Advertisement
Published: April 17th 2012
Edit Blog Post
Greeting All
This is Part two of my Iceland Blog
We arrived in Reykjavik after a long 400km and slow (I couldn’t afford another speeding ticket) drive along the south coast. It had been drizzling most of the day and as we got closer to Reykjavik it started to get a lot heavier. Our first impressions were that is was a ghost town, there was hardly a car on the road or anyone on the streets. We had to double check that this was a Saturday and not a Sunday. We subsequently learnt that on the Easter weekend the majority of the population like to get together as a family and east a meal of lamb at home.
After we found our hostel and dropped our gear off we headed out into the rain to explore. First impression was there are lots of bars and restaurants and you can tell that the reputation of being a hard drinking and party city are well founded. As a pint of larger is over 6 quid we decided that some duty free vodka whilst we got ready for an evening out would be a good idea as otherwise a full night
on the town would bankrupt you!! Live music seems to be the big thing in Reykjavik so we saw plenty of decent live acts on our bar crawl round the city centre.
Next morning we woke up late and hungover and left for our self drive golden circle tour. This has to be one of the best day tours I have ever been on. Just 20km’s outside of Reykjavik is the Pingvellir national park, Icelands first UNESCO site. Its and incredibly beautiful park full of incredible landscapes, Iceland’s largest lake and snow-capped mountains. It also has huge rifts and gorges caused by the tectonic plates moving apart as well as dramatic waterfalls and some great hiking. The icing on the cake is that this is the site of the world’s first parliament which was formed as part of an clan meeting ground where the laws were readout and passed and disputes settled.
Just outside the park is the town of Geyser. Named after the geothermal area full of, yes you guessed it Geysers. All Geysers the world over are named after this town. The area also contains Europe’s largest waterfall Gullfoss which is an awe inspiring site. For
a country packed full of waterfalls this is easily the most impressive. We had decided to spend the evening over on the snaefell peninsula at a town called Stykkisholmur. It was another long drive but as the sun was shining and we had such a nice day, we were in good spirits. Stykkisholmur is on the coast and faces north so it is a great place to see the Northern lights. It is also famous for its Orca population so we planned on doing a boat cruise the next day around the island in the bay looking for whales. The snaefell peninsula is also one of the most beautiful areas of Iceland and the inspiration behind the book “Journey to the centre of the earth” so we were very much looking forwards to our visit.
As usual when we got to the snaefell peninsula the weather closed in and as climbed a pass through the mountain chain that runs the length of the snaefell peninsula its started to snow. We were not expecting snow on our trip!! Stykkisholmur is an incredibly beautiful town (my favourite that we saw in Iceland) set on high ground above a very picturesque natural
harbour with snow capped mountains as the back drop. But as this was Easter weekend it was deserted (I bet this place is amazing in the summer). We drove around the town three times looking for anyone who could direct us to our hostel and didn’t see a living soul. Every shop and restaurant was shut and it was raining fairly hard and blowing a gale. We finally spotted a guy taking his rubbish out and pounced on him much to his surprise, and as it’s such a small town he directed us to our guest house.
Our guest house was probably the nicest B&B I have ever stayed at, and un-surprisingly we were the only guests so we had the place to ourselves. The included the hot-tub on the decking so we grabbed a bottle of wine and soaked away the travel fatigue. On a clear night you can see the northern lights from the hot tub..... But it was blowing a gale and raining (and a bit of snow) and with a thick cloud layer so no chance of the northern lights, we were beginning to get a little bit desperate that we would not see them!!!
The next morning the weather was still foul and blowing a gale with fog and drizzle but the lady in the guest house assured us it would clear by midday so we set off on a 4 hour drive around the peninsular back to Reykjavik hoping that we could spot whales from the cliffs around the headland. The weather got worse the farther around the peninsular we went and I had to battle the wind on the more exposed stretches to keep the hire car on the road!! As we got to the end of the peninsular the high wind had created an ice blizzard with the snow and ice blow down from the icecap and turned everywhere into a white out conditions, it was a pretty sketchy drive for a few hours until we got all the way around to the more sheltered side.
We finally arrived in Reykjavik exhausted and swearing blind that I would never set foot in the hire car again. The sun was shining in patches through the clouds so we set out on foot to find a nice fish restaurant. Reykjavik is a much nicer place when it wasn’t raining
and we spend an enjoyable evening watching the sun-set and taking photos. We had a big decision to make, despite being exhausted and having driven 1800km in 5 days and having to be up to get our flight at 6am did we roll the dice one last time and head out looking for northern lights?? We decided to take the gamble and wearily dragged ourselves into the hire car once again and headed to the Pingvellir national park which is pitch black at night and also inland with a clear sightline north. We drove to an isolated spot and waited for it to get dark.
The problem was though it was pitch dark and you could see stars through the clouds everywhere but north. To the north it still was incredibly light and by now it was 11:30pm and we had been waiting for hours in the cold. We decided to move positions (on a cloudy night you have to chase the gaps in the cloud) before calling it a night. About 5kms down the road Louise pointed to a green glow directly above us in a northern direction, was that it? Is this the Fabled northern lights? I
Swerved off the road and we jumped out eyes glued to the sky and the green smudge got stronger as we saw the Northern lights dance across the sky. Over the next hour we chased the northern lights displays across the sky with the strongest and most visually stunning coming just 13km from Reykjavik. They were definitely worth the wait!!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.058s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 9; qc: 30; dbt: 0.0348s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Rachel
non-member comment
Wow again!
Glad you got to see the lights. Iceland looks so amazing - stunning scenery.