Skatafell / Hof’n Bound

Second day of our driving adventure in Iceland and we’re off to Skatafell / Hof’n. We’ve booked a cottage room at one of the farms in the area so not the hotel scene and a little more “urban”. But before we get too far into the destination, lets talk about the journey. Still driving on Route 1, which circles the entire island, we couldn’t ask for a better road. They really do it right here in Iceland, much like how our homeowners takes care of the roads back in Warm Springs. (Sorry Dan, had to take a shot). The road parallels the coast and provides some really dramatic scenery. Vast volcanic mountains run right into the ocean, sometimes over the road!

Black sand (lava) beaches, caused by basalt lava flowing into the ocean and being constantly ground-down by waves and wind, are frequent and quite the novelty here. We side-stepped about 6 tourist buses and made our way to one of the most popular black sand beaches called, “The Black Sand Beach”. Not only does this beach have, yes- black sand, it also has basalt column formations that are exactly like the basalt formations in Ireland and New Zealand. Crazy thing about basalt when it cools with water, it forms columns that are 6, 7, 8 sided and look like they were formed or carved by man. These formations are a little different than the others, these you can actually walk under, they’re suspended from the ceiling of a cave in process.

Sorry, posted this upside-down

Buses caught up with us so time to move on. Further up the coast we come to Iceberg Bay. The aptly named Iceberg Bay is exactly what it says, a bay full of icebergs. The real story here is that the icebergs come from the Vatnajokull glacier, (the “Water Glacier”) the largest glacier in Europe. Covering more than 3200 sq.mi. and more than 3100 ft thick, the glacier is constantly calving massive bergs into the bay as it retreats from the ocean. A bit rainy today so we passed on the boat tour and pushed on to our destination, Skatafell / Hof’n.

We arrived early evening and checked in with our farm host. Delightful older (yes older than me) gentleman who was completely at our service. He asked our names, handed us a key on a wooden log and pointed out the door to the second cabin and said, “not this one, that one” and returned to his seat. I don’t know, maybe I’m getting sentimental in my old age but I felt a lot of love in that room.

That one not this one

Waterfall behind cabin

Unloaded the car, unpacked the next days clothes and had a vodka & orange juice. Still raining outside so the sound of the rain on the roof was calming, until….. As this is a working farm, there are farm animals, like right outside the door. While enjoying our libations, someone was calling for “Dad”. Well, not someone, something and that something was a sheep, standing right in front of the door! Now I know a lot of you are going to try and make a joke about who this sheep was looking for, but I tell you, and have witnesses, I have never been here before. Anyway, it was the ugliest one of the bunch.

Hello Dolly

Enough about the locals, we’re going into the city for dinner. Seems Hof’n is the lobster capital of Iceland so sounds like that lo-cal dinner will have to wait. To the Pakkhus restaurant for some fine langostine!

Hard to believe but we shared smoked mackerel

Langostine

Icelandic lamb

The Pakkhus

The Pakkhus

All joking aside, this is one beautiful country. Nature has truly done some excellent work here.

síðar y’all

Opps! forgot to show you the glacier….

Vatnajokull Glacier

Vatnajokull glacier