Grazy Days Family Farm
Iceland Family Trip September 2022
9-6-22: We arrived in Iceland at 5 am today on virtually no sleep after a fabulous (also low sleep) holiday weekend 22 year reunion with a bunch of my Peace Corps friends near Boston. Started by hiking eight miles at dawn to see the current volcanic eruption. There wasn't fresh lava today, just the black stuff from previous days, but it was still cool. Then had lunch at an icelandic food court in the capital and drove 3.5 hours to our hotel with a stop by two waterfalls, one of which was in a cave! I am SO tired but also grateful for a wonderful day.
Day 2: Today was a rest day after all the hecticity of the last few days. We explored the area around Vik, where we stayed last night and are staying tonight. So much natural beauty here!
Day 3 of our family Iceland adventure: we packed up early to start our 3.5 hour drive from Vik to our next hotel in Hofn. Along the way we stopped at a tiny grocery store and tried cantaloupe passion fruit yogurt (good but not very identifiable flavors) among other items.
We stopped at a gorgeous valley which we hiked along the top of to a lovely little waterfall. The tourist presence in Iceland is very large, even this late in the year, so the trails are fenced and footed (mats, gravel, etc) and fairly crowded (here in the south of the country, along the Ring Road - which circumnavigates the country - at least).
Afterwards, we continued our drive to the meeting point for our kayaking trip in a glacier lagoon. What an experience! We opted to avoid the potentially even more scenic but super crowded lagoon that's right on the road and filled with motorized rubber rafts and instead went to an awesome secluded one where our group of 16 was alone on the water in glorious silent mist paddling amongst the looming icebergs. Due to my shoulder injuries, paddling is not really an option for me so we reserved tandem boats and my strong 17 year old son was kind enough to haul me around the lagoon while Owen and Hope teamed up in the other boat. We even got to climb on top of an iceberg. Wow. ❤️ After 3.5 hours we headed on toward dinner and bed, feeling quite ready for both.
Favorite things about traveling in Iceland besides the natural beauty: the water is delicious and safe right out of the tap and every place offers bottle refills, the tourist industry is relatively eco friendly: even fast-ish (there is zero actual fast food that I saw) restaurants use washable dishes, or at worst paper and bamboo, hotels have soap / shampoo dispensers in place of tiny plastic bottles, and the hotels don't have to spend an hour writing down each guests' passport info and details. I literally give them my name and they hand me the key. 😍
Day 4: We started with breakfast in our hotel which had a lovely spread. They serve tomatoes and cucumbers at breakfast here, which I really enjoyed. They also had a bottle of icelandic cod liver oil out! Three of us fortified our breakfasts with it. Then we drove along the coast for several hours, stopping a couple of times to enjoy the view, which was crazy with layers of clouds and sun and mountains bathed partly in fog and partly clear. We eventually ended up in Seydisfjordur, at the top of a fjord in the east of the country at a very colorful hostel. What an adorable little town! Tomorrow we head for the north.
Day 5, Iceland adventure. We drove from Seydisfjordur in the east to Husavik in the north, passing through some of the most desolate terrain ever. Weirdly, it looked like a desert, but with water. Puddles, waterfalls, creeks - but no plants. Apparently, volcanic eruptions and related massive flooding, serious wind erosion and overgrazing all caused it. Now it is closed to livestock and attempts are being made to bring back the plant life. Optimism!
We stopped by Dettifoss, the largest (by volume) waterfall in Europe. Impressive!
After that we visited the Myvatn geothermal area, with bubbling mud holes, a groaning/rattling steam vent, bizarre colors and the overpowering stench of sulfur. I imagine early visitors thought they had located the veritable gates of hell. Wild!
As we descended toward our destination we hit a sudden wall of fog and the land turned lush and green as if we had crossed some magical boundary between realms in a fantasy novel. Unbelievable!
Then we had dinner on the waterfront looking out on some cool old-looking boats and settled into our little "cabin in the lava" where we will stay for two nights. Relaxing! 😀
Day 6: Our whale watching trip was sadly cancelled today due to poor conditions at sea. Instead we spent the afternoon at a hot sea water geothermal pool looking over the ocean. Poor us. 😄
Day 7, Iceland adventure: Hope and I set out on an all day horse ride on some adorable icelandic (Icy) ponies, 😍 with a guide from Saltvik riding tours and a few other guests. We rode along the sea on beaches and bluffs, through the hills behind the stable, back for lunch, and then out along the sea again, to a waterfall, through sheep pastures and lava fields. It was fabulous. We both loved our ponies. It was heaven! ❤️ The sun even came out for the latter part. I got to thinking that I might even want to have my own Icy someday. We also saw whales in the fjord, a mama and baby we think, and heard one of them blow. Bucket list! I'd still like to see some up a lot closer, but this was a great start.
Meanwhile, the guys cleaned our cabin (for which I'm very grateful) and went for a hike. Then we drove 6 hours to our next lodging. We saw the famed heart-shaped stoplights of Akureyri, and spent the last third heading out into the remote Westfjords, some of which was down very sketchy gravel roads along sheer cliffs above the fjords, in the dark, with sheep randomly hanging out in the middle of the road. Not ideal but we survived. 😀
Iceland adventure day 8: today we spent the morning lounging in the geothermal hot pot (small natural-ish hot spring) and lap pool in a very remote area where we stopped last night to break up the drive to the Westfjords, the northwesterly and very isolated part of the country. After several hours of driving on narrow roads between steep mountains and deep fjords under dramatic clouds this afternoon, we arrived at the cutest little cottage, whose door is about five feet tall. We split up this evening so the guys could go to a very special fish-of-the-day restaurant (Tjoruhusid) and Hope and I went to a Thai place since we don't care for fish. Just the driving is an adventure here. So much to see!
Day 9 - We drove several hours stopping at a gorgeous waterfall. The whole day was just the most remote and wild scenery, nothing but rocks and water and sheep and four inch tall huckleberry and moss forests with fall colors changing the huckleberry leaves to orange and red. Along the way we went through a crazy 5 MILE LONG ONE-LANE (TWO WAY!) TUNNEL. 😵 thankfully some other travelers had warned us about these and told us that one side would have regular pull outs and it was that side's job to yield to oncoming traffic. There was even an intersection inside where two one lane tunnels join together. Yikes!
Some of the roads were dirt and some had gravel spread over the pavement for some reason, which was quite treacherous, especially on the hair pin turns above huge precipices. Definitely not a time for speed.
We buy our breakfast and lunch foods at stores along the way, which have mostly been glorified convenience stores. The kids and I are getting really, really sick of yogurt, chips and energy bars, even though the yogurt here is amazing, especially the mango one which is just the littlest bit sweet and so very thick and creamy.
Finally yesterday I got my hands on some hummus and carrots, which was a really nice change and last night and this morning we took the time to cook real food in the nice shared kitchen at this guesthouse (our favorite place to stay so far) and it was so nice! Travel always makes me appreciate my own food so much. I have felt like I was starving for vegetables as all the restaurant food is mostly meat and grains. Also, I end up eating stuff that makes me not feel great because so often there's no other option or at least not an option I'm willing to choose.
Yesterday we also enjoyed a couple of "hot pots" which is the local name for the small hot springs all around. Many of them are a bit tepid, about the same as hotel hot tub temp but we found one that was piping hot. And some that had freezing cold options that made the warm ones feel a lot warmer. They all looked out on the sea, which was awesome.
Some observations about Iceland and travel hacks:
- The tap water has been universally fabulous. Zero chemical smell or taste. Such a great change from the noxious city water in the US and the unsafe water in places we usually travel. In those places we have learned to take camping water purification tablets and reusable water bottles to treat the tap water to avoid / minimize having to buy water in disposable plastic bottles.
- Every single hotel, guesthouse and cabin has supplied us each with a single sized quilt in a duvet that they clearly replace between each guest. This means A) no sheet-only option for the hot sleepers in the group - bad. B) no blankets or breadspreads coming in contact with multiple guests between washings - good. C) Nobody is sharing blankets even when sharing a bed. Owen and I already do this at home but we didn't start until we had babies in our bed. I never even considered it an option until then. Having discovered it, I will never go back. Imagine my surprise to discover that this entire country has known this all along! I now hear that this is a thing in much of Europe, actually- LOVE ❤️
- I need three pillows to sleep comfortably due to issues with my shoulders and back. No hotel ever gives that many. On car trips I bring them. Flying doesn't allow that. So I have an awesome inflatable travel pillow that is also great for air travel that I use. Also, if there is a decorative pillow on the bed I'll put a T shirt over it as a case and use that. Failing that, a sweater or coat tied up in or stuffed into a shirt makes my third. I sleep so much better away from home now that I figured all this out.
- in Iceland all the mugs we've encountered have been tiny. Today Owen had the brilliant idea to use one of our metal, insulated water bottles as a tea pot so we can make a reasonable amount of tea and then drink it in the tiny mugs, rather than wasting a tea bag on three sips of tea.
- We got cold watching the aurora last night so tonight we plan to watch for it in one of the hot springs. If not, there's always the stars.
- every town in Iceland has a geothermally heated (and in our experience low or no chemical) swimming pool that is cheap and often has a hot tub too. Sweet!
- We have needed zero cash here. Every place happily takes our credit card. With a PIN needed in some places.
Update -
We've been sitting in stopped traffic for an hour plus. Apparently the road is closed due to a serious accident. Hopefully nobody was killed.
Day 10 - Today we took a car ferry from Brjánslækur in the Westfjords to Stykkishólmur on the Snæfellsnes peninsula (I only shared all those names so you all can see how amazing the names here are and also how challenging it can make navigation. 🙂. Then we drove to Ytra Tunga beach, where seals can often be found at low tide and were lucky enough to see some! They look like giant grey spotted sweet potatoes. 😀
We got home from Iceland last night. It's lovely to be home except that there was no food in the house, the floor was about a foot deep in drifts of dog hair, all the horses have cocklebur mats where their manes used to be, the washing machine immediately broke and someone hacked my daughter's computer. Sigh. Real life.
I didn't get a chance to report on our last two days in Iceland yet, so here goes:
Day 11 - On Saturday we ran a couple of errands and checked out a thrift store, but without much luck. Then we took a whale watching trip out of the capital since our originally planned one had been cancelled for rough seas. We took a twelve person speed boat with motorcycle shaped seats with built in hydraulic suspension. The bay was flat and the day sunny - amazing luck, given the wind and rain that is the norm there. First we saw a humpback whale, but just the tail a couple of times as it was diving down deep. Then we saw a large and frisky group of dolphins with a couple of babies that jumped out of the water a few times. Adorable but fairly distant. Our tour operator stays a pretty good distance away for the safety of both people and marine life, but it's hard to see that much. Then we saw a Minke whale. At first it was just the dorsal fin above the water, which didn't look much different than the dolphins'. I would have thought it was a dolphin if it guide hasn't said differently. But then at one point the whale zoomed right towards us and got really close and even lifted her head out of the water as she neared and her huge size and inky black skin was magical to see up close. ❤️ all the pics are from our actual trip but were taken by our guide with a better camera than I have. It was great because then I could focus on watching instead of photography. And it's included in the tour, which is excellent!
Day 12 -
Sunday morning Owen and I got up at 6:30 and booked it to a nearby hike 2 miles up a mountain to a hot river. It was amazing! Unlike many of the hot springs in Iceland that aren't much above body temp, this one had areas that were too hot to even attempt. It was an actual river and most of it was perfect, piping hot and also beautiful. It's often very crowded, apparently, but at that time of day it was almost empty. Just glorious. We are already trying to figure out how to get back there (hopefully on a future trip back to Iceland). 😀
Then we rushed back to our cabin, packed, ate, cleaned the cabin and headed for the airport, running quite late due to either a glitch in Google maps, which happened a fair amount there, or in my mental calculations of our departure time -who can say, really? 🙂. My Google voice account decided to stop working and we couldn't reach the cabin owner to let us out of the gate of the development where the cabin was, so we ended up having to knock on a neighbor's door for help. Then the gas station credit card reader was broken and the passport checker guy asked us a whole bunch of crazy questions (like does Davin prefer Macs or PCs) and it was a twenty minute walk (literally) to our gate. We made the flight, but barely.
The cabins on booking.com in Iceland left a lot out of the descriptions. One was a two bedroom they called a three bedroom because of the fold out couch in the living room. The second failed to mention the gate, and neither described the full cleaning: toilet-scrubbing, vacuuming, etc that they expected of departing guests. I will be sharing detailed reviews. It annoys me that previous guests didn't bother to warn us about these fairly major issues. Not that it prevented us from having a wonderful trip.
Anyway, it was a glorious and fascinating place and I feel so fortunate to have been able to explore it as we did.
