13 - Road trip Snaefellsness (day 1)

This weekend we went with the 5 of us (Melissa, Barbara, Emilie, Matt and I) to Snaefellsness. This is a peninsula in the east of Iceland. We spent 2 days here and slept 1 night in a hostel in a place called ‘Ólafsvik’. 6 other Erasmus students also spent the night there, which was nice as we are good at hanging out together ??. I had made the plans for this weekend and I decided to go round the peninsula anticlockwise. On the way there, we drove past ‘Eldborg

crater’. We only saw it from a distance as the weather conditions didn’t permit us to get any closer. It was quite an impressive sight. After driving a bit further we took a break at a an area called ‘Vatnaleid’. This was such a beautiful place. We walked to a big frozen lake were two men were ice-fishing. I had never seen anything like this before. They had some kind of drilling equipment to make a hole in the ice. Here the ice was around 25-30 cm thick. Then they just dropped their fishing rod through the hole into the water, trying to catch salmon. We had a nice chat with one of the fisherman and after having spent around 40 minutes here we decided to move on.
The place we went to next I can really recommend, it was a very small fishers town called ‘Stykkusholmur’. There was an impressive church here, the architecture was like no other church I have ever seen before. Furthermore, you could walk along the seaside and go

up the top of one of the cliffs for an amazing view over the sea and the town. Also, there was a little red lighthouse at the top, at which we took some pictures. There isn’t much to do in this town but it was a nice little break from driving to stretch our legs.
While driving to the next stop, a viewpoint named ‘Kolgrafarfjördur’, Melissa thought she saw some seals. Most of us didn’t believe her but we decided to drive back to take a closer look. She was right! There were actually quite a lot of seals (around 15-20) sitting on some rocks next to the water. We parked our car and tried to get a little closer to them. After around 30 mins of walking we got to around 100 meters away from them and then they suddenly all went into the water (they were scared of us of course). We were hoping if we would stand still, they would come back, but they didn’t. We watched them swim for a while, which was very enjoyable. Walking back, the scenery was so stunning. The lake was surrounded by beautiful

white snow-covered mountains. It felt quite magical.
As we had the most adventurous person I know with us on the trip, Melissa, we couldn’t skip an opportunity for an adventurous hike. When we arrived at our next destination, a waterfall named ‘Grundarfoss’, we decided to walk all the way up to it. I will try to explain what the way up to this waterfall felt and looked like. It was covered with a very thick layer of snow (up to our thighs), with not a single path or footsteps in sight. I would never had gone up here if it wasn’t for Melissa haha. I was so glad we did though, the tiring hike up the mountain through thick snow was totally worth it. I think it was the most beautiful waterfall I have seen so far. Especially as it was completely frozen and it had a lot of icicles hanging off from it. The icy wall was around 25 meters wide and the water coming down from the cliff was so beautiful light blue. I really appreciated this moment, it felt very special.
The walk back to the car was luckily a bit easier than getting up there. It was around 3 o’clock in the afternoon, which meant we only had about 2 more hours of daylight. Or next stop was at one of the mountains which was also used as a décor for filming the series of ‘Game of Thrones’ called ‘Kirkjufell’. This mountain is quite pointy and stands on its own, which makes it unique from most mountains in Iceland. Across from this a ‘small’ waterfall named ‘Kirkjufellsfoss’. It was packed with tourist, probably because it is near this Game of Thrones site. The waterfall was very nice though, with a frozen layer around the water pouring over the cliff. It was getting really cold now,

we were hoping there would be a pool nearby to warm up but sadly it was closed so we decided to go to the hostel for dinner. The hostel and the owner were very nice. There was a 6 and 4-person bedroom. We had dinner with about 15 exchange students which was very cosy. Also, we tried to find the Northern lights at night but we only saw them a little (I know, I sound so spoiled).
After having some rum and coke we went to bed for an early start the next day, which you can read more about in the next blog.
Love,
Camille