Day 2 — The West Fjords
Our second day in Iceland started at early morning, as we left Búðardalur, our stop for sleeping in the day before, for the West Fjords. The roads in this area are not great, to say the least. The weather is also not helpful, as you can go from a sunny day to super dense fog in a matter of minutes as you go up and down the Fjords. But the view is always worth it, be it skirting the Fjords right by the sea with steep mountains and warnings of falling rocks by the road or by crossing them by going all the way up and being surrounded by white snow and blinding fog.
Our first stop in the West Fjords would be the Dynjandi Waterfall, a beautiful series of waterfalls falling from the top of the Fjords and running into the sea below. On the way there we crossed heavy fog and large snow fields, with roads that seemed carved in between the ice.
To arrive at Dynjandi, we needed to skirt the top of one mountain and return on the other side, inside the lower part of the Fjords. The waterfall is made up of 7 smaller falls, but in total Dynjandi is more than 100 meters high. Although being located in a fairly remote place, the site has a good structure for visitors, with toilets, parking space and even some tables for the occasional snack. Dynjandi means Thunderous Fall in Icelandic, because of the loud sound produced by the water.
After Dynjandi, we continued heading north to Ísafjörður, a village in the north of the Fjords. The landscapes continued amazing, as the Fjords grew taller. We planned a stop in the city to eat before we continued driving in the Fjords to go back east and then south to return to Route 1 as soon as we could so we wouldn’t fall too much behind schedule.
By nightfall, which in the end of May doesn’t really happen anymore, we were pretty tired and hungry. We stopped in a gas station already back at Route 1. There we met a really friendly south american neighbor, who gave us a free cup of much needed coffee and a map of Iceland. He recommended we spent the night in Hvammstangi, a small village near the main road. So we headed there and before midnight we were asleep again in our car, with a lot of clothes to handle the cold.
