Our first views of Iceland were very foggy, but after 2.5 days on the boat we were here! The boat docks in Seyðisfjörður so when we woke up we were sailing through the fjord on our way to the town. I loved the spooky fog and all the snow!!
The town is in there!
Prior to leaving I was trying to find info on what it would be like exiting the boat - what is customs like, is there any info we need to make sure we have, just what to expect, but I couldn't find much. To my surprise it only took about 30 min to drive off the ferry (we were almost the last car off so that was quicker than I thought) and we didn't have to stop and talk to anyone at all. Just drove off and we were in Iceland!
I did a lot of research while planning this trip and all of it was be careful of the wind and weather and always check road.is for road conditions and vedur.is for wind/weather conditions so once we were off that is what we did. The road map said the road out of the fjord was slippery, so I drove very slowly to try and make sure we were staying safe up to our first stop - Gufufoss! It is right by the road with a small turn-off to park in and our first waterfall!
Still snow on the ground and freezing cold! The temp was -2C/28F with a little wind so really cold, especially as we came from much warmer weather.
So happy to be in Iceland with snow! It was also snowing a bit, but not super hard, which I also loved!
After our stop there we drove up and over the pass to our next stop - Fardagafoss. The drive over the pass was so cool - it was really foggy, couldn't see very far (but luckily could see a car just ahead of us and one just behind us so that took a bit of the worry off) with the ground completely covered in snow. It was so bright even though it was foggy and it was like a scene in a movie where someone dies or something and they are in the super bright white room with nothing else - that was the drive! Super bright white surrounded us and the only thing you could see was the dark road (which was also partially covered in snow, but mostly that was the other side of the road). It was so cool as I have never driven through something like that where it felt like you were not in this world.
The hike up to Fardagafoss only takes about 30 min and was pretty nice. Still freezing, still snow on the ground and it was fun
So much snow still at the waterfall
And so much ice on the rocks surrounding it
View from the waterfall - very cloudy!
Another waterfall on the way down. After our waterfall adventures is was on to Egilsstadir to get some groceries and eat lunch. In my research everyone said to shop at Bonus as it is the best/cheapest grocery store in Iceland so we headed there first and...it was like a discount grocery store here. Fine, but not my favorite, though we did get some free bagels. We had gotten a bunch of stuff, one thing being asparagus, and when we went to check out the lady was like one minute I have to go get a tag for this as it didn't have one. No problem, but she went to look for one and I guess none of them had one so she had to ask her boss to print one for her which he did. So then we saw the boss just sitting doing nothing at the self checkout and we had the same issue with the bagels - no tag and none on the shelf either. So she asked the boss for another tag and then came back and was like you can just have these. He doesn't want to print another tag out and it is not our fault they don't have a tag! I was just like okay, but really? How is this a way to run a store, but not my problem I guess. Really it made me laugh and it seemed like the people in that Bonus didn't care about much which good for them.
Bonus didn't have everything we needed though so we headed over to the other store in town, Netto, which here is a discount store. There? A super nice grocery store! They even had a large health foods section and yeah it was really nice. So then we tried to shop at Netto if the town had one as it was great, though we did still hit up Bonus as they had these fruit snacks that were like fruit leather - just dried fruits - that I loved.
After acquiring groceries and eating some lunch it was off to one of my top spots to check out - Studlagil Canyon. This looked absolutely beautiful in the photos and was one of a few we definitely have to go there places. The drive there took forever - it is down a gravel road which was washboard and potholed and our van really wasn't the best for such roads (but we still took it on some!). We parked near this bridge as the road beyond had super big potholes and we didn't want to get stuck. We also learned that this is the oldest steel bridge in Eastern Iceland still in use which seems very specific, but okay!
The walk takes about an hour from that parking lot to the canyon and was snowing on us the whole time and windy, but on the way there it wasn't too bad as the wind was to our backs.
A waterfall on the way to the canyon
This was so high on my list because I love the columnar basalt and that did not disappoint! Really we saw so much columnar basalt on the trip and I loved it every time!
You can see the viewing platform you can get to from the other side of the road there at the turn
From this side you could walk down to the water and out on this ledge to see the whole thing at once. It was so nice! Though we did not get to the water as it was really slippery and felt unsafe to try. We stayed up on these rocks.
You can see the snow started to pick up so we didn't spend a ton of time enjoying the views as we still had to hike back to the car and drive to camp.
The walk back to the car was not so fun as the wind was blowing the snow right in our face the whole time and the wind, even when it is not crazy wind, is freezing cold! I was so glad we brought all our layers, including our snow pants, as we definitely used them!
Once back to the car we headed towards camp and stopped at Rjúkandafoss waterfall which we saw on the drive there - it was getting much stormier so you couldn't see much! And instead of walking farther to get closer we decided to just go to camp.
We camped at Camp Egilsstadir as it was open (not all campsites are open for the winter and the beginning of May is still too early for a lot of them) which was nice. Really most of the campsites we stayed at were nice, though we really were looking for places with a nice view to park that had a toilet and sink to wash dishes as that was all we needed. Easy peasy.
With the waterfalls and all we walked 15.5km
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