Hitting the Road, the Ring Road

My dad always told me a story about how he first learned to drive manual. He and his friends were driving from New Jersey to Florida and they were all taking turns driving. They put him in the drivers seat in a parking lot, gave him a half hour to practice in the parking lot, and then hit the highway. They always say "like father, like son" since that is more-or-less how I learned if you don't include a quick lesson on a friends Honda Civic two months prior. Except it was self-imposed.

The real adventure in Iceland began as we checked out of our hostel and caught the bus back to the airport so we could get to our camper van. We rented a camper van for four nights from Happy Camper, so we could point to the flamboyantly decaled van and say "That's our ride." I signed my life away for the next few days and set myself up for a mild panic attack or two realized I could barely drive the van I just rented in a foreign country with signs in a different language. At least they drive on the same side of the road.

But for the fun part of the trip -- everything from here on out was up in the air. We had no plan except for some sites that we wanted to see and a general area that we knew we would need to turn around in order to get to the Blue Lagoon four mornings later. Happy Camper's had a stock of food that saved us from spending time going grocery shopping. When people have excess food, they drop it off at the office and it becomes a small food bank. We grabbed pasta, sauce, some spices, coffee, some snacks and more. Enough to hold us over for a few days with the occasional meal out. And since we weren't going to be driving at night, we decided to try and find a state-run liquor store (Vinbuðin) since we killed what we bought at the airport Duty-Free back in Reykjavik. We weren't successful until day three on the road when we picked up some beer and a bottle of wine.

The gist of the next few days was to pack as many hikes, waterfalls and other outdoorsy things into as few a days as possible. Because we were there during a continuous period of rain, all of the waterfalls were given a pretty significant boost, with some flowing down the mountainsides where they would not normally be. Ultimately we ended up making nine stops including the Blue Lagoon on the way to the airport in four a half days. I'll cover three days in this post and the final day and a half in the next.

After a very nervy hour of driving on the highway, we did somehow manage to make it to our first stop --- the cute little town of Hveragerði. There is a thermal river that flows in the mountains beyond the town that visitors swim in, as steam rises out of the mountain side. Unfortunately, we didn't make it to the river since it was a several mile hike and several sources that we found gave us contrasting information. I was hesitant to drive the van through the town since we would've had to drive up a decent sized hill and I wasn't that confident yet. We ended up walking through the town to the base of the trail which killed nearly an hour of sunlight.

Once we finally reached the trail, it was like being in a different world. Hiking up along the mountain side as the town disappears around the bend, steam coming out of vents in the ground and from little streams flowing alongside the path. After about an hour and a half of hiking -- it was getting late and the sun would soon be dipping below the clouds -- we decided to turn around to not get lost in the dark.

Steam vents rising out of the mountain side

On the walk back, we decided to check out what the giant stadium looking thing was on the side of the road. It was about a kilometer closer than the town and were wondering all afternoon what the flow of cars was -- A concert? A school event? A sports game? Turned out that the town decided to build an indoors sports complex a few years back. One of the men there, who coincidently lived in Boston for a few years, told us that it was helped by the government's push to foster sports over the past decade or two. Since the weather isn't ideal and there is limited sunlight during half the year, they build the indoor complex. Either way, the complex was really interesting with basketball and soccer -- one could argue their push is working with Iceland's success in the Euros last summer.

Our night ended with a short but nerve-wracking drive to our campsite at Selfoss. All of these towns are maybe three or four streets and are very cute.

To make up for our lack of waterfalls the day before, our second day on the road was almost all waterfalls. They are impossible to miss when driving along the Ring Road. Seljalandfoss was about an hours drive up the road and marked our first stop. We arrived early, managing to beat the larger tour buses to the waterfall wasn't too busy. You can walk around and behind the enormous waterfall though avoiding the water's spray is a futile task. Continue along the path away from the road and along the mountainside and you'll see several small paths. For the risk takers, these paths aren't too difficult to climb and offer a route to the top of the plateau, being able to look down on the waterfalls. If you aren't afraid of heights and think you can make it up without creating a rockslide, I'd definitely recommend climbing up.

Seljalandfoss from the parking lot

Seljalandfoss' size view

Path we took to climb to the top of the plateau

Seljalandfoss along the cliffside

Pro tip -- if you keep walking further away from the parking lot, there is "hidden" waterfall that can just be seen from the path. You have to walk through a narrow canyon that will most likely result in you getting wet while trying to hop on stones beyond the rock walls but it's worth it. This waterfall,
Gljúfrabú takes the cake for one of my favorite waterfalls of the entire trip. The water cascades over the cliff edge, falling through a narrow ravine surrounded by moss-lined cliffs in a completely idyllic scene. From the main path, there are places to climb for a higher view of the waterfall.

Top view of Gljúfrabú

Gljúfrabú through the narrow ravine entrance

Gljúfrabú

Gljúfrabú

Fortunately, the rain wasn't coming down so we weren't too drenched by the end of the morning's adventure. We grabbed a sandwich from the food stalls in the parking lot and hit the road again, driving to Skogafoss a half hour's drive away. This baby is impossible to miss as it is huge. There are some rest stops and a tourists area where visitors can stay in some small hotels or grab a bite to eat with the waterfall view.

The spray of the water will hit you more than 100 feet away since there is such a volume raining from above. If you are smart and are wearing rain gear, you can get pretty close for some incredible pictures looking up into the falls. If you don't have rain gear, you'll feel like you stepped out of a swimming pool. Climbing the steps alongside the waterfall for the viewpoint from the top also grants access to the top of the plateau where you can hike along the river feeding Skogafoss. From the steps, there are a lot of places to wander off for different views from various heights and angles. Keep an eye on where the ground looks worn out and they'll be easy to find. If people were out there on the sketchy footing with our weather, I'm sure they'll be out there rain or shine. Shortly after the top of the waterfall, there is another decent sized waterfall comprised of a series of small terraces. There's a small rock area where visitors make rock towers with the flat rocks on the ground. I'm sure the tower that we built maybe lasted for five minutes before it toppled from our shoddy construction skills.

Skogafoss

Celebrity photo op: Icelandic sheep

Smaller waterfall above Skogafoss

The final stop for the day was to find Sólheimasandur, the remnants of a plane crash in 1973. Turned out the pilot of a US Navy plane switched to the wrong fuel tank and resulted in crashing on a black sand beach. Why the remnants of the plane haven't been cleaned up I cannot say, but it makes for a sublime experience. When driving on the Ring Road, you'll notice a makeshift parking lot on either side of the road -- this is the spot! It's an almost 45-minute walk along a seemingly never-ending path from the road into the depths of the black sand beach. Since it was so grim and gray, we had almost no visibility -- if there weren't other people around, it would have been almost maddening.


The path is marked on either side and curves along the flat ground. After about half way, you can make out the plane and cut in a straight line to save some time if you're in a rush (or trying not to get soaked to the bone in our case). By the time we got to the plane, there was almost no one there so it felt like a private viewing gallery. You can walk around and inside the plane if you don't mind balancing on metal rafters. All-in-all, it makes for a very eerie experience. Thankfully no one died in the plane crash so no one has to worry about it being haunted.

Sólheimasandur

What's left of the plane's interior

And so concludes the adventures for the first half of the road portion of the trip. We stopped in Vik to stock up on some snacks before Sólheimasandur, and I highly recommend the jerky. Puts American jerky to shame. Ultimately I drove to our furthest campsite at Skaftafell National Park, where we made dinner and watched Mean Girls on Netflix using the campsites wifi while making dinner. It was an early night since we were dry and planning on doing some hiking to get to Svartifoss the next morning.