We kicked off our second day in Iceland with a long drive to the East. After a full day of traveling, hopping in a car for another five hours may seem awful, but I just wanted to see as much as I could during our short stay in Iceland & luckily, half our group was crazy enough to join me on this little excursion. There’s so much to soak in along the way, and we took our time wandering & enjoying the views along the open road, which were mostly quaint little cottages set way back, often with waterfalls or big cliffs as their backyard, and small ponies or sheep herds in the front. Just stunning. It was a gorgeous day (even though the wind still cut right through us) and we stopped all over the South coast of Iceland. We were even able to fit in a nice 5 mile hike in Skaftafell National Park on our way to our small guest house in a town of Hof, population 20.
First stop : Selfoss Waterfall! Second stop : Lava rock field!
We felt like we had the road to ourselves; you can see my friend Brian in the bottom left of this^ shot for scale.
This river was raging, with ice blue waters. It was so lovely against the white snow. A few more miles down, we were reminded of just how powerful Mother Nature is, especially in Iceland. There were huge graffitied steel beams on display that once belonged to bridge which was washed away in a flood years ago.
We drove a bit more until we came across Skaftafell Park where we stopped for a long hike to the Black Falls. We got up to the top & started to venture down to see the Falls up-close like I had been hoping all along, but were might with incredibly steep, ice-covered paths, about 1′ wide that dropped down almost a hundred feet on one side… A few people with full ice-hiking gear passed but we were completely unprepared for that level of dedication (let’s get real: digging through everything I owned to find my old hiking boots & venturing into EMS & buying Under Armor for this trip was a pretty big deal for this city girl). So, we chose to not fall off a cliff & instead hiked back up & enjoyed the views from above.
Our “We hiked & didn’t die” celebration selfie.
We headed towards our guesthouse in the town of Hof. And I use the term “town” very loosely. I mean, this is it. That map is the town map, with about 9 things on it, including houses, our hotel, and a church. No other businesses & almost an hour in either direction to anything that could really be considered civilization. The front desk woman with the thick Icelandic accent explained that we were actually staying in a bedroom in another house, not a hotel room. A little weird but we were along for the ride, so whatever. She told me the building was on the left & to walk right in to find our bedroom, so that’s what we did. Carrying all of our stuff. Taking off our shoes. And entering the first house on our left. We found an elderly woman sitting in a rocking chair in a living room, and we all thought it was weird but this whole thing was weird so we just pressed on trying to find our bedroom. She turned & saw us & started screaming “GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT!” and that’s when we realized we were 100% not in the hotel, and 100% in some strangers home, trespassing, like we owned the damn place. I screamed “Ahhhh!!” because I didn’t know what else to do & turned to my friends saying “Go! Go! Go!” which put them into a complete panic. We literally ran out, completely embarrassed, barely putting on our shoes in the snow as we jumped in our SUV with all of our suitcases, freaking out & laughing hysterically. We drove all the way down the lane, turned left, and saw the building the front desk lady meant. WHOOPS. I think the worst part was that we had to walk back & forth, past this woman’s house, all night to get to & from dinner, and well anywhere, because in a town of 20, there’s no escaping. I’m still embarrassed just thinking about it hahaha.
Once we got to where we were actually supposed to be, we found a nice room and no other guests in our ‘house’, so we had the place to ourselves. We enjoyed a delicious home-cooked dinner of fresh trout in the dining room of the hotel along with a lovely sunset over the fields, views of one of the last turf-covered church in Iceland, and a gorgeous moon. So all-in-all, our little Hof adventure was fabulous & we have a great story to share about a lovely local that we met….
Next up : Snorkeling, hot springs, PONIES.