Iceland Day 4 – Snæfellsnes Peninsula Day 2

Friday August 29, a Tour of Snæfellsnes Peninsula

I awoke early to pea soup fog at 0615 on our second day on the gorgeous Snæfellsnes Peninsula in western Iceland. I fell back asleep around 0830 and did not awaken until 1015. Getting away at 10:45 with no coffee is not how I imagined our day starting, nor was sleeping late which put us a bit behind on our imaginary schedule. The beauty of a flexible schedule is that we can adapt to things like this, and we did, excising several potential points of interest.

Snæfellsjökull

Today's itinerary, I built around a visit to Matarlist Restaurant for a late lunch. Of all the things to do today, the restaurant was closest to our apartment if we traced the route logically in the counterclockwise direction, so we flipped the route to clockwise and retraced part of our drive from yesterday so as to arrive at the restaurant at the lunch hour.

Morning View of Kirkjufell

As we retraced our drive slowly through the fog on route 54 back up over the mountains to cross to the south side of the peninsula, we climbed high enough above the clouds to get our first view of the large Snæfellsjökull glacier.

First View of Snæfellsjökull Above the Clouds

Just as we reached the southern side of the peninsula, we found ourselves above Bjarnarfoss that we visited yesterday with stunning views of the highlands, the waterfall itself, and the ocean. This is an example of the views to the horizon that we came to Iceland to see.

Bjarnarfoss from High Above

The first stop today was at Rauðfeldsgjá Gorge, a spot recommended by friends. It proved to be a tight cave-like gorge carved through the mountainside by a creek. More interesting to me than the short rock hopping creek walk into the gorge were the dozens of Northern Fulmars nesting on the rocks and flying all about the opening of the gorge. Were I to visit again, I would skip this gorge which I found only mildly interesting.

Rauðfeldsgjá Gorge is the Dark Vertical Opening

Detail of the Opening

Inside, Standing in Creek, Looking Up

Many Fulmars Flying Around the Opening

Next up on the agenda was to continue toward the western end of the peninsula, past Búðakirkja, the black church we visited yesterday, into the nearby town of Arnarstapi for a potential walk along the sea cliffs to the town of Hellnar, and also to see an arch rock formation called Gatklettur. We quickly changed our minds about an extended walk here. Arnarstapi has cashed in on the tourist trade, building ample bus-friendly parking, public restrooms, and a little enclave of schlock merchants and cafés.

Our late start to the day gave the first tour buses from Reykjavík time to swarm the area, the drive being under 3 hours. Also, we would find later in the day that some of the tourists came off a cruise ship docked in Grundarfjörður. Before going to Iceland, I had not imagined cruise ships being an issue. We would encounter them also in Ísafjörður and Reykjavík, but thankfully would miss them in Húsavík and Seyðisfjörður.

Annoyingly, we found ourselves amid swarms of tourists, a good many of them Israelis. Nothing against Israelis, just masses of people. Our allergy to tourists kicking in to overdrive, we revised our plans to make just as brief a stop as possible before moving on to less bus-friendly environs. Whether buses could park at a site would guide many of our future choices. Just as we were leaving, 7 or 8 more buses were pulling in to the parking lot.

Monument to Bárður, Important Figure in the Sagas
Guardian Spirit of the Snæfellsnes Peninsula

Pyramidal Stapafell Behind Anarstapi

Snæfellsjökull from Anarstapi

Sea Cliffs at Anarstapi

Columnar Jointing at Anarstapi

Sea Stacks at Arnarstapi

Gatklettur "Hole in the Rock" Arch

Northern Fulmar at Arnarstapi

Leaving just as quickly as we could, we continued west to see the coastal rock formation called Lóndrangar, stopping to see it from a viewpoint. The views from the overlook east of the twin rock spires are simply gorgeous and there is insufficient parking for buses to stop, making Lóndrangar a great stop. Interestingly, in a land of dark volcanic rock, some of the cliffs here are sedimentary, light-colored sandstone that is perhaps uplifted sea floor. Seabirds, including Black-legged Kittiwakes and Northern Fulmars, are common here.

Once again, we would see other tourists climbing beyond the warning fences out onto the cliff face despite ample signage forbidding such behavior. Should these people fall, I would feel bad for the first responders who would have to retrieve their bodies.

Uplifted Sandstone, Unusual in Iceland

Black-legged Kittiwake

More Ubiquitous Northern Fulmars

Twin Spires of Lóndrangar in the Distance

Sea Campion or Holurt, Silene uniflora
Found All Along Sea Cliffs All Over Iceland

The clock ticked over to 1400 as we were leaving the viewpoint and we were becoming quite ravenous, not having yet eaten. This prompted several changes to our itinerary. We skipped visits to both Lóndrangar and Malarrif Lighthouse because we had seen them from the viewpoint and getting closer was unlikely to give us any better perspective. We also scrapped everything else except a quick visit to Djúpalónssandur, a black sand beach.

In reading about visiting Iceland, I saw many people waxing poetic about black sand beaches in a way that made them seem something of a rarity. In fact, most of the beaches in Iceland are of black sand by virtue of the ubiquitous lava which makes up most of the rock in the country. It is not necessary to visit any specific beach and this affords visitors the luxury of choosing beaches that are less frequented. Djúpalónssandur, being situated about 2.5 kilometers down a dirt road, sees fewer visitors than many beaches and is worth visiting for the spectacular lava formations surrounding the path down to the ocean. The small and smooth rounded black rocks called the "Pearls of Djúpalón" that comprise much of the beach are also much more interesting than black sand.

Lava Formations and Small Pond at Djúpalónssandur

Also scattered along the beach are pieces of the British trawler Epine GY7, which wrecked here in 1948. At first, I did not understand why the ultra-ecoconscious Icelanders did not clean up the pieces and recycle them. But as I took in the sight, I found the scattered remnants a poignant and fitting memorial to the sailors who died here.

Detritus of the Wreck of the Epine GY7

Now really hungry, we set sail as it were for Matarlist Restaurant which I knew to be located inside the visitor center for Snæfellsjökull National Park in the town of Hellissandur. We plugged the restaurant into the GPS and took off. I was surprised when we were directed to keep going through Hellissandur and past the visitor center. On arriving in the next town, Ólafsvík, we pulled into the parking lot of a standalone restaurant clearly signed as Matarlist. The chef later told us that he had relocated in May, long after I had noted that the restaurant was located in Hellissandur.

In my research of restaurants in Iceland where I might come to understand local treatment of local products, I got several referrals to Matarlist. In each case, I was told that the chef is young but has great potential. I was really looking forward to our lunch.

We were greeted warmly at the door and seated at a nearby table. We ordered a couple of beers while we looked over the menu. Gull is a way better lager than Viking but still a far cry from our beloved IPAs and hazy IPAs. We decided on a cured salmon appetizer, a lamb shank, and the fish of the day, not surprisingly cod.

Cured Salmon with Fennel and Oranges

The cured salmon was delicious. Although the fennel and orange treatment has been done over and over and is not really Icelandic, the piece of salmon was one of the best I have ever had. It was as deliciously fatty as it could be. Our server said it was wild caught out of Borgarnes; at a later table visit, 22-year old chef Benjamin said he drives personally to get the salmon. The salmon was the standout of the meal.

Cod with Cauliflower and Fingerling Potatoes

Lamb Shank with Mash, Red Cabbage, and Apple Butter

Pistachio Meringue

We enjoyed our lunch and appreciated the care and skill in selecting ingredients and cooking them. I especially appreciated the consideration given to the components other than the main protein, the center of the plate. For example, the fingerling potatoes with the cod and the red cabbage with caramelized onions with the lamb were excellent. Paying attention to the components other than the center of the plate is a sign of a good chef.

The fundamentals are all there for Matarlist to become a great restaurant. Time will help the young chef learn to pare his plates back to the essentials. As young chefs we all put too many ingredients on the plate. It takes time, experience, and confidence to pare them back to let the key ingredients shine. And they will shine at Matarlist because the ingredients are first rate. This restaurant is definitely worth a visit.

Taking our leave of the restaurant after a nice chat with Benjamin, we decided to keep going into Grundarfjörður and call it a day. We drove leisurely back to town, stopping here and again at vista points looking out over the ocean. When we rounded the curve around Kirkjufell headed into Grundarfjörður, a loud ship's horn called our attention to a cruise ship making ready to leave the dock under the guidance of a tug boat. We had not realized that Grundarfjörður was a stop for cruises.

Back in town, we had two errands to run: filling the car with diesel and getting supplies for sandwiches for tomorrow. Getting fuel in Iceland, like Italy, was an adventure. The most common gas station is N1 for which our rental car company had given us a discount token to scan at the pump. I pulled in to the unmanned station, a set of two pumps alongside the road, a common scenario outside the major towns of Iceland. On tapping my credit card, a bunch of Icelandic gibberish came up on the screen which I could not get past no matter what I tried. I finally used Google Translate to scan the words. The machine wanted the PIN for my credit card, and as we Americans know, our credit cards do not have PINs.

Frustrated, we headed off down the road to the other station in town (thankfully, there were two), the Orkan, also a set of two pumps on the side of the road. On looking at the pump, I saw the Apple Pay symbol on the reader and scanned my phone. Bingo! Up came a screen asking me what fuel I wanted and I selected diesel. We would avoid N1 stations for the remainder of the trip. We ended up at Olís once which is similar to any typical American convenience store. Their pumps also accept Apple Pay, take American credit cards without a PIN, and have a menu on the touch screen to select English.

At about 900 residents, Grundarfjörður is too small to attract any of the bigger grocery stores. We ended up in a tiny one with very little selection of anything, but enough for sandwich fixings. Each evening, I would make sandwiches for the following day's lunch so that we could eat when it suited us as we toured the countryside where there are no restaurants.

Back at our room looking out at Kirkjufell, we relaxed for a while before I made sandwiches for tomorrow and assembled a small "fancy dinner," euphemism for cheese and salame on crackers. We had eaten a huge meal for lunch and wanted little for dinner.

"Fancy Dinner" in our Room

Compare the Sunset View of Kirkjufell with the Morning's View

We went to bed anticipating leaving beautiful Snæfellsnes behind and knowing that we would be on a schedule tomorrow, having to arrive on time for our ferry ride to the Westfjords.