Saturday August 30, Grundarfjörður to Tálknafjörður
The past two days in Snæfellsnes have been delightful, but it is full of tourists, and one of our goals on this trip to Iceland was to experience some less visited areas including the Westfjords, that portion of far northwest Iceland that is largely separated from the mainland. The ring road does not go through the Westfjords, so many people skip it.
The wild and fairly desolate Westfjords turned out to be our favorite part of Iceland and if we were to go back, we would stay and explore this part of the country for much longer and in much more depth than we did in our three nights on this trip. There is so much of the Westfjords to see, including Hornstrandir Nature Reserve and the Strandir Coast.
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| Látrabjarg, the Westernmost Point in Iceland and Europe |
I slept poorly last night. I bitched about our crappy bed in Grundarfjörður in a previous post, but I have yet to get into the duvets on every bed in Iceland. I lay some of the blame for a bad night's sleep squarely on a duvet that was too short for my large frame. Icelanders are fans of individual duvets on their beds, which is all good and well, but when I have to turn the duvet on the diagonal just to get a little coverage, well, it is a problem. Last night's duvet was among the shortest on the entire trip and I never could get comfortable under it. I never did sleep under one that I found sufficiently of size.
I really wanted good sleep because today was the first day that we were on a schedule, having to catch the ferry in nearby Stykkishólmur across the wide Breiðafjörður to Brjánslækur in the Westfjords. Our ferry was to depart at 1100 and we had instructions to arrive by 1030. The ferry was waiting for us when we arrived, but did not start boarding until about 1040 for the 2.5-hour ferry ride that made a single stop in the middle of the Breiðafjörður at Flatey. Driving would have taken about 3 hours, so with waiting time to load and unload, the time would have been a wash. But I wanted a break from driving and to be honest, I love taking ferries.
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| Stykkishólmur Harbor |
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| RO-RO Ferry Baldur Waiting for Us |
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| Hiding in the Car Against the Brisk Wind |
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| Loading Cargo Bound for Flatey |
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| Icelandic Flag on Stern of Ferry Baldur |
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A Black-backed Gull Watching Us Depart
Greater or Lesser, I Could not Say
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| Houses in Stykkishólmur |
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| Súgandiseyjarviti, Súgandisey Lighthouse |
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| Elliðaeyjarviti, Elliðaey Lighthouse |
About two-thirds of the way across the fjord, the ferry makes a brief stop, tying up alongside the pier at Flatey ("Flat Island") to drop the cargo boxes they loaded earlier and a few passengers. Some passengers may have come on board, but if they did, I missed it. Flatey's population is principally seasonal; most of the houses are summer houses.
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| Klofningsviti Sitting on Klofningur Near Flatey |
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| There are Few Buildings on Flatey |
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| Cliffs on Flatey as We Were Leaving |
As the photos above show, we lost the warm sunshine that accompanied most of our crossing. And the temperature dropped as well. After Flatey, although it looked like rain, it only sprinkled a bit here and there. The afternoon sky was mostly gray with spots of weak sunshine and the wind brought markedly cooler temperatures.
Already in our vehicle below deck when we docked, I had not yet seen Brjánslækur. When I imagined it, I imagined a small fishing village. It is not. It is a single ferry dock in the middle of nowhere with a dirt road leading up to the paved main road. Welcome to the desolate Westfjords!
Just as soon as the drawbridge hits the ferry dock, the crew starts waving off cars. Unloading goes quickly. As I headed up the ramp, our Duster staggered and lugged its way along and would not get up to speed until out to the main road where it lurched forward violently. The car's odd behavior did not thoroughly register as I was concentrating on moving along in the line of cars just off the ferry, about half of which were headed west in the same direction as we were.
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| This Handsome Sheep Tried to Share the Road with Us |
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Two Eurasian Oystercatchers
We Saw a Flock of Perhaps 200 in Flight, a Mass of Black and White |
We had two stops on our afternoon itinerary, both at the westernmost point of Iceland. On our way to Látrabjarg, home to the largest seabird colony in Iceland and one of the largest in Europe, we wanted to stop at a red sand beach named, oddly enough, Rauðisandur or Red Sand Beach.
Little did we know as we turned south of the paved road in the direction of the beach that this drive would be our welcome to the Westfjords where you want a 4x4 and some skill in driving it. The dirt road starts innocently enough to lure unsuspecting idiots down to the beach, but quickly becomes narrow, steep, and without any shoulders or guardrails, unforgiving. The experience was a long white knuckle affair and I was happy to have climbed down out of the mountains to the water level.
I still had to drive it in the reverse direction and going up always seems easier than going down. Going down the tight and steep hairpin turns was fairly easy; climbing back up them was a slick first-gear four-wheel-drive affair where momentum was key. Of this road, our host in Ísafjördur later said, “That road is scary!” Yep, what she said.
Bottomed out at the water level, we drove in search of the fabled red sand with visions of brilliant copper Arizona, Nevada, and Utah sand in our head. Ending up in a parking area, we found no red sand to speak of, just a sad muddy brown beach, a bust. A carload of Aussies arrived after we did and in comparing notes, we all decided that we got hornswoggled into a whole lot of driving for not much of anything. The sad beach was so unforgettable that I took no photos, though I did get a shot of the local denizens and the local church.
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| Beachside Inhabitants |
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| The Local Church, Saurbæjarkirkja |
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| Noisy Convention of Ravens Far More Interesting Than the Beach |
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Mare's-tail, Lófótur, Hippuris vulgaris, in a Ditch
A New Plant for Me, But it Grows in Oregon |
After grinding back up through the dirt track to the paved road, we aimed for Látrabjarg Cliffs, home to the largest seabird nesting area in Iceland. Once we drove beyond the Patreksfjörður airport on a really beat dirt road, the GPS claimed that the remaining 12 miles would take 90 minutes. As the kids say, the math was not mathing. Pot committed, we pushed on through terrible road conditions alongside Patreksfjörður, the fjord, not the town of the same name.
Some sections were scary-ass singletrack with no shoulders and hundreds of feet of drop off. At one point, we crossed a dilapidated bridge as a bulldozer and crew seemed to be pushing a new dirt track off to one side after having laid a culvert in the creek. Road conditions were rough but the suspension in the Duster was up to the task. Shit road and all, the drive only took about 20 minutes, not the 90 that the GPS indicated.
The impetus for the visit to Látrabjarg was to see the masses of seabirds, hopefully including puffins, despite it being late in the season for them. Ultimately, the birds were a bust, but the scenery was spectacular and seeing the westernmost point in Europe was pretty neat. The puffins have returned to sea for the winter as I anticipated.
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| Lighthouse at Látrabjarg |
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| Cliffs Are Impressive, Up to 440m/1450ft |
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| Next Stop, Greenland |
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| Hilltops Covered in Guano-Loving Plants |
There were a few birds in residence on the ciffs, primarily Northern Fulmars, a bird we saw all over the country. Iceland hosts about 25 percent of the world's population of these birds who prefer to nest on cliffs, sitting there clucking like chickens. Ungainly on the ground, fulmars are wizards in the air and easy to tell from gulls when on the wing. Fulmars appear bull-necked, short-tailed, and fly with stiff wingbeats, different in all aspects from the gulls that we saw, Black-backed, Herring, Icelandic, and Black-headed.
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| Northern Fulmars |
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| Black-legged Kittiwakes |
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| Many Hundreds of Feet Down, Common Eiders |
I was not expecting to see many wildflowers in Iceland in September, but there were a surprising number in the grass along the cliffs.
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| Sea Campion, Holurt, Silene uniflora |
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| Common Scurvygrass, Skarfakál, Cochlearia officinalis |
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| Grass of Parnassus, Mýrasóley, Parnassia palustris |
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| Sea Thrift, Geldingahnappur, Armeria maritima |
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Sea Thrift Close-up
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Autumn Hawkbit, Skarifífill, Scorzoneroides autumnalis
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| Walking Among the Hawkbits |
Tired now after a long drive and walking about the cliffs, we set out for our cabin for the night in Tálknafjörður. We could not find a place to stay in the larger Patreksfjörður, but we did find what looked to be a nice place one fjord over in Tálknafjörður. Reversing course, as we were negotiating the rough, steep dirt road back from Látrabarg, the check engine light came on with a message on the display “Check 4WD.” Awesome! I figured the front transaxle was running hot and switched it to full-time 2WD for the duration of the drive. The next morning, the error cleared, no doubt an overheating issue or a sensor issue.
Remember the dilapidated bridge that we inched across carefully on the drive out? It was blocked off with big signs and the road detoured onto the new dirt that we saw the bulldozer pushing earlier. My tracks may have been the first in the mud as we passed the old bridge now hanging from a crane and being loaded onto a flatbed truck. We would see crews out getting the job done seven days a week and achieving things quickly without flaggers or even minimal signage. I guess Icelanders are used to it and tourists need to learn to cope or stay off the more interesting roads.
Tálknafjörður proved to be a tiny out-of-the-way fish processing town in a gorgeous location hard on the fjord of the same name. Once past the few buildings in town, we followed the host's direction to the cabin: “Drive to the church on the hill, once you are there, drive a little longer on the gravel road with a slight left turn, approximately 150 meters, then you will find the cabin.” Interesting but largely effective for a place with no GPS entry. We bore a little too left ending up at a group of cabins which did not appear to be ours, but retracing our steps a bit, we arrived quickly at our cute tiny house cabin with a view of the fjord, one of our most favorite places of the entire trip and a blessing after our previous apartment.
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| Our Delightful Secluded Cabin in Tálknafjörður |
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| View of Tálknafjörður, the Fjord
Surrounded by Planted Trees from Home
Sitka Spruce and Lodgepole Pine |
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Cotton Grass, Klófífa, Eriophorum angustifolium
Found Everywhere in Wet Locations |
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| Planted Wildflowers Outside the Cabin |
Settling in in the late evening, I found a panini maker in the cabinet and made us a couple of cheese and salami panini to accompany our wine. Because it was a chilly evening, I opened a bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape that proved too fruity and too large for our palates accustomed to lighter Nebbiolos.
After dark, we went to bed already ruing that we could not spend another day here in the beautiful cabin, exploring the secluded town, buying fish at the processing plant which has a self-serve walk-up retail counter, and grilling that fish out on the wide front porch. Where we regretted spending two days in Grundarfjörður, we wished for several more days in lovely Tálknafjörður. Live and learn.
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