The adventures of the morning of Day 22 began early, as we left our hotel in Akureyri and drove north to the town of Dalvik where we were outfitted in one-piece red insulated clown suits and loaded aboard an old fishing vessel.
We headed out into the Eyjafjörður – the “Island Fjord” where we met and played with several humpback whales.
The highlights are shown in the video above, along with the beach walk I took during our lunch break in Dalvik afterwards. The beach (featured photo up top) was pristine and gorgeous on this bright, sunny, calm late summer day.
As I was returning to town, I met a bunch of school kids (it was still summer vacation) who came out to the beach and were goofing around, burying one of their group in the sand; and he was kind enough to allow me to take a photo:
Note the lettering on his shirt–yes, Dalvik is almost exactly at 66°N latitude, and that afternoon our tour came to its northernmost point at a bright orange lighthouse overlooking the vast, bleak stretches of the Arctic Ocean.
I fell in love with the remoteness of this area. Our route took us through a pair of tunnels near this northern point, and in between the tunnels lies a little valley that was once one of the most remote places in Iceland.
The area is cris-crossed with hiking trails. I just wanted to stay here and hike. To hell with the rest of my travels.
But it was not to be. We moved on, visited an interesting beach lined with hexagonal basalt columns.
Offshore in the distance you can see the boxcar-shaped Island of Drangey, and if you squint, to its left you might be able to spot the stone spire that accompanies it. My close-up shot isn’t very good:
The little island is called Kerling, which means “Old Hag”. The legend goes that a female troll and her giant troll-cow were crossing the fjord when they were surprised by the bright rays of the rising sun and were consequently turned to stone.
Speaking of stone, we ended the day visiting one of Iceland’s oldest churches, a stone structure called Þingeyrakirkja.
It has been the site of a monastery for nearly 1000 years. The stone church was dedicated (consecrated) in 1877 and replaces a much older sod church. So much history. I can’t relate it all here.
We stopped for the night not far away at the Hotel Laugarbakki, which is all by itself out in the middle of nowhere, but a very nice place.
The next day was a relatively short one. We stopped at an outpouring of hot water that is so voluminous that it gets piped all the way to Reykjavik, more than 100 miles away, where it heats a good deal of the town, if I understand correctly.
The rest of the way back to Reykjavik we were usually driving beside that pipeline.
The next stop was the highlight of the day by far. It was a waterfall called Hraunfossar, or ‘lava falls’, and it is a half-mile wide wall of cascades coming out from a porous lava field. Amazing. (Yes, click the video – it fades in from black, sorry.)
Our final stop before heading to Reykjavik was the Sturlureykir Horse farm, where we got up close with the sturdy Icelandic ponies:
This farm was the first place in Iceland (and therefore in all of Europe) to make use of geothermal heat, and they still bake bread in their natural oven. Hospitality was delightful and so was the bread and hot cocoa!
Then it was back to Reykjavik for me. My hotel was right on the waterfront beside the iconic Harpa Concert Hall.
I had a Covid test scheduled in the basement of Harpa Hall at about 4:45PM. This was seriously worrying me. If I had picked up Covid during my time on the 19-passenger van that took me around the Iceland Ring Road, I would not be allowed to board the cruise ship in Greenland the next morning (after an early morning charter flight) for my long-awaited cruise through Canada’s Northwest Passage.
Visiting the Canadian Arctic Islands had been on my bucket list long before the term ‘bucket list’ was even coined. I have been wanting to get there since I was about twelve years old. I had paid HUGE bucks to get on this luxury cruise ship, and it all could be for naught if I did not pass this test.
Whew! The next leg of the adventure begins. Stay tuned.