Ringroad Selfdrive Tour - 3rd Day - In 8 Days around Iceland

Following route 1 – also called the ringroad – we took a car all the way around Iceland. This is Day 3.

(Für die Deutsche Version dieses Artikels, klicken Sie hier: German Version )

Only after driving for two days in the shadow of the very same glacier, you realize how gigantic it really is! On day 3 we went for a hike through Skaftafellheiði. The trail went along the edge of Vatnajökull, the biggest glacier and the second biggest national park of Europe.

On our first break at Svartifoss waterfall, we were only half as exhausted as expected. Walking on we soon realized that up to that point, it had just been the touristic path…

On the next stop, two and a half hours later, I have to admit, for once, I had no problem at all with Nils taking a timelapse for about 20 minutes…

The panorama actually was amazing! To our back, a wide and flat land, no forests, no villages, no sign of human presence, just the deltas of several glacier-rivers. In front of us, the mountains covered with snow and the glacier between and on top of them.

Another hour and a half later, after we had climbed another huge rock, we had the best view of all, the glacier moraine Skaftafellsjökull below us.

“At least I can still become a cook”

After this 8-hours-hike (well, at least 2 hours went by filming and taking time lapses and about another one eating and drinking…) with nothing but dry bread and energy bars, you could imagine how hungry Nils was.

Of course, there was still some more dry bread in the car (And look! More lembas bread. I don’t usually hold with foreign food, but this Swedish stuff is not bad… :D) – I thought I would be a good girlfriend and cook some noodles for him. Hm yeah, somebody should have told me never to use a salt dispenser without trying it out first. In the end, we both had a big serving of salt, with lots of butter and a few spaghetti. And it seemed like getting more with each bite – more salt, not more noodles.

We both managed to eat a hole bowl of it – me because I hate throwing away food, Nils because he has good manners.

This incident had a silver lining though: It was the first time on this trip that Nils was not hungry anymore.

We went on driving along the eastern fjords, where we came through a small fishing village called Höfn. Höfn is famous for its lobster which everyone who likes seafood should definitely try – that is at least what everybody told us. But with our purse in mind (and the excessive amount of salt in our stomach) we decided to take but a pair of Hotdogs and Fanta.

Hotdogs seem to be the unofficial Icelandic national food – You can get them nearly everywhere and fortunately they aren’t that expensive. And well, they are pretty tasty 

After leaving Höfn, GoogleMaps told us that there is still 5 hours to drive before arriving at the campsite, in reality it took nearly 7. And it was already late when we left, about 6:30 pm… But so we witnessed the landscape in the twilight turning more and more into a part of middle-earth while we were driving alongside one fjord after the other.

A friend of ours told us that the nanny of Tolkien’s children who told them tales (and him as well, as he happened to love her stories very much) came from Iceland – that explains EVERYTHING!

This post is part of a whole series called "In 8 Days around the Island". 

Ringroad Selfdrive Tour - Day 2 - In 8 Days around the Island

Ringroad Selfdrive Tour - Day 4 - In 8 Days around the Island

Interested in your own Ringroad-Selfdrive-Experience?!

Click on this link to book your own 7 Days Ringroad Selfdrive Tour now: Days Ringroad Selfdrive Tour - Guide to Iceland

Or just rent your car here and explore on your own: Rent a Car!

Here you can find a map that shows our route on Day 3: https://goo.gl/maps/W9ePQC16EbD2