Driving the Ring Road in Iceland
In August 2021, we drove the Ring Road counter-clockwise from Reykjavik
Leg 1: Reykjavik to Vik (186 Km)
Traveling makes you better in many ways. You get new perspectives, learn about new cultures, gather rich life experiences, get to know the locals, and simply eat, drink, and be happy. But one important benefit of travel is making friends with fellow travelers. On our first night on the Ring Road, we stayed at a guesthouse in Vik called Skammidalur, where we made four new friends: a Dutch mom traveling with her son (@travellingwithflipflops), and two Austrian guys on a weeklong visit to the South Coast. We shared food, drinks and laughs. We sat together in the common dining room, chatting about life and Iceland and travel until the wee morning hours.
We had arrived in that guesthouse after picking up our rental car in Reykjavik and driving straight on. The day had been doused in dreary, incessant rain. Mountains and the coast had hid behind a veil of clouds. On our way, we had stopped at some majestic waterfalls: Seljalandsfoss, Gljúfrabúi(the secret waterfall) and Skógafoss. Even though the weather was wet, cold, windy, and generally atrocious, we had enjoyed every one of these waterfalls. Waterfalls with powerful spray make us happy. So happy that not even clammy weather could bring us down.
Leg 2: Vik to Höfn(271 Km)
The next day, we left the guesthouse early. The coast was still socked in. In some places, it felt like we were driving straight into a stick of butter — the visibility was less than 100 feet. We saw sheep merrily sauntering in the middle of the road and, many times, deftly avoided running into them.
Our first stop was the Dyrhólaey promontory, where we spotted a colony of sleepy-looking puffins. The majority of the world’s Atlantic puffin population lives in Iceland. You can see these small, red-beaked birds on land for just a short duration in the summer when they breed. The rest of the year, they bob on the open ocean. Spotting these birds felt like a stroke of luck, given we were traveling pretty late in the season and they were supposed to have already left land for the sea.
Further on, we stopped at the Reynisfjara “black sand” beach. This beach had black volcanic sand, like many beaches in Iceland, and wild, dramatic waves. It also had a few black caves with walls that made me feel like I was inside the mouth of an alligator (or in a set of Game of Thornes): sharp, shining obsidian rocks lining the walls and the ceiling.
The weather started clearing up the more east and north we went. The landscape became wilder. We saw the tongues of many glaciers, including the massive Vatnajökull. We stopped at Fjallsarlon for a boat tour that skirted floating icebergs on its way to a blue, blue glacier. We stopped at Diamond Beach where a glacial stream and the chunks of ice floating on it had been turned golden by the late evening sun.
We overnighted at a comfortably clean guesthouse called Seljavellir in Höfn. With steaming hot water gushing out of the shower, and warm black stone floors, this guesthouse tempted me to want to stay longer in this fishing town. But we had to keep moving. The next day, after breakfast, we were on our way to Mývatn.
Leg 3: Höfn to Mývatn (356 Km)
The road to Mývatn took us through quiet fjords, desolate Mars-like landscape, and sparsely inhabited towns. We stopped at the pretty town of Seyðisfjörður with its rainbow road and its colorfully-painted shops. We ate lunch at Kaffi Lara, sitting on their sunny patio. The vegan beetroot burger and the chocolate cake we had there were deh-leesh-ious!
Before stopping at our guesthouse for the night at Mývatn, we made a side trip to see Dettifoss — supposedly the second most powerful waterfall in Europe after the Rhine Falls. Off to the side of Dettifoss, we walked over to the smaller Selfoss. At Selfoss, I clicked the only waterfall picture that I am proud of on this trip (see above). For my gazillion other pedestrian waterfall shots, I blame my lack of a tripod.
Leg 4: Mývatn to Hólar (205 Km)
From Mývatn, we set off to Husavik, a small town in northern Iceland. Our first business in Husavik — something our stomachs ordered us to do — was to find a cafe. We found a wonderful bakery through a local’s recommendation: Heimabakarí. We ordered coffees and a couple of buttery pastries.
We sat down with our baked goodies and picked up an English language book on the shop’s bookshelf. When the owner saw us thumbing through it, she walked over to us and proudly mentioned that the author was a local of Husavik and lived just down the street. The book we we were looking at is called How Iceland changed the world by Egill Bjarnason. I am reading it now and finding it delightfully funny, informative, and easy to read. I recommend the book AND Heimabakarí if you’re ever in Husavik.
Our next stop was Akureyri, the “second city” of Iceland. It was a short stay. We got ice cream (cotton candy flavor!) at a brightly-painted shop called Turinn and were on our way. Then we sidetripped to Siglufjörður, a fjord in the north of Iceland. Siglufjörður was empty when we arrived. There was church, a few shops — one of them a vegan pop-up — and a few rows of modest houses. The church and the shops were closed. We drove on. We stopped to take selfies at the northermost point of this trip and our life — the closest point to the Arctic circle we have been to — before winding our way to Hólar, our stop for the night.
At Hólar, we stayed at an AirBnB run by a grandmother named Nanna Viktoria. Everything about our stay at Nanna Viktoria’s was heartwarming. Her dog Spurri was adorable, her bathroom was clean with steaming hot water from the shower, her bed was soft, and the sheets fragrant. Most importantly Nanna was very friendly and helpful. She offered us breakfast in the morning and showed us that fat, juicy blueberries with skyr — the famous Icelandic yogurt — was a delicious way to begin our day.
Leg 5: Hólar to Grundarfjörður (451 Km)
Hólar was a sleepy town of less than 100 people with horse and sheep farms, a historic church, and a church dog that wouldn’t bother to lift a paw as we walked by. As we left Hólar and began to drive down toward the Snæfellsnes peninsula, two things went wrong.
First, the weather turned ghastly. Winds picked up to over 15 meters per second. Rain came down like someone had upended a basket of thick needles over us.
Second, on Nanna Viktoria’s advice we drove down to a town called Budardalur, in an attempt to buy handmade Icelandic sweaters from a small community. The road to Budardalur turned out to be shockingly bad. It was not paved and had bumps and grooves and potholes. Our poor Kia suffered, but held on. I breathed a huge sigh of relief when we found pavement again. Hurray to the comfort that the fruits of modernity can bring!
Winds got increasingly worse the closer we got to Snæfellsnes. By the time we reached our guesthouse, it was almost gale force. We couldn’t open our car door without holding on to it for the fear of the wind making off with it. As we walked into our guesthouse, our arms full with our luggage, we were both pushed down by a giant squall. The clouds were low, thick, and black. Even though we had plans to drive the entire peninsula that evening, we decided it was safer to to stay put, warm and dry, inside our guesthouse. We spent the evening watching the clouds drift by and the winds rattle the antenna on the surrounding buildings.
Last day: to Reykjavik and Fagradalsfjall (231 Km)
The next morning — our last morning in Iceland — we did a quick trip to see Kirkjufellsfoss. This waterfall was famous as the “North of the Wall” in the Game of Thrones HBO series. It was also on many a postcard of Iceland. It was breathtaking, even in the poor weather that was still plaguing us.
Our sightseeing road trip around Iceland was now at an end. We took five days to complete this journey, mainly along the Ring Road. In hindsight, five days were just not enough for this splendid drive. If you are planning to do this, I recommend that you set aside at least ten days for it.
Afterwards, we drove to Reykjavik and got our covid Rapid Antigen tests done at the local health center (we got our results in less than an hour). Our next stop was the live volcano in Fagradalsfjall that has been erupting since March of this year.
To see the eruption site, we had to drive for an hour along scenic roads, and then walk up a strenuous, rocky trail marked “Path C”. On the day we were there, the mountain was quiet and brooding. Red hot magma was cascading down the valley.
I had never seen anything like it before — the viscous magma, its slow pace, the sizzle, the rising steam, the singeing heat that got hotter as you closed in. I stood and stared at the destruction in awe, realizing the smallness of my worries, my expectations, my disappointments, my squabbles, my pet peeves, and my self-flagellation. Being in the presence of such imposing natural force brought to mind a chapter in the Bhagavat Gita, where the warrior Arjuna conceives of the Vishwaroopam (which in Sanskrit means, “the universal form”): “the limitless magnificence with no beginning and no end, the radiance of a thousand suns.”
Volcanoes are powerful forces that shape this planet. What was created is annihilated, and the annihilation lays the base for more creation. The red magma spouting from the core of the earth destroys and covers all life in its path. The cooled black lava at Fagradallsfjall that day was the result of the recent eruption. But the generations that come after us will see it as land like any other. In the face of such limitless, endless cycles of this universe, our petty affairs are merely transitory.
Witnessing the grandeur of the volcano brought me so much peace and perspective, an apt end to our vacation. We said goodbye to the simmering volcano and drove to the airport.
To go to my post about hiking the Laugavegure trail, click here. To read about my overall thoughts and tips gathered from this trip, click here.
