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What a night’s sleep! With the combination of sleep deprivation, exercise, and fresh air, I woke up feeling like a new man. Let’s go! The Milk Factory has a big common room where they serve their guests breakfast. There are hard-boiled eggs, slices of ham, yogurt, cheese, and tomato; coffee, juice, and milk; there are three kinds of hearty homemade breads and various cereals. The only challenge is to not eat too much! I failed the challenge.
On a side note, the breakfast room played Icelandic music for their guests. The same for the restaurant from the previous night, the Pakhuss. Good for them for promoting local artists.
We ate our fill and loaded up for today’s adventures. The one thing that you can count on in Iceland is the variability of the weather. We joke in Minnesota that if you don’t like the weather, just wait a minute. There it is sort of true, here it is definitely true. The key word to remember when you visit Iceland is layers. On a typical day, it can be in the 30’s and raining with the wind blowing 40 MPH. Then throughout the day, the wind can die down, the sun can come out and it can be quite pleasant. In between it can change in a heartbeat. So today I had on my long johns, a base layer mock turtleneck, a mid-layer quarter zip, a fleece, Eddie Bauer windproof and waterproof guide pants, warm socks, Gore-Tex hiking shoes, neck gaiter, stocking cap, and gloves. I throw my wind jacket in the car if/when the rain lets up.
When you drive the two-lane belt road it is interesting that most of the bridges are one-lane. You have to stop and take turns when you cross.
There are also an incredible number of rental camper vans. Seems like this is the preferred way to travel at least if you are young and don’t require a certain amount of comfort like us older folks.
Our first stop was to explore the Viking Village. As we headed out, the wind was blowing like crazy and the snow was swirling. You’ve got to be prepared. Thankfully because of my many canoe trips in the Boundary Waters and daily training in dealing with the elements in Minnesota, we came prepared. This morning I am wearing four layers and prepared for anything. We bought our tickets at the little camp store for entry at Vesterhorn and drove down to the site. The village is in private hands so the money is their permission to visit. It's a bit of a walk. Fortunately at about the time we got there, the snow had stopped and the sky lightened up. The village is not a Disney attraction. There are signs saying that the owners are not responsible for injuries and it appears that there has been little in the way of repairs or improvements. However, the village was built to last. The few buildings on the property were built of sturdy, thick wood. There is a three-story home built of stone. The Viking ship had been a functioning vessel. There are the remains of an engine room and storage below. Although it hasn’t seen the water in a while, it looks like, with a little TLC, it would be seaworthy again.
After some great photo ops, we next headed for the Black Beach at Vesterhorn, located just south of the village. It is part of the entrance fee. It is a wild and beautiful site. The mountains, shrouded in clouds and snow tower over the whole area. Theis area is composed of hundreds of acres of black sand dunes and beach. There is a lighthouse at the tip of the beach and a beach that you can walk as long as you’d like. It is hard to conceptualize the scale of the terrain around here. Things that look close can be very far away. As the sun lit the nearby cliffs and water, we hiked and photographed for about an hour. It is a cool, striking terrain. It would be easy to spend an entire day here or just about any other place that we had visited. But we had a full itinerary and it was time to move on to our next stop.
Our next stop was Glacier Lagoon National Park and Diamond Beach which are right on the main road and across from each other. The Glacier Lagoon Park is a very popular site for tourist groups and campers. It’s a very interesting place. It’s a large lake with icebergs floating in it. The bottoms of the bergs are a deep blue.
They offer kayak, Zodiac, and duck boat tours but we opted just for a walk along the shore which offered unlimited photo ops. There were some interesting seabirds and a seal that kept popping its head out of the water. We walked for about an hour and then drove across to Diamond Beach. Diamond Beach, as you can tell by the name, is a stretch of black sand beach that is littered with small pieces of pure, transparent ice in interesting and varied shapes. It’s hard to take a bad picture here.
Our last adventure of the day was Hangandifoss Waterfall - Múlagljúfur Canyon. Try saying that three times fast! We drove a long stretch of open road with dramatic mountains and glaciers on one side and endless tundra and black sand stretching off into the distance on the other side.
This is an Icelandic "rest stop". No toilets, no running water, no trees. Enjoy.
We turned off of the main road and onto a potholed gravel road that was very rough and slow going. After a very slow traverse, we finally arrived at the parking lot. The falls lie at the top of a distant peak. The hike roughly follows a mountain stream that goes up and up and up until it reaches the top of the mountain.
The four of us started up. It was a workout, described in the guidebook as a “moderately difficult” walk or run. Run? It didn’t take long to verify the “difficult” part. The path is rough in parts and goes up at a fairly steep angle. After about 15 minutes, Susan and Nancy decided not to go any further. Juli and I forged on. Juli is a walking machine. She just keeps on going, never seeming to get tired. She set a brisk pace. Soon we were hot and sweating. We kept at it. The guidebook had said that the entire round trip would be about 3.4 miles and take about two hours. It felt a lot longer than that but the higher we climbed, the better the views. As we got closer to the top, the waterfalls revealed themselves. The views just got more and more grand. It was amazing seeing the water drop sometimes hundreds of feet off of sheer cliffs.
Large white birds soared and circled in and around the water. They nested in the cliffs surrounding the falls. We finally made it to the top, took our final pictures of the views, and headed down. It had been an amazing and exhausting trip. My legs felt like rubber but my artificial joints held up, thank God. By the time we finally arrived back at the parking lot, it was time to get some food and check in at our next B & B, Hunkubakkar Guesthouse and Farm. It was quite a drive, almost two hours and we had just enough time to make our dinner reservation at the on-site restaurant.
Hunkubakker lies on a lonely road about a mile from the main highway. You cross a wide valley with a couple of roaring rivers and single-lane bridges. Eventually you drive up and out of the valley before you reach the Guesthouse. We checked in and enjoyed a lovely dinner. There was a three-course meal on the menu as well as individual dishes of local lamb (from across the street at the farm) and Arctic Char.
Pretty tasty. I had my first beer, an Icelandic IPA. After dinner, we repaired to our cabin for a couple of hours of Feffer, bad jokes, and an after dinner aperitif. Due to the tight quarters, the girls had constructed a crafty wine dispensary setup that was put to good use.