We slept in on day 4. And by that, I mean we got up at, like, 7:15. We tore down camp and wandered over to the campground’s cooking facility and made ourselves some oatmeal with bananas and brewed some coffee. I always like people watching in those situations, see what food they’re making for their camping experience, what gear they’re wearing for their trek around Iceland.
We were finally ready to be on the road a little after 9, and our first stop of the day was Grjótagjá cave (aka, Jon Snow and Ygritte’s cave). The cave is cool looking, but the best part was the hot spring inside of it. It’s supposedly too hot to get in, but it felt pretty great, in my opinion. You can then climb above the cave and see steam coming out of all these fissures. It was a unique experience.
And then we drove through some of the most bizarre landscapes I’ve ever see. Steam was just coming out of the ground everywhere we looked, and then we came across a (very smelly) steaming, milky blue body of water with colorful mountains behind it.
After a few minutes of this, we were at the Hverir geothermal area. I couldn’t breathe through my nose due to the sulfur smell, but oh my goodness, it was one of the coolest places I had seen.
We’d walk by steam vents and see bubbling mud pits around us. Really, really unique.
After a small bit of hiking, we made our way to the Myvatn Nature Baths, kind of the north’s version of the Blue Lagoon. It’s a small lake of hot, milky blue water. It’s less tourist-y than the Blue Lagoon, and also cheaper. We relaxed in the hot water for awhile, which helped with my achy back.
At this point, we were starving, so we stopped at a restaurant next to a farm with a view of Lake Myvatn. They had “geysir bread” there, which is bread baked underground by geothermal heat and is pretty tasty.
We had a long drive to our next campground, so we got moving, turning off the Ring Road after a little bit, passing barren, hardened black lava fields. I’ve heard Iceland be described as “like another planet” so many times that it’s cliche, but it is so true.
In the middle of this crazy landscape was Dettifoss, Europe’s most powerful waterfall. We made a short stop here, hiking down from the parking lot. It may not be the most picturesque waterfall in Iceland, but it’s really impressive. The darker, grayish color comes from all the black sediment from the lava rocks.
Knowing we would be seeing it from the other side on the way back, we quickly ventured on. Unfortunately, the road we were on, 862, turned into the roughest gravel road I’ve ever seen in my life right after Dettifoss. We were hovering around 30 km/h the whole way, bouncing around on potholes.
The crazy moon-like landscape just all of a sudden turned into a lush vegetated one.
After gritting our teeth for probably 45 minutes, we turned down toward Vesturdalur, which was a beautiful little detour.
We went on a short walk, checking out the bizarre rock formations and the pretty plants.
And then it was back on that terrible road the rest of the way to Asbyrgi. Asbyrgi is a U-shaped canyon that was carved out by a massive glacial river flood, likely caused by a volcanic eruption underneath the source glacier that caused an immense amount of melt water.
We first ventured to the interior of the canyon to hike through a small forest.
We climbed up to a little viewpoint of the pond and forest and canyon. It was insanely peaceful, which is not a word I usually use to describe Iceland.
We went back to the campsite to pick out a spot before doing the hike along the giant rock in the middle of the canyon. That hike eventually brings you to a spot where you are directly across the U of the canyon, but dense fog settled in, and I knew we wouldn’t be able to see anything. Instead, we took it easy and drank some wine, cooked some dinner, and hung out at the campsite, which was our favorite campsite ever. It was pretty, it was quiet, the facilities were nice, and I kinda just wanted to stay there the rest of the vacation.
We got a good night’s sleep up in our top-tent, rejuvenated for a day heading to the East Fjords.