Iceland, a visual overdose.

Dateline Hvammur, Iceland

8th July, 2025

Series 2  Instalment 6

I have been procrastinating over how to go about writing this for a couple of days. I mean Iceland is so far off the scale from anything we have ever seen, with the possible exception of Patagonia (but different) we are really finding it hard to comprehend just where we are and what it is we are experiencing. So the only thing we can do is start at the start, throw in a few pictures and hope that you get some sort of impression of just how special we think this place is.

When last I wrote we were on a ferry, a very large and comfortable cruise ship in reality, just off the Faroe Islands. To all you people who enjoy cruising, we take our hats off. Being stuck within the confines of  250 metre long space, even with a couple of restaurants, bars, cinemas and the like just drives us crazy. Give us the open road and the freedom it brings any day, even a shitty rainy day, which is what my weather app promises we have in store. However when we emerge from the bowels of the metal beast that we have been entombed in for the last two days we are greeted by warm sunshine. The arrival port of Seydisfjordur is a quaint little fishing village that is struggling under the weight of burgeoning tourism. Hundreds of motoring tourists arrive here several times a week and we see a monstrous cruise ship disgorging flocks of locust like tourists eager to vacuum up the towns meagre resources.

As we climb the hill out of the fjord we are immediately struck by the raw, stark beauty of the landscape. Within a few kilometres we pass by several waterfalls or foss in the local language. There are patches of snow not yet melted from the winter(remember this is the northern equivalent Australia’s January) and the mountains are bare, barren and magnificent.

Most travellers in Iceland take what is known as the ring road or highway 1 and while this is a brilliant road through unforgettable scenery, passing several of the really big tourist draw cards, it is not for us. We have appointed Scott and Gina as our navigators. We figure with Scott’s 26 years travelling the world’s oceans in the US Navy and now four years traversing five continents by motorcycle, he should have some idea what he is doing. What a great idea this has turned out to be. Always in consultation with Gina he has sketched out a route that sees us leave the ring road within half an hour of disembarking, and turning north along a perfectly smooth piece of flowing tarmac through breathtaking scenery, past isolated farm houses, across rivers of crystal clear snow melt and alongside fjords of inky black, mirror smoothness. Soon the tarmac gives way to smooth, gravel and we find ourselves climbing one of the previously mentioned barren mountains via a series of hair raising switchbacks to a 650m summit view that leaves us speechless.

Down the other side and the road is just as good if not better as we follow the north east coast road around many, many fjords, each more stunning than the last. We pass endless waterfalls and countless small lakes (and some bigger) on our quest to reach the northern most point of the island, Hraunhafnartangi light house at 66.32 degrees north it is just a few km below the Arctic Circle.

We turn south and make our way firstly to Dettifoss (immediately corrupted to Dental Floss by Scott) Iceland’s largest waterfall. It is an impressive sight with many billions of tonnes of water raging over the cliff face and into the churning, swirling canyon below.

A few more km of beautiful bitumen road and we emerge from a tunnel to a stunning view of the small regional hub of Akureyi at the head of Iceland’s longest fjord. Sally and I have won the Airbnb lucky dip tonight. Our tiny cabin is perched high on the hillside, overlooking the harbour. The great photos we get cap off a fabulous but long and tiring day.

Crawling into bed at 10.00 pm there is still bright sunshine outside. My weather app tells me that sunset will be at 12.15 am! So that’s why they call it the land of the midnight sun. Sunrise, by the way is scheduled for 2.40 am. That’s right, two hours and twenty five minutes of not really darkness. Sleeping is a challenge.

Next morning we meet Scott and Gina down town for a little sight seeing and on a whim we decide to book a whale watching tour, hoping we catch a glimpse of one of these majestic, gentle creatures. What we get instead is almost a full hour of the most extraordinary activity we have ever seen. A young humpback puts on a display of breaching that has the entire boat gasping for superlatives. The “f” bomb is spontaneously dropped many times as time and time again this massive creature of perhaps 20 tonnes leaps almost completely out of the water and crashes back down again. Then as if to show off for the crowd he would roll on his side and wave a fin and sometimes two fins lazily at us. Then boom, the breaching would start again. Even the crusty old Icelandic sea dog at the helm said he had never seen anything like it. By the way I called the whale a he because in the Icelandic language all nouns have gender and the word for whale, hval, is male. To determine his actual gender would require an up close and personal inspection and we are not quite at that point in our relationship yet.

On a glorious sunny day and still buzzing with adrenaline from our whale experience we head once more for the northern fjords. This is remote and inhospitable land but almost impossibly it is inhabited by thousands of Icelandic sheep, ponies and their attendant farmers. The farms cling precariously to life on the edge of the Greenland sea and in the broad, flat bottom valleys that carve deeply into the mountains. It is summer, the brief growing season and the farmers are working feverishly to put away as much silage as they can possibly accumulate to sustain their livestock through the long, cold, dark winter ahead . White or green bales populate the country side everywhere and vast piles reside next to animal barns, pretty little white cottages with red roofs and ubiquitous Lutheran churches with their distinctive tall spires..

Our next stop over is in a guest house on one of these farms at Sydri-Pvera where we are greeted by two very timid orphaned baby Silver Foxes.

Though native to Iceland, foxes are hunted as a pest to sheep farmers. Thankfully these two were discovered by our host after their mother had been shot. He is a conservationist as well as a farmer (yes most farmers are both) After they have reached adolescence he will return them to the mountains to fend for themselves. In the meantime they are learning to hunt the mice in his sheds.`

Another day is spent exploring the local area where we find many more stunning waterfalls, we herd ponies down a road and help the very appreciative farmer get them to new pasture.

Scott and I indulge in a little off roading, (to be clear, when we say off roading we mean riding on actual dirt trails, just the very rough ones you wouldn’t take the family sedan on. Actually riding off a proper trail is very, very illegal for environmental reasons) We also take a short but very sketchy dirt road to a huge rock standing in the edge of the ocean. It is said to look variously like a rhino, a dragon and even a bison. What do you think?

Next morning as we pack to leave I discover I have left the lights switched on and flattened the bike’s battery so Scott and Gina offer to try to push start. However Scott trips on a rock and shoulder charges the ground. Result ground, unfazed, Scott badly bruised and painful shoulder, me dog house again, bike still not running. After a further comedy of errors we jerry rig some wiring to take charge from Scott’s bike to mine and we are underway but not before Scott takes some deep breaths and pain killers.

This is a long long day as we decide to make a push for the western most point of Europe, Latrabjarg at the  very end of the western fjords. What we find is an endless series of twists and turns following the rugged coastline for hours. The last 40 km is a rough, steep and winding gravel track with violent wind gusts that try to blow us alternately out to sea or into the cliff face.

We pass an abandoned US Navy airbase complete with the remains of an old cargo plane from the 50s. The plane had crashed on a glacier in 1953 during a storm. Rescue teams were only able to retrieve one body before the storm became too severe and the plane became encased in ice. It wasn’t seen again till 1981 and the remaining eight bodies were recovered.

Past several tiny outposts of humanity in this bizarre place when finally we reach our goal. But it’s not the end of the known world we have come to see, rather the fragile hope that we may catch a glimpse of one of nature’s cutest creations, the puffin, known to roost on the cliffs here. Not only are our prayers answered but we are once more overwhelmed by Iceland’s largess. Hundreds of these beautiful, innocent little creatures put on an utterly charming display that melts our crusty old hearts. Sally is beside herself as she takes many many photos at very close range. It has been a bucket list item of her’s for a very long time and finally it has come to fruition.

From here it is another 4 hours of hard slog through plummeting temps and howling winds to our comfortable cabins at Hvammur, but it is worth it, we saw PUFFINS!! LOTS AND LOTS OF PUFFINS!!!

As I write this I am unsure whether I should climb back into our private, geothermal, mineral water hot tub with another beer or deal with the bloody flat tyre I have just spotted on the back of the bike!

Or maybe we should just go out for dinner. Did I mention the food is spectacular here. We have eaten in some five star joints around the world now and this place is right up there. You simply have to try the lamb or the seafood to understand how good it really is. You also need to brace yourself for the bill but hey, we are in Iceland.