Our first stop was an unscripted one but we were jumping out of our skin to just get out and see something. I splashed Icelandic river water on my face just because I could.
We continued around the Hvalfjordur (an old whaling fjord), driving further north before the sun poked through and gave us a few beautiful minutes with these gorgeous animals. The Icelandic horse's gene pool has remained untainted since Viking times.
Next stop was Hraunfossar which is interesting as you see many small waterfalls emerging from the junction between the porous rock and basalt.
Then just upstream from Hraunfossar is Barnafoss. Barnafoss means children's waterfall as legend has it that the mother of children, who died after falling from a natural rock arch over the waterfall, had the arch broken down to protect other children from the same fate.
Deildartunguhver hot spring was next up - the most powerful natural hot spring in the world. V cool.
And these are the greenhouse grown tomatoes that we couldn't buy because I didn't break the right note when we'd stopped at a servo earlier. I'm still being reminded of this.
Then it was on to the 3,000 year old lava field, Grabrokarhraun, and Grabrok crater. We began to realise at this point that lava fields and craters aren't really our thing.
By this point it was 6pm but we had to push on - we wanted to sleep with seals for the night.
We dropped into Hvammstangi as the driver needed an espresso. Then we had some fun taking photos of the various dried fish bits that hang around town before taking off again.
We searched far and wide around the Vatnsnes Peninsula looking for the seals without any luck. However, lighthouses and distant glaciers made for some pretty spectacular scenery along the way.
We pulled up for the night in the first of a string of amazing camping spots. We would continue the seal search once we woke up.
We got the camping chairs out for our first taste of Brennivin - the aptly named Icelandic Black Death that's a caraway flavoured, 37.5% schnapps that does the trick as the temperatures tend towards zero at night - with Icelandic cheese and sausage and some Sigur Ros in the background, in the most spectacular of surroundings. It was at this point, after a few Brennivins, that I made the very profound statement that, "Sigur Ros' music was made by these surroundings, for these surroundings". It was a serious travel moment.
We went to bed bloody exhausted but unbelievably content. In our wildest dreams we could never have imagined that first day going so well. We were actually living a dream that we never thought possible beyond photos and travel articles. I write this post a couple of weeks after that first day and, as it will forever sit in my mind, it still is a dream. Life surely can't be that good.
Click here for day 2.
