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Published: September 10th 2013
Gljufrabui
Who lives here?An Italian out-door club coming to Iceland end of April and are doing a tour around the country before joining a ski-weekend in Isafjordur. The bus was playing tricks on us just before the tour started so had to be fixed the day before. One thing off the check-list. My driver broke his leg a week before the tour, another driver hired on the last minute – one more thing off the check-list.
We, thirty five people, set off in the morning, all skis fitted into the bus and the group was hoping there would be snow somewhere in the hills on our way so they could do some walks. No snow on the southern part except the glaciers that were all white and pretty, but too far away.
The first day was good, the weather so and so, at least we had view to the glacier, which is the source of the water in Gullfoss. We all had a relaxing time in the Jacuzzi in the yard of the hotel. The day after seemed like a short distance to travel so I decided to show the group one church on the way, a little detour. Skálholt used to
Dimmuborgir
A walk in the snow was good be the capital of Iceland more than 200 years ago, such a nice area. After that we visited the waterfalls on the south shore, drove below the mighty Eyjafjallajokull, across the black sands to Klaustur where our hotel for the night was. Some of my tourists hiked to see yet another waterfall, as if those on the south had not been enough.
Another day and great view to all the glaciers on the south-east part. Fantastic to view those magnificent galleries of frost, the glacier lagoon with a sail between the icebergs is one of ‘WOW-places’ in Iceland – ‘WOW-place’ is a place where you hear this exclamation like an echo through the bus. A long day was ahead of us over to the north-east part, but on our way we spotted 16 groups of reindeer, idly grassing even if we stopped to take photos. As we got more north we drove through snow – this looks like January, not April except for the daylight. In January we only have daylight for about 3-6 hours, but end of April daylight is about 20 hours each day, so only that told me it was April.
Today we are to
Rocks
and trees . . drive over to Akureyri, the capital of the northern part. My fellow-travelers from Italy asked if I and the driver were very worried about the snowstorm. What snowstorm? Ah, this is just a drift of snow, nothing serious to worry about. And my driver loves a little challenge so he stops now and then just to take a photo. The road to Dettifoss, the most powerful waterfall in Iceland (and Europe) was impassable. Too much snow. The district of Myvatn is so interesting that we can take a whole day to see it all. As we drove in to Akureyri I found out the ski-slope had been closed two days earlier even if there were plenty of snow in the mountain. The driver then took the group up to the hills above the town and they had great fun in fönn (pronunciation fun, meaning snow in Icelandic).
Our next stop is Isafjordur. My group had a good time in the ski-race. Some of the foreigners in the ski-race were talking about the weather and if the ski-race would be canceled because of weather – an Icelander answered: ‘there’s nothing wrong with the weather, we just move the ski-race to
Gryla's candles
In the Gallery of frost. Steam sprays on a rope another location where there is snow and less wind’. And that was done, everyone happy and we went back to Reykjavik that afternoon after the ski-race was over. I was wondering if it had not been better to stay overnight in Isafjordur one more night rather than drive that afternoon back to Reykjavik, but the day after I heard on the radio that all those who had tried to cross the mountain roads from Isafjordur to Reykjavik the day after the ski-race had got stuck in snow upon the mountain roads. Oh, after all we were lucky we had to cross those mountains the day before, at least we got back to Reykjavik without any problems even if it were not until midnight that we arrived.
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