Sunshine Rain and dazzling rainbows – Iceland Road Trip 7

On our seventh day across the South Central Iceland, we visit a Viking Village at the eastern end of Iceland . The Viking village lies on the outskirts of the town of Hofn where we had stayed for the night. Hofn is a fishing village has fishing trawlers, warehouses and a busy fishing harbour. a We plan to return to Reykjavik tonight, a distance of over 450 kms. Now that is a lot of driving in a country where the speed limit maxes out at 90 at highways and 50 kmph in and around local villages and towns. And during the day we find beautiful streams and dazzling rainbows along the way.

This is the seventh part of my Travelogue about our Road Trip across southern Iceland. During these last few days we had been to a lot of different spectacular locations including Gulfoss and Geyser, Thingvellir National Park, Kerid Crater Lake and the incredible Skogafoss and Seljalandsfoss waterfalls and yesterday had been to Rynesfjara, the Black Beach and Solheimjokull Glacier walk.

It has truly been an astonishing trip these last few days here at Iceland. There were moments when we almost found ourself in a spot. I had almost lost control of the car once as we were driving towards Pingvelir. Next , my friend had a car breakdown in the middle of nowhere on that same day. But everywhere we went, the natural beauty made good. It also overwhelmed us all through. I have never experienced anything so dramatic, so magnificent in my life.

Hofn, a coastal fishing village near Jokulsarlon, Iceland.

Milk Factory Hotel : Hofn

It was tough getting over the beauty of Jokulsarlon which we covered yesterday. The night was spent in a cozy accomodation at at Milk Factory. We rested, slept well after a tiring day . I woke up refreshedin the morning and then we joined others at the dining hall for a hearty breakfast. The breakfast consisted of boiled eggs, fruits, cereals, milk, cheese, muffins, croissant, bread,juices and hot beverages.

Early morning, one of my friends and I had went for a quick walk around this fishing harbour town. It was before 8 in the morning, the air felt fresh and the town clean. We could see the morning workers around the harbour were coming to work. The school children were getting to school. They crossed the narrow lanes in an uniform line with their teachers leading them. The fishermen were getting their gears ready. And the town slowly was rising up from a slumber.

It was time to leave Hofn and there is a long way ahead today. We planned to drive down to Reykjavik on the other end of the island.

Viking Village near Hofn, Iceland

The first stop was the Viking Village. Built as a set for a movie which never got released, the village stood as before and was converted into a tourist attraction. Though I would have loved to spend an hour at the Viking Village, time was short. We needed to make the long trip back to Reykjavik before sunset and it was bothering me. The weather was always unpredictable here in Iceland, (as we had seen earlier). We wanted to make it back safe and sound into the capital.

The Viking village makes a good spot for an hour or two. This is one of the few places which charge you to visit. Now all of Iceland had been a free visit for us, except for Kerid Crater lake which charged us around 5 Euros per head. Here the ticket price was Euros 10 per head if I remember correctly. But the sad thing was that we didn’t have an hour or two to spend here. The long journey kept bothering me ,and I tried to hurry up the group instead.

So we spent about 15 minutes near the gate of the Viking village, which also hosts a small cafe/bar and you can view the wide plains from this place which is a little higher than sea level.

We started back on the road, and this time we turned around to Reykjavik. We had the six days of an exhilarating tour. Unhindered natural beauty is everywhere, you turn your sights on. We thumbed the long back road, the nature keeping us company every minute of the way. I had a quick look at Jokulsarlon from the bridge crossing nearby as we hit route No #1 . For the next hour the Vatnajokull Glacier kept us company, this time on the right hand side while the left expanse gave us glimpses of swamps, rocky terrains and the Atlantic ocean. We are going back… and it seemed to make all of us a bit sad.

Driving back towards Vik from Hofn

We crossed the expanse of the Vatnajokull glacier, it was still beckoning us. Every glance and it seemed to speak to us, standing still with all the snow and ice around. Then came a short burst of rains and I slowed down the car so as not to loose control of the car. Fine flakes of ice coloured the black tarmac grey and hit the windscreen relenless.

After about 15 minutes of driving and the skies again seemed to clear up. And then we saw the sun and along with it an impeccable dazzling rainbow, a few kms away. It rose in an arch, the mountains towards its back and a small village shone behind it. We chased the rainbow till we found a spot where we could park at a side of the Icelandic Route #1. The whole scene looked ethereal in the soft ambient light.

Rainbow: Iceland Road Trip

The rainbow looked just like the ones that we find in our nursery books and the whole team was joyful at the sight of it. We quickly parked our cars to a side and came out to rejoice at such a wonderful sight. The rainbow arched large over the plains and rocky, scrubby land, the mountains huddled together to give it just the right backdrop and we marveled at the sight. The cold air, still heavy with the weight of water vapours felt nice on our cheeks. It was a breather after about 2 hours of driving and basically everyone needed to stretch their legs a bit . I started my car-coffee mug and had a few sips in between.

Time to move on and again the road lay ahead stretching miles and miles over the wilderness. The beauty was everywhere, strange shapes and colours, playing with the sporadic sunshine, and partially grey dull skies accompanied us as we drove back to the city. About another hour later we stopped at a running stream, its heavenly ,sparkling water gushing into a river bed making a small waterfall at its end. We filled our bottle with the streams water and tasted it. Chilled and sweet it tasted and everyone had some fun jumping along the river beds and ridges of the stream.

We soon had our lunch, at an cafe-restaurant close to the town of Vik. The women also went for a bit of shopping at the local store right next to the gas station. The store had Icelandic woollen gears, miniature artifacts, pashminas and hiking shoes. It also had armbands and keychains, caps and ponchos and ladies found many of them alluring.

We filled our cars at the gas station, by then had become adept at the self filling, billing process practiced here in Iceland. It is always good to do a full tank filling, the machine adjusts the payment from the credit card and reverses the right amount shortly.

On our way back to Reykjavik

We started back on the road, it was close to five in the afternoon. This time we gave another wistful look towards the iconic falls which we had visited a couple of times earlier -Seljalandsfoss and Skogafoss. Google map had been accurate and most help in our tour. Another two hours to Reykjavik and it was time for the sun to set in front of us as we moved westwards.

The sunset was the leading event for the day. It took about 45 minutes to set and that was the most colourful sky I had ever seen. You just need to look all around you, the soft light turning into a golden shade and slowly bursting with red. The icy plains took on an orangish-reddish hue, the mountains glistened with the falling light, the snow refracting the light from all different angles. The clouds, tufts of them, tinged at their edges reflected the mayhem of colour below and driving on the road with miles and miles of open wilderness of desolate beauty brings out the philosopher in you. Nature makes you feel the divine around you.

Around 7 pm we entered the capital, Reykjavik, and being a busy hour it took about half an hour to reach our hotel. It was a really long drive today, and was time to sit back and reflect on these wonderful 7 days of nature that we had experienced. One regret was we were not able to experience the northern lights which had been one of the key attractions for coming to Iceland.

We soon settled at “Hotel Orkin”, where we were booked for three nights through Booking.com. During our tour, we had done most of our booking for Hotels, BnBs, lodges and farmhouses through BOOKING.COM. The link below is a little gift for you.
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The young woman who managed the reception was cordial and communicative. After settling in, once I checked the Vedur website I saw that there again was another strong indication of an Aurora that evening. So I came down to the reception to get a lead on where to go in order to search for the Aurora, the direction.

She tried to explain and then to help started to walk out towards the parking lot of the hotel to show me the direction. And then we both looked up and she shouted, ” Its already forming . Look there it is!” I looked up and could see the slow magnetic dance of a greenish shade of light across the sky, getting ready for the show.

I ran up the stairs and shouted for the team to quickly come down for the Arctic Lights. After the day long drive, a long night awaited us .

The final part of our Iceland Road Trip !
If you would like to read a summarized version of my Iceland Road Trip, with more emphasis on how to plan it out, CLICK HERE !!