As we embarked down the dirt road we quickly realized it was going to be another nauseating cliff side drive when we saw these signs far to frequently -
We continued driving toward Eglissadour, our town for the night. We rented a house through Air BnB and we had a full house to ourselves! After being in a hostel and small cabin-like duplex, it was exactly what we needed! We picked up frozen pizzas at our always reliable Bonus grocery store so we made dinner and settled in to our large living room for movie night. Watching The Notebook in English with Icelandic subtitles was just as good as watching it at home! Momma Summer treated us to a wonderful breakfast of bacon and eggs...Icelandic bacon smells just as amazing as at home!
Photo Credits: Christina Hawkins, Morgan Leatherwood, Summer Saunders
This little blue sign means "rollercoaster ahead", at least that's what we determined it meant after we took our first stomach rolling drop a little too quickly. Our fear-filled car ride had a gorgeous reward waiting for us that made us forget (somewhat) about the journey to get to the waterfall.
Dynjandi had 7 tiers and you could hike up to each level if you didn't mind a shower, but I can't imagine it being anymore beautiful from the top than it was from the bottom! We spent an hour at Dynjandi soaking up the sunshine and having our own 4th of July celebration.
We braved the treacherous drive back up the mountain and along the cliffs of the Westfjords. Our drive went much faster since we knew we had already survived once. We felt like pros and I blew dust in the faces of the scared slow tourists...who were driving just like we had been less than 24 hours prior.
Our 4 our drive to Akureyri didn't feel too bad once we got on highway. We arrived in Akureyri around 6pm and checked into our hostel, Akureyri Backpackers Hostel. Now this was what I envisioned a hostel to be like! We were located in the heart of the town and the hostel had a restaurant on the main floor and the bedrooms were located on the 2nd and 3rd floors and the showers and laundry facilities were in the basement. Our room had 3 sets of bunk beds and our hall had sinks and toilets. It reminded me a lot of the Clemson dorms I stayed in. We had dinner at the restaurant downstairs and it was fabulous! We went to a couple of gift shops after dinner and then went to bed early since we were leaving early the next morning.
We woke early Sunday morning for another long day of driving, but this day held promise of several gorgeous waterfall stops! We wandered Akureyri after breakfast and I wish we had had more time to explore! Akureyri was such a cute town! It's the largest town in northern Iceland and it's a great base for those wanting to explore the nearby area. We saw a cruise ship in the harbor and there seemed to be a lot of activities and nightlife.
When we finally loaded up in the car and left town, we began our day by....getting lost...for an hour and a half! We obviously hadn't had enough coffee because we thought nothing of the one lane dirt road we were on until we saw signs for a state park. I took a 10 point turn to go back to Akureyri where we saw where we went wrong...we were too distracted looking at the cute houses and we missed the sign that took us across the harbor and in the correct direction.
Our first waterfall of the day was my favorite, Godafoss. Godafoss is a horseshoe shape similar to Niagara Falls and you can get much closer to Godafoss than you can Niagara Falls. We walked around both sides and it was absolutely breathtaking!
We kept driving East and our next stop was full of anticipation because Summer and I had read about Dettifoss and it was supposed to be spectacular. We drove for over an hour down the deserted highway and when I say deserted I mean empty! Few cars, no buildings, and only black dirt and rocks. Out of nowhere we saw a geothermal pool just as blue as the Blue Lagoon! It was so beautiful! This geothermal pool was not conducive to swimming but we stopped to take pictures. We kept driving down the isolated highway until we began to see more cars and even large motor coaches. Where did these people come from!? Finally, we pulled into a parking lot for Dettifoss...but I still didn't see the waterfall...or even hear water! We had to hike 15-20 minutes down to the view point. We definitely knew when we were close! Dettifoss was huge! We couldn't walk to all vantage points of Dettifoss, but we still had a spectacular view!
We continued driving toward Eglissadour, our town for the night. We rented a house through Air BnB and we had a full house to ourselves! After being in a hostel and small cabin-like duplex, it was exactly what we needed! We picked up frozen pizzas at our always reliable Bonus grocery store so we made dinner and settled in to our large living room for movie night. Watching The Notebook in English with Icelandic subtitles was just as good as watching it at home! Momma Summer treated us to a wonderful breakfast of bacon and eggs...Icelandic bacon smells just as amazing as at home!
Another long day of driving ahead of us took us to our most anticipated destination, Vik, in South Iceland. We were in the car for over 7 hours and by the time we arrived we were all a little tense and tired of being in a car by the end of the day, but our reward was our cute house in the middle of a field where almost everyone got their own room for 3 nights!
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