Iceland Day 8-9
Veiðivötn
After raining all night and into the morning, we got up early to he’d back up to Hveradalir to do the round loop hike. There weren’t many people up there that early, and the weather for sure wasn’t helping. This was the first time I wore the waterproof rain pants I brought. With all the mud and rain continuing, it was a wise decision. The hike down began with going down stairs with large mud puddles on each step. Once you get down to the thermals, you head right and up another set of steps. This is where it got a little sketchy.
The trail leads around the hill in a narrow trail that was extremely muddy. If you have poles, this would have been a good hike to have them with the steepness, muddiness, and weather. Even though we didn’t have any, we made it through that part slowly and carefully. After that, the trail wasn’t too bad. At one point, we were in the snow! It was shocking to see how much change in weather we saw and it was August. Following the trail, we crossed through a large snow field. This is where we figured out we were actually the first one on the round the loop trail since there were no footprints in the snow. I even tried to do a jumping snow angel to find out it was only a sprinkle of snow and actually hard dirt underneath. Learned my lesson to check the depth before doing that.
Once we completed the trail and were back at the car, we had a decision to make: go South or North. We decided we wanted to go see the north side of Iceland, so we went to our next stop on the 35: Hveravellir Hot Springs. On the way there, an unexpected thing happened. This is where having a flexible plan really helped.
When I got to the parking lot of the hot springs, I got out of the car and got a nice surprise: the Kammok awning on my truck had snapped the brackets and was hanging by a thread. It put a nice little scratch on my truck. The brackets apparently good not support the weight with all the articulation apparently, or I needed one more bracket. Either way, I took the awning off, set it next to the truck, and made that a later problem to solve.
The thermal area was a smaller version of Hveradalir, and we decided to pay the admission to use the hot springs. When we got there, we were wondering why we saw people moving the hot pipe out of the hot spring. Boy did I learn really quickly the reason. As soon as I stepped into the shallow pot of the water, I had to pull my feet out as it was burning hot!
my IG girl pose
Dana tried, same results and a few other tourists met the same fate. We found the cold water pipe and inserted it completely into the pool, and after 10 minutes, it was finally at a temperature good enough to enjoy. We did learn that if you went near the hot water area, you had to move the surface water around constantly or else it became burning too quickly. Once we enjoyed our time enough, it was time to figure out a solution.
After chatting to Jokull, I decided to pivot my plan and head to Reykjavík to drop off the awning at his shop until it was time for me to leave. The awning is 7ft long so the next step was to figure out how to transport. We ended up putting Dana in the backseat and throwing the awning diagonally between the back seat and passenger seat. So now we were heading South instead of North. Once we dropped off the awning, we decided to eat at a restaurant since we were in town. Dana found a nice little Thai place close by since I was craving Asian food. It was a nice change of pace from camping food. Once we were done, I found a campsite and we headed there to crash. Once again, the weather was extremely windy and rain like the usual.
The next morning was actually a beautiful sunny morning, which was nice because it helped dried the tent before closing it. Since the sun was out, I decided to take our time for that to happen. I got treated with a funny site of a couple forgetting to close their tent and drive off before we could warn them. A another camper and I just stared in disbelief as they made the right turn and continued down to the main highway. The first place we were to stop by was a “New” Geysir. As we made a right to the parking lot, I was thinking this looked like the other geysir we saw on the Golden Circle. After passing the center, Dana realized it was in fact the same center! We had a good laugh about it and made the best of the situation by getting some pastries and coffee. Once we were done, we headed to Jokull’s favorite spot, Veiðivötn.
Veiðivötn is a 12 mile long and 3 mile wide area that contains over 50 fishing lakes. This area was formed during a volcanic eruption in 1477, which left these crater lakes surrounded by tephra sands. It is also said to be home to Europe’s oldest stock of trout, making it a very popular spot with locals.
We took the road leading to the area and once we got there, wow. It took awhile to find a place to replace Laki as my favorite spot, and this spot did take the cake. There were so many dirt tracks leading to many, many lakes that the area had. We ate lunch at one of the lakes and just took some roads exploring as much as possible. When we had our fill, we decided to head to Landmannalauger as our campground for the night.
license plates of rescued vehicles
We took 208North, which was just filled with tourist cars and buses since it was considered the easiest way to Landmannalauger. Honestly, there isn’t much to report about this road other than a couple of viewpoints. We eventually reached Landmannalauger and the place is a zoo. They require a reservation for parking before 3pm, but even though we were there close to 5pm, it was still people struggling to find parking. Lucky for us, we were in my truck, so we crossed the 2 water crossings and parked in the campsite. Once we paid for the site, we headed out to do the round trip hike.
I can see why Landmannalauger is popular because the hike had a little bit of everything. With greenery, lava fields, and thermals, it was everything Iceland had to offer in one place. The one funny thing that happened on the hike was that the weather turned to hot instead of rainy, and Dana and I started to overheat. We eventually pretty much stripped everything and was a funny site of us carrying our layers around like a football. On the way back to our truck, we stumbled upon the Mountain Mall.
The Mountain Mall is 3 school buses parked in a shape of a U with a nice fire pit in the middle. One bus is a shop, the other a restaurant, and the last one a seating area. We talked to the owner, who was absolutely hilarious. I thought I had no filter and was blunt, but boy I was wrong. I still have a slight filter, but this man had no such thing. He truly said whatever he thought no matter who it was and it was awesome. After dinner, we came back with our drinks to sit by the fire and talk to the people there. We met the hikers doing the multi day hike, some Polish guides who were on their day off, and of course the owner. We had great conversations and then started playing the hammer/nail game where you flip the hammer, catch it, and try to drive a nail down in one hit. Each person has their own nail and once your nail is driven in, you’re out. Of course, Dana was absolutely terrible at it. Once I went to a meeting, apparently she did a lot better.
Late into the night when everyone left the fire, Dana and I decided to go check out the natural hot spring. Even that late at night, there was still a ton of people out there. It is also extremely shallow so I had to lie down in order to stay in the warm water. After about 30 minutes, we called it a night and went to bed.
