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Turns out that Hunkubakkar is very nicely situated in a beautiful location at the top of a hill surrounded by high moors. The sheep graze in the surrounding hills. Not a tree in sight. The story goes that here, like in Ireland, the locals cut down all of the trees over the centuries for fuel and building until there were none left. Apparently, there is a movement underway to replant. It has yet to come to fruition but it will be a nice and welcome addition if and when it happens. Now there is just the ceaseless wind and the stark, barren beauty of the countryside.
We had a cabin with two bedrooms.. The rooms were small and there was a shared bathroom with a very tight shower. When you turned on the shower it sprayed directly out into the room which was an interesting design.
There are blackout curtains on the windows but during the long spring and summer nights, there is always light coming in. It never gets totally dark this time of year. The sun dips just below the horizon and stays there all night.
Woke up this morning to a driving mist. Made my way to the restaurant for breakfast. The breakfast room is a nice room with windows on three sides, light and cheery. They serve the typical breakfast: cereal, sliced cheese and meats, rolls, coffee, juice, and freshly made bread with homemade jam. The only caveat was that they didn’t open for breakfast until 8 a.m. When you wake up at 6:15 a.m., that means that there is a lot of time to kill before you can eat and start your day. Fortunately, that forces me to catch up on my journaling in that downtime.
Our first stop of the day was at Fjadrargljufur Canyon. Conveniently, it was a five-minute drive from our B & B. This is a spectacular formation, a deep, steep-sided gorge with waterfalls and a rushing river. This is a fairly remote attraction but after a Justin Bieber music video was shot here back in 2015, crowds thronged. The video had an astonishing 440 million views. The infrastructure is woefully inadequate and the National Park Service was caught with their pants down. Over 2.7 million visitors visited Iceland in 2018. When the video was shot, there were no restrictions as to where you could walk and hike. There are several great vistas but they all end in breathtaking sheer drops hundreds of feet to the canyon floor.
When Justin Bieber makes a video, he can go wherever he wants.
The decade of foot traffic has worn deep tracks to the edges, not to mention the hundreds of cellphones and occasional tourists that ended up in the river. In 2019, the park was closed for all but five weeks of the year due to the environmental damage. Smartly, the Park Service has improved the walkways, put up guardrails, and constructed permanent overlooks for the best views. The parking lot was tiny though and it was full. There are no bathroom facilities despite the number of visitors. It’s kind of a cluster.
You park at the base at river level by the road and then hike up a fairly steep path to the top where the magnificent vista overlooks the river and canyon below. There are multiple places to take pictures, all of them with spectacular overlooks. There were people from all over the world there. I must have taken dozens of pictures. I am fortunate to be traveling with three patient fellow photographers and we have come up with a common theory, that in Iceland you can’t take a bad photograph.
After hiking the canyon, we decided to head up the road to visit Skaftarstofa waterfall. It was also a short drive and there were a couple of gas stations, a grocery store, several restaurants, and other amenities in the area. It was a real town. The waterfall is right off one of the local streets. There is a picturesque little park at the base with a couple of picnic tables. We parked across the street at the Kjarr Restaurant, where we would eat dinner later.
The trail takes you up some steep steps until you come to the top, about ¾ mile or so. The view of the river that becomes the waterfall and the endless vista beyond is worth the effort. There is a small pump house at the top also and a beautiful, placid reservoir. It is an idyllic location.
This is a traditional sod structure at the base of the falls. It is now a storage shed.
This is the Skaftarstofa Systravatn or reservoir at the top of the falls. The story goes that the nuns used to swim in here.
After our hike, we had lunch in the park at the bottom. When we had been at the top of the waterfall earlier, we noticed that there was a swimming pool nearby. So we decided to check it out in hopes of relaxing in a soothing, hot tub. The pool was part of a community recreation center which included a child’s play area, a soccer field, an indoor basketball court, and the pool. Nice place, clean and modern. We paid our money and discovered that there were three pools to enjoy, a main swimming pool and two hot tubs at different temperatures. We had heard that the Icelanders were notorious for their obsession with cleanliness and they frown upon outsiders who do not follow their protocols. It’s obvious when you enter the locker room.
In case you didn't know where your "dirty" places are, they have posted a handy chart.
I found out later from the girls that you do not wear shoes into the locker rooms. You are supposed to remove your shoes after checking in and well before entering the locker rooms. This is to keep dirt out of those areas. The girls were stopped and scolded and made to remove theirs. I was blissfully unaware but made sure to carry mine to the entrance before putting them on again. Additionally, you are required to take a trunkless shower before entering the pool. They are quite specific about your “dirty” zones. I was a little surprised that there was no one there to inspect me before I entered the pool.
We took turns lounging in the hot tub and cooling off in the pool for about an hour. The hot tub was pretty toasty, 40 degrees C. You can lay in the hot water and enjoy the waterfall and vista in the near distance. It’s pretty idyllic.
Clean and refreshed, we headed back to the B & B. Along the drive back there is a really interesting terrain consisting of endless dunes and hummocks. Of course, we had to stop multiple times to photograph.
We returned to the B & B and decided that our next excursion would be an interesting side highway loop not too far away. In fact, it was right back where we had just been. This is a small, lightly traveled route. The first part of the drive we drove through a landscape that resembled a moonscape- barren and desolate but interesting. There are very few houses, what would you do out here?
There were occasional sheep ranches. The interesting thing about this road, and Iceland in general, is how quickly the landscape can change. Way off in the distance, a lone church stood against a horizon of barren rock and marsh. We stopped to check it out. It was an old church, called Langholtskirkja, established in 1863, surrounded by a graveyard. It appeared to still be in use judging by the clean and organized interior that we could see through the windows. The church was surrounded by a graveyard. It appeared that the graves themselves were above ground, forming humps. We walked around the graveyard and grounds and took pictures.
Continuing on, the landscape again morphed into a stupendously vast river delta that flowed off into the distance. I expected to see a wooly mammoth come ambling by. The terrain that ran up to the bluffs surrounding the riverbed was stacked with a jumble of round rocks uniformly covered in moss. It was a surreal landscape. What made it even better was the distant snow-covered mountains. I stopped about every 50 feet to take photos as the light improved and it got more and more interesting until I started to hear grumbling from my fellow passengers. I could take a hint. Time to get moving.
Back on the main road we only stopped a few more times as the light continued to get better and better. You could literally spend months photographing this weird and beautiful country.
Since we were close, we went immediately to dinner at Kjarr. It had gotten great recommendations online so we decided to give it a try. It did not disappoint. The drinks were good, the food terrific and the waitstaff young, energetic, and eager to please. The Icelandic vibe is pretty great. The restaurants are warm, inviting and informal and the food has been really tasty. There tends to be just a few things on the menu like Arctic Char and lamb that come with potatoes or root vegetables and a tasty and rich cream sauce. The girls split a bottle of wine and I had a nice beer. For dessert, we split a couple of servings of rhubarb crumble with ice cream, the perfect finish to push us over the top. My new motto for dining out is, “If you ain’t overeating, you ain’t trying”.
We returned to the house. It was about 8:00. It was still light so I decided to take a walk, to make myself feel a little bit better. Nancy did the same, crossing the road to the farmer’s house to get a close-up look at the ewes and lambs. I walked a little way down the road to where two bridges span two separate rivers.
Unfortunately, it had clouded over again and the light was flat and gray. Still, the walk helped me shake down my big dinner. When I got back to the cabin, we played a long game of Feffer. We were just getting settled in when our smoke alarm started blaring. This led to several moments of chaos and disorientation until Susan ran to the office and brought help. A young man was able to disable the alarm and things returned to normal. We played cards for a couple of hours and eventually turned in at about 11 p.m. Another very full and satisfying day.