Iceland Day 3 – Snæfellsnes Peninsula Day 1

Thursday August 28, Reykjavík to Grundarfjörður

To the constant screaming of gulls as if I were at the beach, I woke at 0700 in our Reykjavík apartment after a fair night's sleep, a first in Iceland and sorely needed to help me get over the dragging feeling of jetlag yesterday. Today marked the true beginning of our clockwise tour of Iceland as we headed north and west out of the capital headed for the beautiful Snæfellsnes Peninsula.

Before setting out on the highway, Ann and I wanted to walk to one of the nearby coffee shops to fuel up for the day. We ran headlong into the fact that none of the shops near us were open early, the earliest at 0930, long after we planned to be on the road. This would be a constant in most of the country; coffee shops do not open until late morning.

After packing and loading the car, we watched the traffic cameras and waited for rush hour traffic to thin out. Amazingly, as we set off, the day was mostly sunny and mild. I say this in retrospect because today would be one of only two days without rain in the entire three-week trip.

In Reykjavík, we joined the Hringvegur, literally the "ring road," Route 1, the main highway that loops around the entire country. Almost immediately, we navigated a series of closely spaced roundabouts, seven or eight in a row, on our way north. I expected the major highway in the country to be more like a limited access interstate at home with exit ramps rather than roundabouts.

Not only is Route 1 not like an interstate, but it has one-lane bridges and a few unpaved sections, quickly repaired after being washed out in vicious floods such as the one that ripped out a 150-meter section barely east of Höfn just days after we passed through. Icelandic highway engineers are some of the fastest and most can-do people I have ever seen as they struggle against the non-stop forces of nature.

Because the ring road is the main tourist route, I planned our itinerary to stay off of it where possible. Many of those alternate routes would prove to be an adventure, scenic to be sure, but often unpaved with limited to no shoulders and steep drop-offs without guard rails.

Exiting the ring road at Borgarnes, we continued almost due west onto the gorgeous Snæfellsnes Peninsula, a finger jutting west into the Atlantic Ocean. We stopped first at a set of cliffs made of basalt columns, the Gerðuberg Cliffs. The entrance road was our first stretch of dirt road, and among the worst we would experience, but only 2 kilometers long. Many secondary roads are dirt or gravel, but are in fair enough shape such that I could make some speed. Not so this short stretch of potholed road.

Columnar basalt occurs when thick lava cools and shrinks into roughly hexagonal shapes, typically starting at the top and bottom of the flow. As the lava cools, cracks extend toward the center, creating a crystalline structure that when viewed from the edge looks like columns. While columnar formations are common along the Deschutes River back home, none is as regular and photogenic as this site and others that we visited in Iceland. We would see many spectacular columns during our three weeks in Iceland.

Gerðuberg Cliffs

After Walking Along the Bottom of the Cliffs
We Climbed up the Steep Wall to Walk Along the Top

Our Car Far Below

A Familiar Plant from Oregon, Sea Thrift, Armeria maritima
Geldingahnappur in Icelandic

Rauðamelskirkja at the Cliffs

Off in the distance from the cliffs sits a white church with a red roof called Rauðamelskirkja. White buildings with red oxide roofs are the common architectural vernacular in western and northern Iceland where if there were a cluster of three buildings in a hamlet, one of them would be a church. We did not see this nearly as much in the east and south.

From Gerðuberg, we continued west to a beach called Ytri Tunga, known for being one of the best seal haul-outs in Iceland. This was our first experience with a place being overrun with tourists, likely because of its proximity to both Reykjavík and its situation directly off the main highway. We saw a handful of seals only, Harbor Seals and not the rarer Gray Seals, and I needed my 525mm lens to shoot them. This was not the easily visible and highly populated seal beach that I had anticipated. Ytri Tunga offered us poor value for our parking fee, about 1000ISK.

Harbor Seals at Ytri Tunga

Common Eider at Ytri Tunga

Green and Red Rock at Ytri Tunga

The Beauty of Snæfellsnes West of Ytri Tunga

The next stop was our first waterfall in Iceland (of gazillions) and it was a pretty waterfall with few visitors that offered good bang for the buck. Bjarnarfoss or Fall of the Bears, an 80-meter two-tiered waterfall, is a short walk from a free parking area at the base of the hill. This waterfall is close to the road and yet among the less visited falls that we photographed. As a result, it was quiet of visitors, loud of rushing water, and a peaceful respite after the crazed throngs at Ytri Tunga.

Quiet Bjarnarfoss

From Between Two Sitka Spruce
Planted, not Native to Iceland

The Bjarnarfossgil Creek Rolling Down the Hill

Same Creek Snaking to the Ocean

Bjarnarfoss tumbles off a cliff just inland of a photogenic black church called Búðakirkja, situated in a nature preserve. From the main road, a quaint little lane winds through interesting moss-covered lava formations ending at the church. Having only seen Búðakirkja in photos before, I was surprised at how tiny it is. After visiting the church, Ann and I walked through the dunes to the water in the surrounding nature preserve, a wonderful short walk on a sunny afternoon with enough clouds in the azure sky to add drama to our photos.

Búðakirkja

A Favorite Photo (Click to Expand)
Búðakirkja left and Bjarnarfoss right

The Shore Behind Búðakirkja

We decided to spend two days on Snæfellsnes so that we could split up the sights over unhurried days. Randomly, I chose the town of Grundarfjörður in which to overnight. We had been visiting sites on the south coast of the peninsula while Grundarfjörður is on the north coast and to get there from the south requires a climb through pretty good mountains, some capped with glaciers. After leaving Búðakirkja, we climbed through the scenic mountains on Route 54 towards Grundarfjörður, leaving all the sights on the west end of the peninsula for tomorrow.

Route 54 enters Grundarfjörður, a wide spot on the road, from the west passing directly by one of the icons of Iceland, the mountain known as Kirkjufell or Church Mountain. Kirkjufell is best known to Game of Thrones fans as Arrowhead Mountain, a significant location for events north of the wall. And consequently, the area is wall-to-wall with tourists.

Coming from the west, we pulled into the Kirkjufell Waterfall Viewpoint, a tourist trap to rake in parking fees. Had we been familiar with the location, we could have parked at a pullout just a little closer to Grundarfjörður for free and avoided scads of noisy, undisciplined tourists. Had we wanted to see Kirkjufellfoss, the waterfall, we could have walked a few hundred yards to see it. It was not worth the parking fee or the aggravation and Kirkjufell photographs well from plenty of places nearby. You can shoot it from across the water, which makes a spectacular photo, but I was not willing to battle a crowd to do so.

Near Kirkjufell, Clouds Stacking Up, a Sign of Fog to Come

The Iconic Kirkjufell

Underwhelming Kirkjufellfoss

Watching Idiot Tourists Go Beyond Barriers;
Trying to Ignore the Persistent Whine of Illegal Drones

Leaving Kirkjufell disgusted at our fellow tourists who were displaying the most boorish of behavior and giving all tourists a black eye, we still needed to kill some time before checking in to our apartment in town. Anticipating this, I had planned to visit Grundarfoss just on the eastern outskirts of town. It proved to be not well loved, possibly because although the twin falls are visible from the road, it involves a walk of about ten minutes to arrive at the falls, a walk most lazy tourists are unwilling to take. To be fair, although parking was free, the falls offered little bang for our buck and had we not needed to burn time, skipping them would have been no loss.

Grundarfoss

I Like the Mosaic of Patterns on the Hill

Leaving the falls behind, we made the two-minute drive through the hamlet of Grundarfjörður to our apartment on the hillside above town. We found it to be one of our least favorite apartments, a really basic DIY ADU with no place to sit and be comfortable, not the best choice for a two-night stay. Worse still, our bed was two twin beds differing in height by about three inches, shoved together in a corner.

We wanted a late lunch and a beer so we asked of our host who recommended a café just down the hill from our room. Like our room and the town of Grundarfjörður, there was little to recommend about this café whose Eastern European crew was not terribly on the ball. For beer, we had our choice of Viking Lager or Viking Lager, a sort of generically bad Icelandic lager, Budweiser adjacent. We shared equally generic mozzarella sticks and an order of fish and chips. The only reason I remember the food is because I noted it in my daily summary on my phone, the notes from which I write these posts.

She is Not Smiling Because the Budweiser Beer is Good

However, I do clearly remember the pizza menu at this restaurant that styles itself an American café. I know that many Americans eat all kinds of crap on their pizza (pineapple, for God's sake), but this menu takes the cake for shitty combinations that no unstoned American would have conjured. A case in point: pizza sauce, cheese, ham, chicken, dates, arugula, and chipotle mayo. WTF!

Want to Laugh? So-Called American Pizza

Back at our room, we really did not need dinner after the late lunch. We laid in our miserable beds for a while before going to bed. I leave you with a photo of Kirkjufell at sunset as seen directly out the window of our apartment.

Kirkjufell at Sunset