Heyyyy!
So we finally got to Mývatn lake, situated on the south-east of Iceland! By the way, “Mývatn” means “mosquito lake” in Icelandic. Once we got out of the car, we figured out why, haha:)
In the morning, we set out for a short walk around this huuuge crater with turqouise water and a few steam places. Unfortunately I can’t remember the name of this crater, but it’s a part of Krafla volcanic complex. There is a few craters around this place but this is the only one that has water inside.
After that we drove down the hill and parked the car on another parking place, from where we set out to the lava fields and another hot steams, going up from the ground. This place was called Leirhnjúkur. The path was about 5 km long and it went right on the lava formations. Just a few meters from the path we could watch the smelly blowholes. I even touched one of the lava rocks and it was really hot! The sulphur smelled really strongly and after a while, I started to feel a little bit sick, haha 🙂
After that we parked the car on another parking lot and walked another 10-km roundtrip, this time all the way to little lava cave with hot spring inside of it, called Grjótagjá. This hot spring was used for bathing before, but today it’s temperature is almost 50 degrees. Right before Grjótagjá we explored a smaller cave, in which you can swim, but it’s really tiny and hidden between the rocks – Stóragjá.
Right next to the main road, there is a milky blue lagoon, really similar to Blue Lagoon near Reykjavík, but we didn’t explore it much.
Finally, we drove around the whole lake Mývatn, but it didn’t quite catch our attention. The lake looks good only from above, from where you can actually see all the little craters in the water.
A few kilometers away from Mývatn we stopped by Goðafoss waterfall, one of the most beautiful waterfalls on Iceland! Although it’s not very tall (around 12 meters), interesting is mainly because of its horseshoe shape and length of about 30 meters. Unfortunately everyone knows that, so it was almost impossible to shoot a long-exposure picture because everyone was pushing me and walking right in front of my camera. Unfortunately any hike wasn’t done here either, because the waterfall is accessible from the Hwy 1.
The same day we managed to get to this beautiful town called Siglufjördur. The architecture of this town was very similar to the Norwegian one. Even though one would say, that the Norwegian one has to be quite similar to the Icelandinc one, he’s absoslutely wrong. In Norway, the houses are small, wooden, usually colorful (mostly green or red) and have white window frames. Here in Iceland, the houses are mainly made of sheet metal, due to the destructive elements. So that’s why I was obsessed with this house, haha 🙂
We got back to the coast by the sunset, where we experienced another orange sky! We pitched the tents right on one of the cliffs and watched the sea when we woke up in the morning.
The next day we sat down in the car a lot. There were no hikes on the way, so we started to chill a little bit. By this time, we were sure that we can make it back to Reykjavík on time, so we didn’t have to rush at all.
We stopped by small houses with grassy roofs, which we found by coincidence. On our was we saw one of the cool Icelandic churches, which was worth exploring. Too bad we don’t have any cool churches like this one!
We got to a place called Hvitserkur. The story says, that it’s a petrified troll, that wanted to destroy the town of Strandir and turned into a stone once he was caught by daylight. In reality it’s an interesting rock formation that lies right on the beach.
We continued to the west, where we wanted to spend 2 days – West Fjords, or the very west of Iceland.
It took us really long to get there, because there were just gravel roads. We met one car in three hours and the last few kilometers were so worth it! We were driving along the coast and sometimes we got really close to the precipice that we were scared we would fall down. The sea was so blue and the weather perfect. We even saw the polar seals on the way there! Unfortunately I don’t have them on picture, because they were too far away:(
And tomorrow’s, probably the last article, will be from West Fjords, which we enjoyed a lot! :)))
Cheers and have a wonderful Saturday!
E.