Day 5. Diamond Circle

Overview. After a significant amount of doubt related to the amount of driving on gravel roads, we nevertheless were able to turn  the Diamond Circle visit  into an actual circle, visiting Godafoss, flying through Husavik, hiking Asbyrgi crater, viewing Dettifoss and Selfoss, and seeing - and smelling - the Hverir  area next to Myvatn.  Unfortunately, the latter was the only stop we made in the Myvatn region, although we did drive around the lake a bit.  A busy day that could have been even busier.

Weather. Continues to be our friend. 17 to 22 degrees Celcius all day. Except for Dettifoss, where the river and the waterfall creates a significantly colder, windier and wetter weather, I was comfortable in a t-shirt pretty much everywhere.

Akureyri tunnel.  Morning started with doubt, or perhas outright panic. The night  before I started finalizing the Diamond Circle itinerary, and it occurred to me by looking at the maps that the path I chose, and an alternative route involved driving around 30-35 kilometers on gravel roads. This is something I really wanted to avoid, based on our prior experiences with gravel roads in various parts of Iceland. But this meant (a) not visiting Dettifoss/Selfoss, and (b) having to double-back from Asbyrgi to Myvatn area through Husavik, and losing two hours to driving in the process.  We searched for options - staying an extra day, and doing a separate trip to Myvatn, double-backing, excluding things from itinarary... At the end, we decided to get to Asbyrgi, and then improvise.  

We set off around 9am, but had to stop for gas in town, and this turned into stopping for bread at a local bakery. I'll just say that they make excellent bread.  We then headed out of Akureyri, with a quick stop on the other side of the fjord at a vista point to take some pictures of the town from across the water. It was a correct decision - on the way back the sun was smack about Akureyri, and it would have rendered impossible to get any good shots. This way, I got to shoot some nice panoramas.

Akureyri in the summer.

Immediately after, we got routed to go through Akureyri tunnel. This requires paying a 1500 krona toll - the most expensive toll we've ever paid to travel. Except.... all signs discussing the payment are in Icelandic (as opposed to a lot of road signs almost everywhere in both Icelandic and English), and there is no toll booth or any other means of collecting the toll physically. Instead, withing three hours of passing the tunnel, one has to visit this website and pay the toll on-line, lest, a 1000 krona penalty is added to a bill that is mailed to the driver (owner) of the car.  If you know ahead of time, it is easy to pre-register the car, etc..., but if you don't, things get iffy - especially since cell reception is crap on Route 1 past the tunnel for quite a few kilometers.

While I was driving to Godafoss, Olga figured it all out, but failed to load the payment page. Upon arrival to Godafoss, I spent 10 minutes doing the same on my phone and eventually was successful in registering the car with the tunnel authority, and paying the toll. Argh... Lots of time spent on this trivial matter, and a lot of words.

Godafoss. I decided to stop by Godafoss, although it is not on the shortest route to Akureyri (but a few kilometers). In hindsight, it was a correct decision - both because we otherwise would not have visited it, and because it would not have been as impressive after Dettifoss and Selfoss.

Panorama of Godafoss.

 As it is, though, we parked, walked to the  various vista points along the way and took requisite pictures. Godafoss is a nice Niagara-style waterfall - with quite a bit of power, but not too much height. 

Best view of Godafoss.

The smaller Gettifoss is just downriver from Godafoss - but it is not as impressive.

Gettifoss: just down the road.

Overall, not a bad start of the day - we were on our way towards Husavik before 10am - much better than we did the day earlier.

The uncropped "I was there" picture with a rainbow.

Husavik. We pretty much zoomed through Husavik. That is,  we stopped at Netto, a grocery store, to let kids choose some food and drinks for themselves for the day. Surprisingly, we were quite efficient, getting in and out of the store in about 20 minutes. I then walked across the road to the bayside, and took some pictures of the bay, the fjord, and Husavik.

Husavik: the Morro Bay of Iceland.

That was it.

Sweep panorama of Husavik and the surrounding area.

Asbyrgi. We then sped up towards Asbyrgi following the curve along the north coast, and at some point hitting the northen-most point of our trip. For about 20 km or so, we had a police car in front of us - which was an excellent pacer, but closer to Asbyrgi, the car turned on the lights and stopped. Passing it by carefully (I was not sure why he turned the lights on) I saw the cop talking on the phone, so, relieved, we overtook the police car, and never saw it again.

Asbyrgi is a curious tongue-shaped canyon about 4 km long.

Asbyrgi from the top of the rim.

 We got a map at the visitor center, discussed the trails, and went up the east side of the canyon, after initially missing the appropriate trailhead. The trail goes along the rim of the canyon - which gradually increases in height, and seems to go all the way around the canyon. The rim of the canyon is covered in arctic birch (looks like Karelian birch to me, but I am certain Icelanders used a different name for it), and blueberries. The latter were not quite ready yet, although Olga managed to collect a handful, she claims were quite edible.  Lots of mushrooms too, including some really nice ones. The hike was easy, but somewhere half-way into the canyon, we decided to go back, because it was getting to be around 1pm and we were worried about being able to make a few more stops.  

Yep. I was at Asbyrgi too. 

Another view of the back of the canyon.

Dettifoss and Selfoss. When we arrived to Asbyrgi, I asked at the information center about the roads to the waterfalls. Turns out I was right about the eastern road - it is all gravel, although the visitor center employee told us it was in "great shape". But I was wrong about the western road - it only had seven kilometers out of about 50 of gravel road, although it was described to us as "bad shape". At the end, we decided on the western road, as the sun was slowly heading west, and I was both concerned about the definition of "good shape", and the ability to take pictures of the waterfall.

Walking to Dettifoss.

The visitor center employee did not lie. The gravel portion of the road was in a pretty bad shape. In fact - there are two separate styles of gravel road on the route - the first one is a narrow path (two cars have to be very careful when driving past each other), but resonably flat, and without the idiotic ribbed ground that creates much inconvenience when driving over them. The second style is a wide road in a really horrible condition.  Eventually, we defeated the gravel roads, and reached Dettifoss parking.

The river, with Selfoss at the back.

From there, it was a matter of hiking the trails leading to the two waterfalls. We first went to Dettifoss.  Just wow. It's a large and immensely powerful waterfall with a significant drop, and A LOT of water going over the edge. There are multiple viewing points - both at the level of the waterfall, and a bit more of a bird's eye view, and all create awesome opportunities for pictures.

Dettifoss makes a rainbow.

Dettifoss. Nuff said.

The water falling.

Dettifoss. Close-up.

Dettifoss, full view.

From Dettifoss we took a short trail up the river (about 800 meters) to Selfoss, which is also a sheer drop kind of a waterfall (again, a comparison with Niagara Falls is not out of the order), except that the drop is a very deep curve, which increases significantly the surface of the waterfall, but decreases its power (which is not as large as the power of Dettifoss). 

Sellfoss.

Sellfoss. Getting closer.

On top of Sellfoss.

Dettifoss is best viewed from west side where we were, although east side tourists can come right to the drop itself.  With Selfoss, it's reversed - east side has a great view of the drop on the West side (the larger part of the curve), while west siders can reach the very tip of the waterfall's rim.  Nevertheless, both falls offered ample opportunities for awesome pictures.

Upon return to the parking lot, we utilized the purchases made earlier in the day, as well as our prior supplies, and had a picnic.

Hvrir.  From there, the kids demanded home.  I wanted to actually get to Myvatn and spend some time there. So... turns out, the first attraction I wanted to visit that was directly on our way, is Hvrir - the geothermal area on the other side of a chain of hills from the world famous Myvatn baths.  This turned out to be both the right decision and the wrong decision. The right decision - because it is a really cool area with a lot of geothermal activity, although without the actual geysers.  The wrong decision - because kids hated the small of sulfur, and chose not to explore the area with us. This pretty much put the last nail in the coffin of our travels for the day.

Olga and I did walk around the area - deciding not to hike up the hills, but visiting all the locations at the bottom of the hill - lots of mudbaths - some quite active, and hot springs - some with some boiling activity.  Lots of acrid sulfur clouds coming out of various places.  Beautiful colors - just the right time to start taking golden hour pictures.

Back to Akureyri. The kids were spent, so we decided to cut our losses, and Olga took over the driving home. We chose the toll-free route - increasing our commute by 16 km and 15 minutes - a reasonable alternative to spending another 1500 krona on the tunnel.  Along the way, I utilized my free time, and took an umeasurable number of pictures from the car.

The best part of Iceland isn't really the specific places we visit. The best part of Iceland is Iceland itself - which is to say, the landscapes along the way.  I decided to try to capture as many of them as possible, while Olga was driving. Setting up the shutter speed to 1/1250th of  a second (later revised to 1/1000th, 1/800th, and finally - 1/600th), and letting the camera figure out the appreture, made for photographs that were captured at very high speeds, and therefore - with little to no blur (sometimes and occasional blurry object would show up on the foreground as we were passing it - I made certain to take many pictures of the same scene, to ensure proper shot, and have at least one shot per scene with a decent horizon line).

I will do a separate post on photos taken from the car - they represent well the beauty and the diversity of the land we are travelling through.

Upon arrival, we dropped the kids off at the house, and went downtown (the kids opted to recuperate) . We spent about two hours total, searching (in vain) for ice cream, eventually, settling on a glass of wine and a beer (respectively) - I got to taste locally made stout - a rich, 11% alcohol brew with a taste similar to bourbon barrel stouts. Really nice, although I was grateful, their glass was only 250 ml. 

On our way home, we stopped by another Netto, which turned out to be inside a small shopping mall, which was still bustling with activity at 9pm.  Bought some additional food, went home, cooked lamb and pasta, had dinner and collapsed.

Driving. Odometer reading is 337 km.

Walking. A record day with 18,848 steps counted by Google Fit. A major chunk came in Asbyrgi, but we also walked quite a bit at the Dettifoss/Selfoss site.

Day 6 plan. We head home to Reykjavik. Probably will visit Borganes and something else on Snaefells peninsula.