Date: 23-24/06/2017
From/To: Akureyri – Arnarstapi
Distance: 428 Km
Total Distance: 4809 Km
Weather: Cold, Rain, Extremely Windy
Road: Paved Road

Today we would move from Akureyri to Arnastapi, where we booked another cabin for a couple of days. The weather in morning didn’t look very enticing, but we had the right gear.

So we continued over a rainy, cold pass and learned that our boots were not water tight. After a stop in at a petrol station we exchanged the soaked socks for dry ones and continued.

Everything was sort of fine until roughly 30km away from our new accommodation. Here we got very strong sporadic Gail forces winds, it nearly blow us off the road. I think Gerlind and Peter were worried for us as they saw this in their rear view mirror. Anyway, despite this, we made to our new accommodation without any major incidents. When we checked the current weather report, we ralised there was a warning for all Caravans, they should stay where they were because of Gail forced winds.

So it would have been wise to have a look at the weather forecast before we start to travel J Anyway, the accommodation was great. It was close to a cliff, a natural reserve and a stone sculpture, Bardur Snafellas, he is the protector of the Snafellas.

The next day we walked through the natural reserve. There were some amazing stone formation and plenty of birds

Some of the stones looked like faces, you can imagine a Troll was exposed to sun light and then turned into stone. The picture below shows clearly a face.

At the end of the natural reserve was a small village with a pebble beach and rocks with orange sea weed.

When we were sitting on the pebble beach, I saw a fin in the water, so I zoomed in and took a couple of shots. Looking at the long small fin, it must been an Okra. I saw more of a whale on this beach then I saw at whale watching tour.

On our way home, we walk along the path to our house. This was the first time that we realised that birds in the grass would try to attack us to protect their nests. Here’s Gerlind walking along and successfully ignoring the birds 🙂

Tomorrow should be a sunny day, so we might give a Glacier walk a try.

Date: 22/06/2017
From/To: Akureyri
Distance: 0 Km
Total Distance: 4381Km
Weather: Cold, Sunny, Drizzling
Road: –

This was our last day in Akureyri, so we thought we have a look in the town itself. Some colourful houses.

We noticed that all red traffic lights have the shape of a heart. We found out that the hearts were created as a consequence of the finance crash in Iceland in 2008, when there was a need for some positive thinking. They were certainly thinking outside of the square.

In the town, we made some nice tall friends, unfortunately the didn’t fit onto the bike J

And finally we found the government controlled bottle shops in Iceland, they are called Vinbudin and had all this sign shown below.

Nevertheless, the prices were extremely expensive. Strange enough, Champaign (sparkling wine) was one of the cheapest alcoholic beverages that you could get. Anyway, we organized a bottle of red to celebrate, well, our holiday J

Date: 21/06/2017
From/To: Akureyri – Husavik
Distance: 0 Km
Total Distance: 4381Km
Weather: Cloudy, Sunny, Windy
Road: –

Today we booked a Whale and Puffin watching tour in Husavik. Peter and Gerlind took us in their car. This was very convenient, since we had to start early. Sigrid and I even got to snooze in the back of the car until we arrived in Husavik.

The harbour is picturesque, particular with the moored sailing boats.

The museum has some whale skelettons on display, this makes the real size of these animals tangible.

As usual, we spend too much time in the museum, so we had to hurry to get the whale watching tour. When we boarded, we got some nice red thermos overalls, aren’t we looking great in them?

First we stopped on a small Island, where the Puffins were breading. Well, under Puffin watching I expected to get closer to the birds. It is a small bird in the first place, so taking pictures from the distance made them look like black dots. So below are some shots of the puffins we managed.

At one stage I was lucky that a Puffin did swim closer to the boat, so I got at least one closer shot.

From the Puffin Island we continued to a Whale watching spot. There were multiple boats waiting for a whale to surface.

Below are Gerlinds pictures, she got a couple of nice shots.

And here are my pictures, on the right hand side of the beany you can see a black dot in the water, well that is the tail of a whale. And that was my best shot J

On our way back the sea got a bit rougher, and people in the front got rain coats.

Just before we arrived back, we were fed a hot chocolate with a cinnamon bun. That was really nice.

After we came off the boat, we took a picuture of all surviors J Nobody got really sea sick, phew!.

Even if I didn’t got any good shots of the whale, I enjoyed the boat trip.

Date: 19-20/06/2017
From/To: Akureyri
Distance: 0 Km
Total Distance: 4381Km
Weather: Cold, Drizzling, Sunny, Windy
Road: –

Today we planned to have a look at a Waterfall near bye, the Godafoss. So we hopped into Peter and Gerlind rental car and allowed our bikes some rest J. Below are some pictures of the Godafoss.

The weather was ‘crisp’ and we were all happy to be back in the car. Then we happened to drive past the Myvatn Naturebath. This place is called the ‘Blue Lagoon of the east’. The pool looked enticing, but smelled really strong of sulphur. So we weren’t too disappointed that we had forgotten to take our bathers in the first place!

So we took a picture and left to explore the steaming lake we saw at the turnoff to the Naturebath. It was prohibited to go swimming there since there were hotspots in the lake. However the colour of the water was an amazing, a really beautiful turquoise

Eventually we went back to the geyser where we hd been two days ago for more pictures. The weather was better and the landscape looked different.

Back at our home for a few days in Akureyri we realised that we were close to the midsummer night’s sun. With the weather being great today we stayed up and took some pictures around midnight.

The next day we decided to explore the area further north from Akureyri. So we piggybacked again and hopped into Peter and Gerlinds car. We drove to the next larger town, ‘Dalvik’ and had a nice stroll through the harbour and had a waffle and coffee at the tourist information.

On our way back we past a store and went shopping for dinner. In the store they had deep frozen fish from the local fisherman’s, for a good prize. The only problem, we didn’t exactly know what type of fish it was, we think it was Cod J.

With dinner secured, we continued north. Here we had our first single lane tunnel, with a very wired entrance. It looks like the door can be closed, but we are not sure why.

Getting through the tunnel, we arrived at the most nothern point of the penensula and there was a orange light house.

We couldn’t get into the light house and there was not much to see either, so we turned around and went back. In the morning we passed by the main church in Akureyri so we decided to stop there on our way back. We had a short stroll throught the town, but most of the shops had closed, so we decided to go sightseeing there on another day.

Date: 18/06/2017
From/To: Egilsstadir – Akureyri
Distance: 314 Km
Total Distance: 4695Km
Weather: Cold, Raining, Windy
Road: Sealed

After a leisurely start we stop first waterfall, we think it generated from the Jökulsá river, but we couldn’t find the name. We walked up to take a closer look and a couple of pictures

When we went through landscape looking like Mars, we stopped and got our raingear on, just in time! The wind was strong and rain started to come in.

We then continued to Dettifoss, the largest waterfall in Europa, unfortunately it was raining, a lot while we were there.

The second waterfall, just behind Dettifoss is, Selfoss.

Selfoss looked for me more interesting and on the top of the cliff we found black sand, which looked awesome.

When we were riding to Akureyri we stumbled across some Geysers. They were just on the side of the road.

Some of the vents did sound like a steam train, constantly whistling like it would explode every second. Peter and Gerlind were brave enough to get a picture taken in front of one of the vents.

We booked a nice accommodation on the opposite fjord side of Ajureyri. When we tried to find it in the evening, we got a bit lost and it took us a while before we found it. The house was really nice and the view from there was stunning.

Date: 17/06/2017
From/To: Fáskrúðsfjörður – Egilsstadir
Distance: 168Km
Total Distance: 4381Km
Weather: Cold, Drizzling, Sunny, Windy
Road: Sealed

The morning was beautiful. When we looked out of our bedroom window, we could see the top of the mountain, and the sun was shining. We had breakfast inside our room, since Sigrid did feel awkward to use the restaurant again while not paying for their buffet breakfast. After we finished, we packed up and set off to Eglisstadir..

From here we planned to visit the Litlanesfoss, Fardagafoss waterfall and the Hydroelectric power plant. The first stop was the water falls, they were close by.

It took a while to get there from the carpark to LItlanesfoss.

The first Waterfall (Litlanesfoss) had plenty of hexagonal basalt columns. It can be seen a bit better with a closer picture.

Walking further up we arrived at the second waterfall, the Lagarfoss. The surroundings were rocky but the waterfall had red layers.

After taking some pictures we started our way back to the carpark. Here we had a short lunch and continued to the Hydroelectric power station. On the way we had to drive up a mountain range. The view from here was fantastic, but it was very windy and the clouds at the horizon didn’t look promising.

So after riding for a while we stopped to put our raingear on. At this moment Sigrid realised that she has lost here mobile phone. So Peter and Gerlind decided without hesitation to help us searching for the phone. We drove/ride the same way back, but couldn’t locate the phone. Using the tracking software on the phone didn’t give us any clues, and it was reporting always that the device was switched off. So Sigrid cancelled all cards using my phone and we returned to the guest house that we had booked yesterday. We let the tourist bureau and the police know that the phone including credit cards was lost. So we decided to wait for a couple of days before we cancelled them all together.

Date: 16/06/2017
From/To: Egilsstadir – Fáskrúðsfjörður
Distance: 110Km
Total Distance: 4329Km
Weather: Cold, Foggy, Rainy
Road: Sealed, Dirt Road

We packed up and took our time to get started, since we hadn’t ride very far today. it was not very far. So we stopped not far from Egilsstadir to take a couple of pictures from a  water fall and to have some lunch. During the break the sun tried to break through the cloud cover. I think that was the last attempt for the day, then she gave up J.

We did arrive at the guest house around two PM. All the doors were closed, but there was a phone number with some Icelandic text on the door, so we called. It turned out that our host would be back around four PM, so we had two hour s to spare.

So we decided to try some dirt road, leading around the peninsula. The road was not too bad for a second grade dirt road. Most of the road was nicely compacted, only some patches were filled with deeper gravel. After two hours we stopped at a petrol station close to our guest house and had a coffee when Peter and Gerlind passed by.

They stopped we had a short chat and continued to our accommodation. The host was very friendly and we could use his restaurant to have our dinner. Gerlind and Peter introduced us to some special prepared salmon that became our main dish. After dinner we had a look at the map and decided to have a look around Egilsstadir, there is a water fall and a hydro power station. So we booked an accommodation in Egilsstadir via Airbnb, which made it affordable.

Date: 15/06/2017
From/To: Seydsfjordur – Egilsstadir
Distance: 26.8Km
Total Distance: 4219Km
Weather: Cold, Foggy, Rainy
Road: Sealed Road

When we arrived in the morning in Iceland, the motorcycle were the last to go. We were not sad about it, since the weather was, let’s say, average. It was +5degres, drizzling and foggy. The GPS didn’t work either as expected, so we were flying blind. Having said this, there was only one road leaving Seydisfjodur, which made it easier. The road was a mountain pass. I believe the landscape would have been stunning, if we would have been able to see it. The visibility was 20…30m. We stopped at a view point at the top of the mountain; well I still could see Sigrid, that was it.

Coming down the mountain improved our mood a lot. We could see a village and a lake. Without any map we opted for the next village to fill up our bikes and have a look for accommodation to fix the GPS problem. After the first wrong turn and then talking to a post man, we found the petrol station where we filled up the bikes.

It was raining again and quite windy, so we thought we have a look for a hard accommodation instead of camping. We looked at a three star hotel, the price for a standard room for 2 people one night was 350AUD (235Euro) Ouch!. These seem to be a normal price. At the end we found a guest house that had a room with shared bathroom for 100Euro, this was our cheapest but quite nice option.

After fixing the GPS by applying the island only image I had a look at Google maps where we would meet with Peter and Gerlind tomorrow.

Our next adventure was going shopping for dinner. The food was as well expensive. We discussed the exorbitant prices with our host.. He mentioned that the prices increased dramatically in the last year which would explain why it was so much more expensive than we anticipated. The income for Icelanders increased accordingly, so that it doesn’t seem to be too expensive for Icelanders to go shopping or dine in a restaurant (main meal ~60Euro/person). Anyway, in the evening the weather became better, no rain and the wind died down, conciliating us with our wet arrival here.