ICELAND. PART IV.
Days 4 & 5: we travelled to the West Fjords. Google and other directions online told us taht from Reykjavik we should take highway 1, then 61 which follows the innerside of each fjord. This looked like it would take long, but would be scenic. Another possible route was to take a shortcut from highway 1, to the 60 then bypass the majority of the fjords by cutting through the middle section towards highway 61. We tried that. In our Yaris. We failed, miserably. We figured instead of trying to plow through the snow in our dinky little car, we should turn around, head back to highway 60 and continue north. If we backtracked it would take another hour to get to highway 1, then to the 61 and to us, both the 60 and 61 looked equal distance and followed each fjord. So we figured we’d take the scenic route that wasn’t suggested ANYWHERE online.
What followed was a 4 hour drive up the side of mountains, without guard rails, on gravel roads leading up to the top of snowy peaks with snow walls as high as 15 feet of each side of us. It was actually insane. We took a few photos along the way, but for the most part, we were scared to stop and have to deal with our Yaris stuck in the snow. There were 30 minute to 1 hour sections where we would not see a single soul. No cars behind us or passing by, no houses. No one. A few spots we just had to stop because the view was unreal. We finally arrived at Ísafjörður, a small fishing town in north west Iceland with a population of 2,600 people. The views, serenity and overall atmosphere both in the town and in the surrounding mountains was something that cannot be explained. We both agree that it is somewhere that everyone would see before they die.
We didn’t have directions or anything on what we were doing the following day. Matt accessed google navigation through his phone and we used that as a guide to get us to different locations. It was super fun and we explored so many different fishing towns. That night we drove a short distance from the city to get away from the lights and I set up my tripod. The northern lights were hiding behind the clouds but were also not as strong as they were a couple of nights before when we saw them from Reykjavik. It was still amazing none the less.
Check out the rest if you missed it:
ICELAND: Part I.
ICELAND: Part II.
ICELAND: Part III.
Our Iceland trip was also featured over on SMP Living‘s blog.
Location: Ísafjörður, Suðureyri, Flateyri, Súðavík, Hnifsdalur & Bolumgarvik.
Date: April 2013
Camera: D700
Lenses: 50mm 1.4D, 85mm 1.8G & 24-70mm 2.8G
