This morning we woke up to terrible winds that were accompanied by rain. We planned to wake up early this morning to get a head start to Detifoss, as we knew we were going to have to drive about 1.5 hours north and then straight back down the same route. Last night when checking in I paid for showers, so I was determined to get my hot shower. The shower was the only hot water available at this campsite, everything else was cold water only, which made it very chilly for washing hands and dishes.

From the back of the SUV, we moved everything from the front seats to the back, enough room for Nick to get in the drivers seat and drive us closer tot he showers. We got up to the showers to find it was one crappy, small, cold shower stall. While the water was warm, it had vents in the top of the hut that the wind was whipping through. I showered first while Nick sat in the car, for some reason setting off the car alarm several times, I’m sure waking the whole camp up 😁 I then moved around to the other side where the bathrooms were to finish getting ready, and it was even colder in there. I told Nick, I learned a valuable lesson, before paying for showers I will first assess them from now on, this might have been a site where we would have forgone them.

It took awhile to defog the car this morning, but once that was done we were off, we drove about 45 mins down a dirt, washboard road, only seeing a few cars along the route. Unless there is another paved route back to the falls, I find it hard to believe many tourist buses and vans get back there, which is a shame. Once we finally made it to the falls, it was a little bit of a hike down to them, by this time the wind and rain had picked up, so it was a wet, short visit.

The falls did not disappoint, as Europe’s most powerful, highest volume waterfall it was a sight to see. It was nice as nobody else was down at the viewing point with us, so there was nobody to contend with to get a picture. We got a couple shots and then back up to the car. At this point our next destination was to be Asbyrgi Canyon, a place I had read about in a blog and begged to go to even though out of our way, well with all of the rain and clouds we didn’t figure it would be enjoyable trip, so we turned back and made our way back to route 1.

As we continued our drive the weather only got worse, we attempted another stop, which was Krafla volcano and the areas surrounding it, but it was just too nasty, so we decided to set out for the thermal baths that were recommended to us by the Russian girl that picked us up to get our car.

Myvatn Thermal Baths

We had a delicious lunch that consisted of a salad bar, goulash and a ham sandwich, and to be honest it wasn’t badly priced. We then bought our tickets and floated around in the Myvatn Thermal Baths for awhile, it was crazy how warm some spots of it were and then others chillier, but I guess that’s what you get when it’s being heated from a magma chamber underneath. After spending several hours there, the weather had cleared a little and we made our way back up to Krafla, however it was still too nasty up there on the mountain top, we got out of the car to see the Viti crater lake, but I quickly retreated back to the car once my boots had so much mud on them that I could hardly pic my legs up, Nick kept on walking up the rim to get some pics, but he wasn’t too far behind me. As the weather continued to get worse we decided to forego the volcano as we really wanted to see the mud pots, and they did not disappoint. While a bit sulfur smelling, they were really beautiful. I really wanted to dip my hands in and give myself a facial, but I assume that would also mean scorching my face, so I decided against 😉

 After walking around the mud pots and the fumaroles, we headed to what ended up being our last destination of the day, Godafoss, and it was an awesome way to end the day. This massive waterfall is known as the fall of the Gods. We were able to hike around it to view several different vantage points. We decided to forgo the last waterfall on our list for the day as it was another two hour drive out and back from route 1, so we headed to our campsite for the night in Akureyri, while there are no hot showers here, I really didn’t feel like driving another 45 mins out of our way for a campsite that has some. We spent plenty of time in the water today, I think we’ll be okay.

We had another delicious dinner of tomato soup, Raman noodles, applesauce and our new favorite cookies. Per usual we caught up on everything going on back home and are calling it a night. We are officially a day ahead of schedule, but aren’t getting too excited as we are not 100% sure what our drive back to Rekjavick has in store and would like to be able to get a little off course if we so desire.