Westfjords - North + Akureyri

Hello!

We made it to Isafjordur, found our place, parked and walked to the local brewery Dokkan Brugghus. Carsten had a flight.


Tuesday we had a full agenda starting with Skali Hallvards Suganda, a replica Viking hut from the original Settlement days.




The sod walls are quite thick, this creates good insulation for the cold climate.

These were not tall people.

Next stop is The Troll Seat hike. In AllTrails app it says this is a "hard" hike. In our experience, we are much older than the average AllTrails app user. That is to say, if they say "hard" it is going to totally kick our butts! Oh well, off we went!



Here from across the fjord you can see where we hiked. Where the grey "seat" starts, there the trail ended. It was hard but the view is amazing!


Perhaps you get an idea how high it was (225 meters/750 ft) based on the cruise ship in port.

Next stop was the Arctic Fox Center. We watched an interesting film about foxes and one crazy lady who goes out in the dead of winter to photograph them. Seriously, she almost died one winter and then the next scene is - "well, the next winter was not as bad..." Nuts!

fun fact #1: Arctic Foxes have 20,000 hairs per square centimeter, humans have 150 per square centimeter. They need this hair to stay warm in the winter.


Fun fact #2: they don't start shivering 🥶 until -90° F.

Fun fact #3: when born they weigh about 80 grams, they are fully grown in about four months. Adults only weigh 6-11lbs.

Final stop was Bunarfoss. We went about 2/3 of the way up and finished with a little hike in the forest.




Lovely.

A quick stop for a few groceries and gas and we are going to rest a while before heading out for dinner. We did laundry yesterday but nothing is dry! The sun is out now so hopefully the clothes will dry!

Wednesday morning we headed to Bolafjall Skywalk. This is a steel structure sitting out over a fjord. The most interesting part was the drive up. We drove through absolute SOUP, it was a cloud settled into the valley. We emerged from that white cloud covering the road.


Once you got up higher, where the skywalk was it cleared up considerably. 


We are a long way from home. 


Next stop was a pool/hot tub. It was nice but had a more structured feel. Nice locker rooms with a cool little machine where you stick your bathing suit in and it spins the water out. No phones allowed in the locker room (for obvious reasons), the sign said they will call the police!


We talked to a nice young man in the hot tub. Today was finally a day we talked to some Icelanders. Seems like everyone we meet is another tourist. It was nice!

We went back to Isafjordur for a short hike to an observation deck and had a nice picnic followed by a longer hike. We are guessing that the wall in the picture below serves as an avalanche block.



After an Icelandic hotdog for dinner we are back at the brewery for a drink and some football. We are becoming "regulars" here, three nights in a row! 

Walking home from brewery I took this reflective pic.


We said goodbye to Isafjordur and headed off the Westfjords in the direction of Akureyri. It is a long way so we had an overnight near Hvammstangi. Along the way we went to another thermal bath, saw a sheep sorter (below wagon wheel looking thing), walked along the seal beach and saw a couple of seals in the distance, had dinner and found a bar with the Germany match on TV.




Did I mention the roads are often gravel, rock, dirt, etc. our Dacia Duster is living up to her name!


Good looking worker cleaned it up!


No reason to hang around in our room, there was barely enough room to bring a suitcase in. LOL.

After having the breakfast we headed on to Akureyri. We made a stop to check out some Basalt Rock formations.





Arriving in Akureyri we headed first to the Forest Lagoon. Super nice thermal bath!





We found our apartment easily. After unpacking we did some laundry and got some groceries. Finally we headed out to walk around town a bit. We had an icelandic hotdog and walked quite a way for the best ice cream in Akureyri. Both were good but quite messy!

A lovely stroll back to our place. Some sights in town.



I love the traffic lights here - the red lights are HEARTS! This might improve everyone's mood in Houston - what do y'all think?


That's it for now. 

Take care,
Sheri + Carsten

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