Þjóðvegur 1. Hitchhiking Around Iceland – Part III

The third day of my trip around the island greeted me with wonderful weather. One that I have not seen for many, many weeks. I felt underneath that it was going to be a pleasant day, perfect to see what the main road of Iceland - Þjóðvegur 1 - has to offer, this time in its eastern part, also called the Eastern Fjords.

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The night spent in the hostel in Höfn delivered me a much needed regeneration. Last evening I took almost an hour lasting hot shower. Chris, whom I met the previous day, as he promised to do, arrived at the hostel at the agreed time and we moved on. The blues of the sky emerged from behind these dense clouds and I could finally see the rays of sun that had been waiting for me for days. The gloomy, harsh and mighty nature of Iceland while being rainy and cloudy disappears when the sun comes out, and the country is taking on an idyllic, soothing climate. It adds charm to it.

Chris was also in a good mood. We stopped by the road to see the famous Icelandic horses and even to treat them with apples. We had a lot of fun as they seemed to ignore us completely. Their appearance is quite characteristic, they resemble ponytails. As Wikipedia says:

They live long and are durable. They rarely fall ill in their home country; Icelandic law prevents horses from being imported and once they have been exported, they can no longer return. These horses, apart from such gaits as tarsus, trot and gallop, can also move on the pedestal known as tölt and ambling gait.

We drove to one of the most monumental places I have seen in Iceland, one of the two natural attractions on the island, for which you have to pay a small fee. It is a peninsula Stokksnes with a view of the mountain Vestrahorn, which is completely out of this earth.

Here is Chris

The space around us and the vastness of pointed peaks have delighted our eyes for a longer while. We have spent a lot of time here, and apart from the breathtaking landscape there is much more to see there.

This place was one of the first inhabited places in Iceland. There is even a reconstructed Viking village here made for a film that was never finished. It was left here for the tourists to visit. When we were here, I think it was undergoing some renovation, because it looked like a battle had been fought here recently and some of the constructions seemed to have been destroyed or unfinished.

Not far from the village you can climb the huge black cliffs, from where we admired the extremely harsh sea and the waves crushing against the rocks. In Stokksnes you can really feel the destructive power of nature.

We moved on. Suddenly by the road, in the middle of nothing appeared a chair. Of course, each two of us wanted to sit there for a moment.

Finally, we entered the actual eastern fjords. For the next 2 or 3 hours we drove along the shore gazed into the car windows. Or at least I did it, because Chris had to look at the road for most of the time :D

Having driven Egilsstaðir, the largest city in the region, when Þjóðvegur 1 was already turning west, we turned east towards a charming town located at the bottom of one of the fjords - Seyðisfjörður. To get to it you have to drive through the top of the mountain, so it got completely white around us.

Leaving the fjord we stopped even for a moment to walk along some short trail we accidentally encountered and admire the bay from above.

Below is an example of what I call "Icelandic textures", which have already appeared in previous entries and will recur in next ones. These are simply effusions of hues, a whole range of colours and unusual patterns that one encounters while dealing with Icelandic nature, mostly looking simply at the soil or rocks. This reminds me strongly of the psychedelic oil-based paints popular in the 1960s and perhaps one day I will put them together in one post.

We landed in the town. A very good Icelandic crime drama Trapped was shot here, which I highly recommend. I could recognize some views! Chris gput himself in a previously booked hostel and I chose a campsite. It turned out later that paying $20 allows me only to have a place on the grass, and hot water or coffee from the thermos is not included!

We walked around the village for a bit, ate icelandic hot-dogs at the station and finally landed in a pub with people whom Chris met at the hotel. It was several Americans and a completely crazy Dutchman, to whom I regret that I did not take any contact - he was a type of traveller who goes alone in the wilderness and builds various constructions of wood, do fishing, etc. in the middle of the forest. Anyway, nothing tastes as good as cold beer after a whole day of traveling impressions, no matter how expensive it is! The conversation revolved around travel, Iceland, life in the USA, although the most interesting argument was probably about which unit system and temperature scale were better - our logical, European, or absurd and obsolete imperial units and Fahrenheit?

Slightly squiffy, everyone went in their direction of accommodation. The next day Chris wanted to continue the route Þjóðvegur 1 until Akureyri, so he offered me a further journey together. It was so difficult for me to refuse! I think we got along quite well driving together and I believe that he did not do it solely out of politeness. This thought, together with the low temperature, put me to sleep...

To be continued...