Iceland August 2013
← Previous Next → 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Days Seven and Eight: The mountains
We had a clever plan for the 7th day: drive to the Gulfoss waterfall, have a look around, leave the car at the car park (shown on the map) and catch a bus to the Kerlingarfjoll mountains. The problem was that "normal" (e.g. 2-wheel drive) cars were not allowed to drive any further. We were planning to spend two days in the mountains but it did not quite work out... Anyway, let's start from the beginning.
The green tent shows the place where we stayed overnight.
The track is a simulation, the real one got deleted somehow... Zoom in to see the track in the mountains. The track back from the mountains is shown on a map at the botom of this page.
The Gulfoss waterfall
En route to Kerlingarfjoll. The road was quite bumpy, the bus did not accelerate above 30-40 km/h. The landscape reminded us of the Mars: scattered large red boulders, no flora in places, mountains on the horizon. The weather was pretty poor so we took virtually no pictures. We knew the weather forecast, but this was close to the end of our trip, and there were no easy ways of changing our plans.
 |
 |
The forecasters promised ca. 24 h of strong wind and rain. We decided to spend some time near a hot spring in the valley not too far away from the campsite, and go up in the evening. We hoped to wild camp in the upper valley, and expected the wind and rain to stop the next day around lunchtime.
After some bathing, we started climbing up the hill. The wind was very strong, the gusts were literally knocking us off our feet, and all this with strong rain which was hitting us in the face We hoped to find a shielded place in the upper valley to pitch our tents. But when we reached the valley, we realised that it is very open and the wind was no weaker. At this point Sonya became a crying icicle, and we realised that we cannot go much further. What were we to do? We could have climbed down a bit, there was a place shielded from the wind, we could have pitched our tents there. Maybe this would have been the best decision. But if the wind had changed direction, and the rain had not stopped, we would have been in trouble... We could have returned to the campsite, but it was also as wet and windy plus lots of people. Renting a little cottage at the campsite would have been quite expensive.
So we decided to go back to the hot spring. Firstly, we would take a dip in the warm water again, but most importantly, there was a little shed right next to the hot spring which was used as a changing room. We realised that this would be an ideal place for staying overnight..
This is the shed, our saviour! It was warm and dry in the shed. Actually, we anticipated bad weather in Iceland, and were ready for it. We were quite well equipped, and virtually none of our belongings got wet in the rain. But it was still wrong to walk with the kids in the weather like that.
 |
 |
Next day the wind subsided, and we even caught a glimpse of blue sky, and saw some snow fields in the distance... but we still decided to leave the mountains. We will have to come back at some point!
Even if we stayed in the mountains, we would not have seen much, as the clouds quickly covered the whole area until the rest of the day.
This is a typical landscape of inner Iceland. A hike on the flat lava fields would probably be a bit boring. But the mountains are great!
This is the campsite from above.
So we walked around a bit, caught a bus back to the car park, stopped to look at the geyser again, and by the evening reached the Thingvellir national park. We spent the night in the campsite in the park..
The green tent shows the place where we stayed overnight.
