Reykjavík Grapevine - 13.07.2007, Blaðsíða 24

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The last time I came to Iceland, in 2006, I drove
the 1,339 km Ring Road in 27 hours. My best
friend and I came flying out of Reykjavík in our
Toyota Yaris at twice the speed limit, so used
to Los Angeles highway speeds and habits
that we took the roads like we were fighting
our way to the Valley at rush hour. We blasted
ACDC’s Back in Black the entire way, shout-
ing the lyrics and riding just as much on our
high testosterone levels as on the expensive
petrol. We flew through the low fog on the
cliff roads on the east fjords, hypnotised by
the road into the wee hours of the morning.
I remember snapping awake at the wheel on
the rocky ledges of mountain road 939, on one
of the windiest and most dangerous passages
in the country.
We slept only once, for 2 hours, in an
Egilsstaðir parking lot.
We had truly believed that our return to
Reykjavík would mark us as heroes. We antici-
pated that American appreciation of getting
’er-done and getting ’er-done quick. Instead
we were received as the most amateurish tour-
ists in town. “But didn’t you look at any-
thing?” the Icelanders asked us. “Didn’t you
stop anywhere?” We looked at one another,
dumbfounded. “Well, sometimes. When we
needed gas?”
One man went so far as to open up a photo
album from his last trip around the Ring Road,
pointing out all of the beautiful places we’d
missed. Oops.
So I proposed, nearly a year later, that I
reconcile my stupidity with another trip. This
time, I’d give my senses all the things I’d denied
them that obnoxious day-and-three-hours last
July.
Reykjavík - Akureyri
My girlfriend arrived in Keflavík Airport from
Baltimore at approximately 6 in the morning
on July 2. She had been in transit for nearly
30 hours, and was now battling what seemed
to be an oncoming fever. I took her back to
my flat and tucked her in, and hoped to God
we could do this.
Even with my background in collegiate
procrastination, the situation seemed out of
control: I wasn’t packed, I had very little idea
of where I would be going, and any lodgings
I might find once I’d arrived were even more
uncertain. My arrival at Hertz was clouded by
thoughts of high fevers, hypothermia, and
rental car catastrophes on dirt roads so Podunk
it’d be a miracle if your telephone could even
reach the 112 emergency line.
The 2007 Toyota Yaris is by no means a
spectacular vehicle. In fact, it looks more like
a colossal cell phone than a vehicle safe for
use on barely-maintained Icelandic mountain
roads. Still, rental car companies consistently
choose this car as the one most suitable and
reliable for ambitious foreign travellers, and it
is the typical “Tourist!” harbinger throughout
rural Iceland. A strong Yaris presence in any
carefully surveyed parking lot gives an oft-
helpful warning of one national hazard, the
fanny-pack brigade.
By the time I got back to my flat, my girl-
friend was on her feet, armed with my external
frame backpack, our flannel sleeping bag, and
the utensils and necessities for three days of
semi-legitimate “roughing it.” We picked up
a tent for about 4,000 ISK at the cheap ap-
pliance store Rúmfatalagerinn and grabbed
a few “BBQ Life” disposable instant grills,
which would prove most indispensable to our
stomachs, wallets, and minds.
An unimpressive stretch of road led us out
of Reykjavik and into the western farmlands.
There was something about moving clockwise
that felt natural: my last trip had moved coun-
ter clockwise – it had been intense and danger-
ous, so masculine it bordered on irrational. But
the drive through the mild, green countryside
seemed settling. I felt safe, and the contrast
was great enough with my original circuit to
dispel my fears of laughing Icelanders and let
me refocus on the land.
The road went from dull to unbelievable as
we came into a mountain pass called Öxnad-
alsheiði. Green slopes rose dramatically on
either side of us and the sun lit up every nook
on the mountain face. In utter disbelief of the
ubiquitous rolling green, we stopped the car
to immerse ourselves in sunlight and explore a
meadow that lay at the foot of the slopes. In
retrospect, it was one of the least impressive
panoramas we would see, but it was also the
harbinger for every kid-at-Disneyland sensation
we would have in the coming days.
We got to Akureyri around dinnertime
and paid way too much (even by Icelandic
standards) for a pathetic burger and some
skinny fries. After finding a guesthouse just
outside of the town centre, we crashed, just
hard enough to overcome the lopsided box
springs of our three Goldilocks cots.
Dimmuborgir
There is a sign in Akureyri, Iceland’s second
largest city, that reads “Akureyri: The Cultural
Capital of Iceland.” Somehow this appeared
to be an inflated self-concept. After strolling
the “Capital’s” only two commercial streets in
search of a reasonable cafe, we were nothing
short of forced to forage for our breakfast in
the brightly lit aisles of the town’s single 10-11.
So much for culture.
The ring road took us to the other side
of the enormous coastal hill of “Vaðlaheiði,”
that stands off against Akureyri, winding into
yet another perpetually green and unexciting
stretch. It seemed that throughout the drive,
the wake of dramatic landmarks nearly always
delivered bits of repose, in boring sections of
road that acted like the stasis after a mas-
sive earthquake. Goðafoss (“The Waterfall of
the Gods”), falling for 12 meters on the river
Skjálfandafljót, ordered us out of our ring-road
hypnosis. We scrambled up a wet cliff and
witnessed the wide falls, a full thirty meters
of churning water.
The road took us onward to Mývatn, the “fly
lake” in Northern Iceland I had been reading
about since my middle school Geology class. An
unmissable series of craters and grassy miniature
volcanoes caught our attention. It was impos-
sible to be disappointed by the sheer bizarreness
of these landforms, and a walk around this area
(we had to trespass a little) took me back to
that “elf country” feeling I had forgotten about
a week after moving to Iceland.
Our next scene was Dimmuborgir, on the
eastern shore of Mývatn. When you search the
internet for this Icelandic “Dark Fortress,” you
mostly end up with entries and websites about
the Norwegian metal band of the same name,
which is sad, because Dimmuborgir offers an
enormous playground of dark and towering
lavaforms, humbling remnants of awesome
volcanic activity. The path through Dimmuborgir
unravelled like a tour of an abandoned city,
many of the crusty forms themselves (like
“Kirkja,” or “Church”) eerie replicas of iconic
Baroque architecture.
After a quick grocery shopping excursion,
we rolled out of the Mývatn basin. Just after the
Green Lagoon (North Iceland’s alternative to the
internationally renowned “Blue Lagoon”), we
Round and Round Around Route 1
Text and photos by Chandler Fredrick
Botnstjörn, the pond at
the end of Ásybyrgi’s bot-
tom trails, is the most
beautiful piece of earth I
have ever witnessed.
happed upon a cluster of bubbling sulphur pits,
which we decided to approach, olfactory assault
be damned. While I would have hoped for some
swimmable hot spots after some long hours
with my Yaris felt interior, the gurgling, smok-
ing wells of grey stink just outside of Myvatn
illustrated just how warm the earth is in Iceland
– even if it’s not conventionally inviting.

Krafla
Our original plan would have kept us to the
Ring Road until we got to road 863, a 10
kilometre dirt road that continues on to Jökul-
sárgljúfur national park, a protected area which
includes Dettifoss and Ásbyrgi. However, just as
we pulled out of the splattering mud pit area,
we came upon a well designed pillar reading
“Krafla,” the marker for a thin paved road to
the North. Without much justification for this
stop besides a notably sexy sign font, our visit
to the Krafla complex was, in part, a mistake:
When I read that the crater “Viti” was one of
the sites at Krafla, I had actually mistaken it for
the crater at Askja by the same name. At Askja,
the crater boasts a geothermal swimming pool
inside the crater. I hadn’t remembered that
Askja was several hundred kilometres away,
in the highlands.
But the 10 minute drive out to Krafla proved
to be a mistake worth making. We passed a
pristine and strangely quiet geothermal power
plant, seemingly undisturbed by workers or
official vehicles, and soon found ourselves on
the rim of a large crater, staring down into a
calm reflecting pool at the bottom. Though
Krafla didn’t have any new geophysical bells or
whistles to offer us, its size and beauty seemed
to compensate. Miraculously, the vast amounts
of water and steam made our trip to Krafla
seem like a trip to Laugurdalslaug swimming
pool, though we heeded the warning signs
and avoided getting our feet wet.
The drive on the 862 road out to Ásbyrgi
was miserable compared to every other road
during the trip. Football sized rocks in the
middle of the road made it nearly impossible
to navigate the road with any speed, and what
should have taken only an hour instead took
two or three. When we took the alternative
route, the gravel road 864 on the way down,
we seriously regretted ever having taken the
“government-maintained” 862.
Dettifoss, Europe’s largest waterfall, was
our final stop before the campground at Ás-
byrgi. From the west side, it was difficult to
ascertain the magnitude of the falls, but the
roar of the water was enough not to second
guess it. Standing on the slippery rocks ad-
jacent to the falls and looking down toward
the misty bottom was absolutely terrifying. I
couldn’t stop doing it.
A short drive through the green and ex-
pansive Jökulsárgljúfur fields took us straight
to the campground at Ásbyrgi. Though we
considered finishing the day off with a short
hike through the canyon, we had to recognise
our limits. Obviously, it had been a long day.
Despite a screaming French baby or two in
the neighbouring campsite, we slept like logs,
embracing the food-coma aftermath of our
late-night BBQ Life banquet.
Ásbyrgi
The next morning, we cleaned up our tent
equipment after using the excellent facilities
at the Ásbyrgi campground, which did not
quite feel like cheating. A short drive into the
canyon itself gave me a full-on authenticity
complex as a hiker (“Drive? But where are the
trails?”), but a short hike to the walls of the
canyon shut me up quick.
I’m just going to give my best flat-out
declaration: Botnstjörn, the pond at the end of
Ásybyrgi’s bottom trails, is the most beautiful
piece of earth I have ever witnessed. A speckled
U-shaped rock cliff towers above the pond and
the surrounding mossy rocks. The pond itself
has two observation decks: one platform on
the pond itself, and another Ewok-like outpost
with a view from higher ground. Throughout
the short hike, I found myself breathless at
nearly every turn. There was always some fresh
gorgeous view awaiting me. Ásbyrgi seemed
at points to be out of place, like some South
American cliff, rainforest and all, had been
accidentally dropped near the Arctic while the
Earth was forming. Though we were tempted
to spend the rest of the day taking the hike
along the tops of the cliff, we made a pact to
come back one day and explore.
Day three gave us our Nordic Hawaii.
Though the drive from Ásbyrgi to the painstak-
ing town of Egilsstaðir was even more boring
than the stretch from Reykjavík to Akureyri,
the drive from Egilsstaðir to the east Fjords
showed us the tectonic plates in all their glory:
mountains turned on their side, expanses of
land where one plate was jutting out of the
earth, waterfalls tricking down from heights
immeasurable.
Though I have heard Icelanders say noth-
ing complimentary about the East Fjords, this
stretch was probably my favourite. A view of
the high peak Búlandstindur inspired us to
violate some trespassing laws and witness one
brief act of the natural theatre from a small
rock peninsula, high above the beaches. The
thought that these gorgeous pieces of land
actually belong to somebody astounds me.
We stopped in Höfn í Hornafirði at the end of
the day in forfeit, convinced at long last that
we didn’t possess the energy to continue on
to Skaftafell after all. Höfn was a tidy little
town with a quaint harbour, and it would
have been nice to stay there for the night if
the campsite wasn’t a packed downtown lawn
full of tents and loud people in just-as-loudly-
coloured windbreakers. We jumped the gun
and headed back north about 15 kilometres to
the next-nearest, more secluded campsite on
our map: Stafafell. It turned out that Stafafell
was, indeed, quite satisfactorily peaceful, as
the official campground premise seems to
have been abandoned long ago, leaving a
neat plateau and some very out-of-commis-
sion toilets in the midst of some sprawling
sheep farm. We didn’t really need facilities that
night – just a calm stretch of land – and with
its close proximity to the beach, Stafafell was
warm and serene, the perfect place to camp
for our second night.
Skaftafell
An unmemorable but brief drive down the east
coast took us from our campsite to Jökulsárlón,
the world-famous “glacial lagoon.” Every day,
humongous sea-bound chunks of the glacier
Breiðamerkurjökull break off into the rela-
tively small lagoon. The scene was absolutely
surreal: frosty shades of light blue I had only
seen before in Gatorade bottles, and towers
of ice hanging out in what must have been
freezing seawater. Beached glacial splinters
just southwest of the bridge spawned a play-
ground of eager visitors. Though the tourists
were more apparent here than anywhere else,
nothing could possibly have degraded this
experience.
Before finally heading home, we stopped
for several hours at Skaftafell National Park,
which features a ton of flowered hiking trails
and a vantage point for the pokey Skaftafell-
sjökull glacier. A view of the organ-like Svar-
tifoss, named after the chunks of black rock
the waterfall has carved from its banks, was
well worth the hour-long hike. Surprised to see
elderly travellers showing their sprightly side on
this relatively steep hike, we decided to one-up
our (much) older counterparts and ambitiously
choose the 6-hour path around Morsárda-
lur. After an exhausting couple of hours, two
French hikers coming the other direction ex-
plained that “the ice cream was having its third
birthday,” an interpretation taken with a grain
of salt through my girlfriend’s questionable
skills in translation. To more fluent speakers,
their helpful advice seemed to signal that the
glacier we sought lay at least another three
hours away. Exhausted and entirely satisfied
with the wonders we’d taken in thus far, we
turned back and followed the markers to our
dear Yaris.
The drive back to Reykjavik was surprisingly
quick, and after many odd road snacks, we
were too weary to enjoy the Friday nightlife.
REYKJAVÍK_GRAPEVINE_ISSUE 10_007_TRAVEL_31
When you search the in-
ternet for Dimmuborgir
you mostly end up with
entries and websites
about the Norwegian
metal band of the same
name, which is sad.
Clockwise from top left: Skógarfoss, Ásbyrgi, Jökul-
sárlón, Mývatn, Dimmuborgir. Opposite page: Víti,
Vík, Öræfajökull, Dimmuborgir, Svartifoss.
Car provided by Hertz, Tel.: 522 4400