A trip around Iceland on the ring road – Part IV
On our fourth leg of the trip, we decided to drive a little further in favour of making track on the ring road through the Eastern fjords ending up at Lake Mývatn. We really wanted to do a diversion to the Snæfellsnes Peninsula at the end of the trip and needed to make sure to get around on time before we had to return the car. This wasn’t a problem at all though, because we really enjoyed the drive through the Eastern fjords and didn’t find that we missed out by not stopping in many places, e.g. Egilstadir, a larger city on the road.
The road into the Eastern fjords is very winded and pleasant, passing a variety of landscapes such as vast, rugged mountains, greener plains and coastal deserts, always in stark contrasts with the deep blue sea. Because we got through faster than we thought, we decided to add another mini-diversion to the town of Seyðisfjörður, approximately 20 km off the ring road. The drive took us on a steep ascent and then downwards again towards the sea and the scenery of snow-capped mountains and green hills was absolutely breath-taking.
A funny thing we noticed about driving the ring road was that each rest area only seems to feature one set of benches tables. We found this really quite amusing because the ring road can become really busy with tourists in summer and there aren’t that many viewpoints or rest areas where people can pull into with their car anyway. But guaranteed, if there is a viewpoint or rest area, there is only set of tables with benches and they’re usually taken. So we considered ourselves quite lucky in Seyðisfjörður to find a spot to sit and enjoy lunch which we only had to share with one other person.
The remainder of the town, featuring colourful little houses, surrounded by picturesque, green hills with waterfalls, was swamped with tourists so we didn’t hang around for too long and headed back to the ring road to continue our drive towards Mývatn. After the lushness of the Eastern fjords, the terrain became very barren the further we progressed towards Lake Mývatn. Just before we arrived at the lake, we stopped at the Hverir, a collection of natural hot springs and mud baths that bubble in a moon-like scenery and give out the strongest smell of rotten eggs due to the sulphur they contain. It’s a very surreal sight but we really struggled with the smell.
We had decided to spend the night on the campsite of Lake Mývatn , which was an utterly beautiful spot. The only downside of being this close to the lake in combination with the very nice weather was that the campsite was covered in flies. Fortunately they didn’t bite so it was more annoying than anything, since they flocked our clothes and the tent as soon as we unpacked it. We fled to the nearby Mývatn Nature Baths – which are very similar to the famous Blue Lagoon but a lot less busy and with 40 EUR (35 GBP) for a day ticket also about 15 EUR cheaper – and soaked in the blue waters until it was time to end the day with a delicious dinner of grilled trout at Gamli Baerinn. It was here that we also discovered that Mývatn actually means “midge lake” in English, which made us laugh out loud.
Total driving distance and time approximately 320 km / 4 h 30 including diversion to Seyðisfjörður
