The East Coast

A reindeer. 

 The east coast.

A beautiful black beach on the east coast. 

 The fishing village of Djupivogur.

Our new digs.

Friday, August 18^th.

Up and off again by nine. Today was a driving day. We left south east Iceland and headed north to the east coast. En route we came across some wildlife. We saw families of swans and one reindeer wandering around with a couple horses. Right after pulling back on the highway we developed a squeal in the rear of the van. Johann continued telling his stories and seemed to be ignoring the noise. Tim and I had visions of us breaking down in the middle of nowhere, because we were as far away from Reykjavik as possible.

We drove to a small town for gas and supplies and drove north. In town we talked Johann into checking out the squeal and luckily he found it was just a stone in the brake and the mechanic removed it, no charge. Shortly after we drove through a 800 metre tunnel that took us out of the land of the glacier up through the dividing mountain range into eastern Iceland and the land of the fjord. It made me think of how much it cost to build the tunnel and how many people they were really servicing...

We drove the entire coastline of one of the fjords. After that we drove to the next town, Djupivogur. This was a very pretty little picturesque fishing town. We had lunch here and then continued on. From here we drove inland on a short cut up a very narrow, steep, dirt road to the next town and up to the highlands. As we climbed we got up into the clouds and a fine drizzly rain. We stopped for a couple of views of waterfalls and a spectacular view back down the fjord to the ocean, which was unfortunately shrouded in mist. Then drove through an area that looked like the moon. We were up on top of the mountains where there was nothing but rocks and sand.

Then we turned off the highway onto a dirt road for a few kilometres to get to our new guesthouse. This one is really remote and unique. There is one main building with reception and a dinning area and a number of smaller cabins, some of which are sod houses. We are housed in one good sized cabin.

Shortly after we arrived and got set up we went for dinner. This time I had the Icelandic soup, which was vegetable and lamb, followed by rhubarb pie.