July 9th – After a 4 hour flight and 2 hours time difference to our advantage we land at Keflavik at 8:30am. It’s a roughly 1 hour drive to downtown Reykjavík where we drop our bags to go hunt down a nice lunch spot. Fortunately, and to our pleasant surprise after everything we’ve heard about mediocre Icelandic food, central Reykjavík lines up one cool café/ restaurant after another so we’re spoiled for choice.
We then head off to check out our camping gear where we’re somewhat freaked out by everything we need to take. Short of sleeping on the ground at 2 degrees we don’t have many options of what to cut so we lug the whole lot back to the apartment and have a denial filled nap. Turns out it’s quite a lot to carry tents and mattresses etc for 5 ! Bref, time for another delicious dinner close to the harbour. We really enjoy the laid back, cool vibe of the city with lots of street art, friendly people and super cool boutiques which I dare not even enter.
The next morning we need an early rise to catch our 8am bus to Skógar, in the south and home to the beautiful Skógafoss waterfall. We kick off with a delish breakfast at trendy Sandhòlt and have a lovely 3 hour bus drive with gorgeous views of the rolling green landscape with geysers, waterfalls and horses abound. The Skógafoss waterfalls are a popular tourist destination, understandably so. They also represent the starting (or end) point of the 26km trek called Fimmvörduhals – 1100m up, losing 0.6 degrees in temperature per 100m as you arrive between two glaciers – one of them the notorious Eyafjallajökul (go on – pronounce that out loud! 😉 ) vulcano that erupted in 2010 . We have a relaxed afternoon with a surprisingly decent lunch right by the waterfalls followed by a heated family football match. The kids had to, of course, try out the hotel’s hot tub.
Tomorrow morning we re off to our 5 day camping excursion and given the ca 20kg weight of each of our backpacks and the 26km I believe it’s going to be a looooong walk. Fortunately it doesn’t get dark here!
Extraordinaire les photos .je trouve Rahan le plus fatigué des 5 !
Magnifique . You made my day
J’attend la suite avec impatience . La cascade énorme . Ici il fait chaud !