We pitched our tents as close to the water as the wind, the spray and the cliffs allowed, had dinner, walked around a bit, had a look at the visitor centre and finally had an early night again. Strange: we both are experienced cyclists and used to riding a lot, but if you have to fight cold and storm many hours a day you not only become incredibly hungry (how many calories do you burn under these conditions??) you also are tired enough to sleep long nights.
The next morning was sunny again and of course stormy. Steve was not very happy. Having problems with Icelandic food or water he had to find a toilet several times every hour. Conditions that make it impossible to bike. He decided to rest in our camp and was - as usual - generous enough to encourage me to make a day trip on the still closed road into the interior. In any case, I was not worried about him. Steve is far too experienced to be frightened by digestion problems - he had already had the shit in every country he had visited - and there were enough people around to help if the worse came to the worst. So I set out at ten, equipped only for a day's out and back. It was a weird ride. Soon after the visitor centre the pavement ended and graders had left a terribly dusty dirt road. I know, a road treated like that is excellent for a car, but on two wheels, please, this grading is always downgrading; an upgrade is only achieved by real pavement. Still, bad roads can be found all over the world, a scenery like that is unique. During the eight hour's ride I saw hardly any trace of life: two or three birds, very, very few dots of moss, everything else rocks, sand, snow, crystal clear and icy-cold water. I have never seen a cold desert before, but this made me feel like on the Moon or the Mars. What, if 'Pathfinder' had never touched down on the Mars and NASA had snapped some badly focused shots of the desert in central Iceland? Anyhow, the weather was not too bad and I liked that ride.What a pity I could not share directly my impressions with anybody! Loose sand, storm and water are tough conditions for all greasy or moving parts. Usually I do only the very necessary maintenance on my bike, I want to ride it and not to clean it, but when I came back in the evening I just had to wash it and to re-oil chain and derailleurs, otherwise the next ride might have seriously damaged these components.
Back in the camp, I was glad to learn that Steve felt better and certainly ready for cycling the next day. The sun came out and allowed for some impressive views on Gullfoss and a series of rainbows in its spray.
Unfortunately the night was wet again so we had to set out with wet tents, the usual headwind. Luckily the sun came out soon and we expected a perfect cycling day. Back to the cafe at Geysir, we had a second breakfast, then turned left on a good gravel road to come to Iceland's south coast. As usual, it needs sweat if you want to get somewhere. This morning we were pedalling through green farm land, over rolling hills, sometimes with a glimpse at the Hella volcano in the background. Obviously we were on a back country road now, since we did not count more than half a dozen cars this morning although it was an ordinary working day.
When the infrastructure is good, and so it is in the south of Iceland, you do not bother with carrying food on a bike. You just shop and eat. That is what we did for lunch. I tried for the fist time the traditional Icelandic 'Skyr', a milk product similar to the French 'fromage blanc' but with zero percent of fat. Well, no fat no taste, as I like to say, but if you add large amounts of milk, granola, honey, fruit and so on, than you can even enjoy the 'Skyr' (so, frankly, it served as an alibi to eat pure granola and honey...).
Finally after 50 km of head- and cross winds we came to the main road and turned left following the south coast. An excellent decision. The 30 km to Hvolsvollur we were flying (in conditions like this you could easily do 200 km a day). How strong the wind was we only realized when we stopped and were freezing immediately and, later on, when we tried to pitch our tents. The problems with the wind are many, but when you try to find shelter for your tent, you like to know at least where the wind is coming from. Sure, this is easy to say for one moment, but in Iceland you can have a completely different direction in the next minute, so in principle you need 360 degrees of shelter, which is not so easy to find. In Hvolsvollur we went to the local campsite.
There was only us and two hikers on the campground. They wanted to cross the glaciers to Landmannalaugar. I doubt that they ever made it, but we wished them luck. Although only a small village with less than 1000 inhabitants, Hvolsvollur has a swimming pool (which is certainly reasonable if you can get free hot water from mother earth). We went there in the evening to have the first shower after four days. They were already closed, but the cleaning woman let us in for a free wash when she realized that we were very dirty: Icelandic hospitality.
The next day was superb. The campground manager arrived in the early morning when we were just about having breakfast. He asked us very kindly to pay for the night, what we of course were willing to do but could not so far as the office had been closed. It was still quite windy but we were happy about this since it was blowing from the west making a perfect tailwind if you go east. Additionally it was sunny and not too cold now - during the night the tents were frozen and Steve had measured - 5 (C, the coldest night of this trip. Even minus 5 is not too cold, as long as you are in your sleeping bag, it is only uncomfortable if you have to pack all you gear with stiff, hurting, chapped fingers and maybe snow or rain and wind. Before we left for Vik, we went to the local supermarket and had a snack there. Again we could profit of the Icelandic habit of providing customers with free coffee. 80 km were foreseen for this day and this is normally an easy task, so we were not in a rush. When we finally set out it was almost eleven. After only a few miles we came to the Seljalandsfoss, a waterfall of pretty impressive height. In fact, we learned later that it looks higher than it is, but never mind, it is not the records that make this waterfall so attractive, it is its setting in green meadows. It does also not stick to the cliffs, but you can walk behind it or - if you are very brave - have a shower right under it in its almost perfectly round pool. We were not brave enough, but still, one more reason to come back one time. We carried on, found even some traces of agriculture and finally came to Skogafoss, one more waterfall. This one is 60 m high and its amount of water, at least at this time of the year, is impressive. But also its beauty fills you with wonder. The combination of spray and sunshine leads to a constant crown of rainbows that make it look like the king of all waterfalls. I must state that we highly profited from the excellent weather conditions of this day. Imagine we had arrived in rain and fog. We probably had thought it is ununderstandable why people describe this waterfall as so beautiful.
While having lunch we experienced once more typical Icelandic behaviour. Somebody was sitting next to us. He had taken a seat without saying a word. No hello, nothing. When we were finally talking about the opening hours of banks, wondering when we could get money, he suddenly turned to us and explained very courteous everything we wanted to know. This seems to be typical for Icelanders. They want to be separate, but they are willing to help whenever they can.
The road stayed in the same excellent conditions for the rest of this day's ride, only the afternoon presented us with two steep hills. Hills and rain are similar: they are only unpleasant if you do not expect them. We did not at all expect the steep slopes at the end of the day. Anyhow, so at least we had a good downhill into Vik. We checked in at the local campsite. It was not very cheap and showers had to be paid extra, but it had a huge friendly room serving as kitchen and room to stay. For this room we were very thankful. The wind was picking up again and it was really cold. Without a shelter we would have gone immediately to our sleeping bags. A travelling magazine has classed Vik's beach as one of the ten most beautiful beaches of the world. Okay, the water looked very clean, the black volcanic sand is something special, the cliffs make a good background and the some tens of meters high rocks in the water, called Dyrholaey, said to be petrified trolls, caught by the sunlight when attempting to steal a three-master, are unusual as well, but among the top ten? Much more interesting for us was the immense number of birds living close to the water and at the cliffs. There were thousands of them chatting, dropping something every now and then or just flying. This was amazing. Before going to bed we could witness a buggy climbing and damaging, spreading terrible noise, some kind of a natural quarry. I cannot support this kind of entertainment, although it is fun to watch and certainly also to drive such a car. But the damage to nature, especially to the fragile nature of the north, cannot be neglected. On the other hand: there are not so many things to do on a Friday evening for the local youth.
This night was the only time we met a cyclist from Iceland. He was from Reykjavik, touring around Iceland. He also had taken advantage of the tailwind and done the same distance we had done, only about 5 hours later. Before falling asleep I heard Steve shouting: do you realize we could have gone to Crete or some other warm Mediterranean island? - Yes, but then we would have missed Iceland!
The next morning the weather had changed. We now had to deal with a headwind, not too strong, and colder temperatures. It was overcast, but in principle a good day for cycling. When we set out at about nine, there was nobody else up at the campsite so far. Soon the scenery changed. Enormous fields of black ashes, some kilometres wide, stretched from the sea to the mountains, reminding a bit of a beach but somehow not inviting for swimming. These black surfaces must become very hot if the sun is out and the wind ever drops. Luckily a rarely or never encountered coincidence. We had a tough cycle this morning but we knew where we wanted to go to: the hot springs and polychrome mountains of Landmannalaugar. We were optimistic enough to think we could do it in a day (170 km, more than half of it gravel or worse). Superfluous to say that we ended up no where near this aim in the evening. When we left the paved road, we had done not much more than 50 km, felt already tired, ready for lunch.
It is a bit uncomfortable that you do not realize the cold as long as you are working hard. Sometimes you might even sweat, but once you stop, you must hurry to find shelter from the wind or you will be freezing within a minute. Our search for shelter was not too successful and therefore the lunch break everything but comfortable. Who cares, hot springs are waiting! Although the fist bit of the gravel road was comparably good, it is always slower going than on tarmac, especially when you hit some steep grades.
The more difficult part began when we came to the junction with the highland piste. The road now was really rough, the grades even steeper and the wind told us very clearly who had the power. The land looked a bit like the prairies: not exactly a desert but very little vegetation, no cattle but only sheep. After averaging not more than 6 km per hour we finally had to admit that Landmannalaugar was out of reach for this day. We decided to carry on for maximum one hour and trying to find a nice spot for the night. After some more kilometres, we came to a hut. Being a stable in the ground floor it looked like some kind of private house with sleeping bag accommodation on the first floor. We were too early in the season, so everything was closed, but round the corner there was also a meadow, presumably serving as a campground during high tourist season, a river and shelter by some rocks - and the sun had just come out to convince us that we had found the best possible spot for the night. |
