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Northwest Iceland – Seagulls and Horses (and an extremely long drive)

December 7, 2017May 27, 2018 By bkchng

Northwest Iceland  (7 Dec)

This was going to be our most ambitious day yet, in terms of driving length and driving conditions.

The plan was to make it from Akureyri in the North all the way to Grundarfjörður in the west. That’s over 400km of driving across snowy, icy roads, and the weather didn’t start out great.

We started the day before the sun came up (that is, around 9am), and scrapped a mountain of snow off our car. It was pretty much snowing for the whole of yesterday, though thankfully the roads remained open due to the snow plows constantly getting snow off the main roads.

The weather didn’t look good at all in the morning – look at all the storm clouds in the horizon. This was pure, untamed nature.

It was scary yet awe-inspiring at the same time to look out into the storm clouds at sea, and surrounded by snowy mountains. I wouldn’t want to be on a ship out there though.

We stopped at a gas station to top up on gas and grab a quick breakfast. So far I haven’t mentioned anything about gas stations – but we must have gone to at least 10 of them by now.

Many gas stations in Iceland are unmanned, especially those in locations far from towns. The way it works is that you have to insert a credit card and key in your PIN, then enter the amount of fuel that you’d like to top up (or you can top up till it’s full). Not all credit cards worked – you’d generally need one with a 6 digit PIN. From my experience, the DBS Woman’s World card worked quite well, as did the UOB Visa Signature card (which I used most of the time, since it gives 4 miles/$).

Breakfast was a hot dog – believe it or not, this was our first gas station hotdog, 7 days into the trip. Hot dog is probably the most popular Icelandic snack, and here they generally do it well – the hot dog’s usually tasty and quite succulent.

Hot dogs never really caught on in Singapore though – but it’s such an easy food to make and sell. Then again, I can’t recall having any good hot dogs in Singapore.

Somewhat of a hyperbole here for a gas station hot dog… I must say it still tastes better than any hot dog in Singapore though.

The northwest is dotted with quiet small towns along the main road – we opted to go off the Ring Road and into highway 82 to check out some of the towns. It was mostly going to be touch and go today.

 

We were driving on roads like these. Very few cars, just nature and you. It was simple but yet quite awesome, really.

Tried a can of Protein Coffee and almost puked. This was probably the most nasty drink I’ve had in a while – give me tomato juice anytime!

Urgh.

There were a few tunnels to navigate as the northwest was rather mountainous. Some of the tunnels are single-lane probably because it just didn’t make sense to spend money and effort on a double-lane tunnel when the traffic is so low. So, there are places where you could duck into while waiting for an oncoming car to pass. Not as scary as it looks since the tunnel is straight, and you’d get ample warning of any oncoming cars.

We were just stopping at random towns along the way. Each of them looked eerily quiet – I guess at this time of the year, people don’t really get out of their homes except to go to work or get groceries.

A very strong smell of fish here, which probably attracted all the seagulls.

 

Frozen river between 2 mountains.

 

A haunting yet beautiful sight.

 

Horses and a lighthouse, plus a rough and stormy sea. Not a sight you’ll see everyday.

Came across a heated swimming pool.
Too bad the pool was closed today.

One of the last few pit stops. We saw a bunch of horses, and decided to stop for photos.

Look first, trying to avoid a surprise headbutt while taking a selfie
Safe!

So raw, yet so beautiful.

We weren’t going to have time to get dinner before 9pm since we were rushing to the west of Iceland. So it’s time to eat in the car again:

We made a quick pit stop in Blönduós, a relatively large town with a population of 880.

The cemetery overlooked the town of Blönduós.

A rare Chinese restaurant in these parts.

Probably some famous guy 😛

After Blönduós, it was full steam ahead to the Snæfellsnes peninsula where we would be spending the night. The interesting thing was, we would actually get pretty close to Rekjavik (something like 100km). Iceland’s actually pretty small and in theory it would have been possible to make a day trip from the capital of the South (Reykjavik) to the capital of the North (Akureyri).

An interesting church along the way.

After a very, very long drive, we finally reached our hostel in Grundarfjördur.  Our accommodation for the night was a twin room in Grundarfjördur Hostel (S$138). Functional and comfy.

This was also the night when we’ll see our first (and last aurora) of the trip, so stay tuned for the next post!

A simple dinner before aurora hunting 🙂

 

 

 

This entry was posted in Europe, Honeymoon, Iceland
  • Akureyri
  • Blönduós
  • Grundarfjördur
  • highway 82
  • icelandic horses
  • Seagulls

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  North Iceland – Hverarond (Lake Myvatn), Godafoss, Akureyri
West Iceland – Aurora Hunting on the Snæfellsnes Peninsula  

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