Iceland - Husavik to Hvammstangi

We woke this morning to heavy mist. It wasn't really raining, but we were inside a cloud so everything was just wet. I guess this was part of the coming storm we'd been told about last night.

We didn't have much of a plan for today, and our multiple Lonely Planet guide books didn't have a whole lot of suggestions either. It's lucky that the bad weather coincided with this leg of the journey, so we made the most of it by driving as far west as we could.

We stopped at a Akureyri, a major town up here in Northern Iceland with a population of 18,000. Here we filled up the diesel tank, the ice box, and bought some food supplies for the coming few days. We sat at a cafe in the middle of town for a couple of hours and caught up on yesterday's photos and blog post while enjoying the heaters and free coffee refills. While standing at the counter, the man in line behind me asked me something in Icelandic, and I replied (feeling very inferior knowing only one language) that sorry, I spoke English. He asked if I spoke Dutch, and when I said no, again sorry, I added the excuse that I was from New Zealand. "New Zealand!" he exclaimed! It turned out that his brother lived in Mt Albert! All was forgiven, and he showed us some photos of his brother and sister in-law from when they had come to visit him and his Icelandic wife here in Akureyri.

Today is Icelandic National Day which celebrates the 75th anniversary of the founding of their nation. We saw a small parade with a brass band, and there was a stage set up in the town square with some people performing in funny costumes.

Further west, we stopped at yet another waterfall, Goðafoss. While walking out to take photos of this one, we noticed how there were no well defined paths or safety ropes. We've talked a lot during our travel around North America about how hand railing and fences give tourists a false sense of security, and I think the lack of them here drove home the point that we were here at our own risk, and it was our fault if we fell off the edge.

Also, Katie just made the point to me that even though we've seen a lot of waterfalls (and they weren't really novel to us to begin with), we still find them awe inspiring, and stop whenever we come to one.

We stopped one more time at a parking lot on the side of the highway, not because we knew what was there to see, but because there were lots of other people stopped and we didn't want to miss something impressive! In the carpark we met an Australian couple that had been with us on the whale watching boat the night before. We had a quick chat about taking photos of whales, and about how we struggled with pronouncing Icelandic place names.

This rest area turned out to be a lookout over the confluence of two rivers. I can't find the rivers on the map so don't know what they're called, but the area we were in is called Hörgársveit.

From here we drove on to our final destination, Hvammstangi. We had a mid-drive re-evaluation of our plans for the next few days, thinking that perhaps we'd been a little ambitious with the amount of driving we could handle in a day, while still being able to enjoy the things we were passing. We considered some other options for campsites an hour further on, but ultimately decided that our original choice was going to work.

We're now sitting in the packed common room of the campsite, while the famed Icelandic wind roars past outside. We've parked our little popup tent behind a huge overland camping truck for shelter, but I think it's going to be a noisy night.