on an Icelandic trail.

We stopped in Hofn for the night, which is a great place to stop, as it is the langostino capital of Iceland (maybe the world) and we ate a bunch of them straight from the ocean for dinner. It was a tasty way to end a great day.

Following a good night's rest, we began one of our longer drives, all along the ins and outs of the east fjords. It was a part of the country that we thought we might skip, but that would have been a mistake.  The scenery is just beautiful.  After driving a ways in the morning, we stopped here, in a no name place, for lunch in our mobile home.  This is what a no name place looks like in Iceland:

The blue in the water had to be seen to be believed.  Cliff jumping, anyone?  Nate Brown, you know you would . . .

There were low clouds and mist all around, adding to the otherworldly aura of this place.

And then they would lift, and you would see this:

Or this:

And then it would close back in again, adding more mystery to the ever-present water falls along the way.

As evening approached, we decided to stop in a little town at the head of Reydarfjordur, to go for a swim.   Every little town in Iceland, it seems, has some version of this -- heated pools to bask in, along with a sauna, and a cold dipping pool that feels like an ice block (Keegan was the only one brave enough to plunge in -- I do think he must be part Viking). We had a delightful time, mingling with tourists from France, bemoaning jointly the way terrorist attacks (e.g. in Nice and the Bataclan attack) were changing our countries, filling them with fear and anger, leaving people less open and optimistic. That was the only sad part of the stay, though, as a hot water soak is good for anyone's soul, and the sound of kids on a water slide will almost always bring a smile.

Even thought it was getting late, we decided to make the dash over to Egilsstadir and then up over the mountain range to Seydisfjordur.  That turned out to be a great decision.

Here is what the road looked like on the way over, and the drive gave way to some of the most beautiful cloud colors I have ever seen, from a deep ice blue to sunset orange and back again. It felt wild and raw and simply amazing to watch this parade of light, all at around midnight, in a land of midnight sun.

We finally pulled away and began our descent into Seydisfjorder, which got a little dicey in the 1:00 am twilight, particularly when the fog and mist rolled in.

We made it down the winding road, pulled into town, and found a camp spot at around 2:00 a.m.  After too short a night, we woke up, did some laundry and wandered around tiny Seydisfjordur, one of the prettiest towns we saw in all of Iceland. Here are some of the scenes:

After grabbing a bite to eat, we headed out in to the desolate north, looking for our next Iceland adventure.