Yes, we finally made it to Iceland, our long expected destination in the North… It was pretty chilly after the constant 30+ degrees in Spain with the approx. 10 – 14° here. Yet so beautiful and different. So green, lush and … wet …

We took a camper in Iceland (just a tip www.mcrent.eu is a rather moderate (for Iceland) priced rental company) as this is far more convenient than to take the ferry from Denmark which we did the last time we were here. The ferry crossing is (can be…) nice, but it takes 5 days with return trip and you should stop over on the Faroer islands and you have to drive all the way up to northern Denmark as well. So timewise the option to rent here is unbeatable and in total cost as well…

So collecting the camper in Keflavik was easy and after the mandatory security briefing (oh man, what kind of trolls do they get normally??) we were ready to go, yet one thing was still missing… Yes provisions So stacking up evening pleasures (well, wine and beer on top of our duty free allowance) we felt rather lighter around our money wallets as drinks are somehow expensive here. It’s not too bad (you can only buy in the state controlled shops), just a bit. So a real good local artisanal beer (we love IPA and all kind of pale ales) will bring you down around 2,5 – 3 € and a bottle of wine is perhaps 30 – 40% dearer than in Spain (or somewhere else). The real hard stuff is dead expensive, but who is keen on cheap vodka as you cannot really use it aside cleaning windows and sterilizing things?

So finally we made our way to the Snaefelness area (Jules Verne – Journey through the Earth…) and took a little walk around the area.

The old buildings look rather battered and run down. I wouldn’t like to stay here over night…

Majestic lava columns

Very impressive beginning to the local sightings

Guano cave…

Good that we took the pictures this night as next day with low tide things looked totally different

Wonderful lava tunnel (well, the remains of it)

And another view towards the mountain and glacier from the shore

Another natural arch (quite plenty of them there)

And a beautiful bay

Icelandic is a language wonderland for Latvians as is Spain is for Germans – many words here have a totally different meaning in Latvian (as do Spanish words have in German). This one i.e. means “pimple”

Churches are usually isolated and in the middle of nowhere

Professional interest… Anybody at home?

After some time the sun came out and it was becoming a bright clear day (for Iceland). Saying that it means: nearly no wind (which is bad here in the West, where we are now as the sand flies are having a field day – live sushi…), temperatures between 8 – 14° and just a brief shower from time to time. Very pleasant

The gorge was quite impressive, just soooo many tourists. They said it’s increasing 20% p.a. which you can start feeling already. The infrastructure is simply not prepared for so many visitors and on the more popular touristic places (“Golden Circle”) you get them by the cartload. We might have had around 50 people in just half an hour in this place alone…

The lava chimney is gorgeous

Squeezing through

And trying to explore the depths

Back to the outside we continued the coastline as we intended to take the ferry to the Westfjords

Beautiful mossy landscape

and the patched colours just were amazing

shelter

Lava is (given enough water) extremely fertile and the start for almost anything

The colours are just so amazing

Lava is forming columns

Actually more like an old skin which is shed

The landscape here is scattered with old lava flows covered by thick moss

As the this afternoon my glasses finally decided to start to break and my replacement glasses were no good any more, we had to figure out where you can find an optician to fix it. Another lesson learned… When you are on bifocal glasses, get your replacement ones in bifocal as well – anything else is a major disaster.

Saying this it turned out, that Iceland still is a very sparsely inhabited island and the next one would have been either in Akureri (360 km) or close to Reykjavik (180 km)… So, next morning we drove down again, even found the shop and were informed that they cannot fix it… Well, we got the address from a shop in Reykjavik which should, so off we went, found the shop, got the part replaced and drove back to the North. Why couldn’t these glasses decide to have a problem 3 days ago…

So, after another quit night we took up a small path into the mountains to explore the scenery

See the beautiful small flowers everywhere

And just admire the beauty of nature

Exhausted and tired (campers are not the easiest thing to get used to) we climbed and climbed just to figure out in the end that the blue marker which we followed was not the one we thought but a long distance route…

So back we went, to the camping ground. After looking at the quite greenish hot pool we opted out of having a swim…

So our journey took us down the valley with its giant walls of stone formed by glaciers

Moving lawnmowers…

Agricultural landscape

Changing to become rougher after some time

very Northern views

and the road became interesting as well – one piece is not yet covered by asphalt

So suddenly you have to drive some 30 km on the old track

As parking is not easy either, sometimes you can only stop in an obvious place and take your images…

Again something which will not work anymore if there will be many more tourists. Yet as it is right now the 10 cars didn’t bother too much

It was just a gorgeous landscape

And so I had to unpack the big one…

Tidal areas

Too many tourists… (why they don’t invest in a cesspit we didn’t understand either)

As tide was out the bare rock came through

Which is just another beautiful sight

With all the boulders coming out of the water

Isn’t that nice?

Our cool camper

landscape…

small islands

All this looked pretty much like a painting

I can hardly wait to get it all developed in B/W as I made some shots there as well in large format.