Returning to the Land of Fire and Ice
Two years. Well, two years, give or take a few days. Either way, I was heading back to magical Iceland in mid-August almost two years later after first stepping foot there. Last time, I caught the dying last gasps of a volcano. What would Iceland have in store for me this time?
What brought me back to Iceland in the first place? Well, I booked a weeklong sailing trip in Eastern Greenland, where the flight to and from Greenland was out of Reykjavik domestic airport. So I needed to be in Iceland before and after Greenland, twist my arm! Since I already needed to be in Iceland at least the day before, and the day after my Greenland flights, I decided to add a few days on each end of the trip.
The first leg of my Iceland adventure I focused on the Westfjords, a wild and rarely visited part of the country up in the Northwest. I had wanted to go here for several years, and I had roughly 72 hours between landing in Reykjavik and when I needed to return for my flight. This was a BIG undertaking.
The Westfjords are extremely rugged with roads to match. Once I was off the ring road, it was an alternating mix of pavement and graded and ungraded gravel. At one time I drove about 20 miles over a washboarded road that was so bone rattling I thought the car would fall apart. Lesson learned, take a high clearance 4 x 4 to the Westfjords. Even though most places in Iceland feel isolated, this felt REALLY isolated. There is really only one large-ish town in the whole peninsula, and then a smattering of small hamlets along the way. There is unexpectedly a lot of farming up here, and is also home to Iceland’s infamous fish farms.
I really enjoyed the 72 hours where I was never further than a mile from the coast, watching the mountains seemingly rise straight up from the sea, and basking in the uncharacteristically sunny days.
Post-Greenland (what a trip!) I decided to focus the second leg on the north part of Iceland. While I was understandably tired and ready to get home to start working on my photos, I was committed to seeing what the geothermal and waterfall-filled north had in store.
I had classic Iceland weather almost the entire time, deeply overcast, almost constant light rain, and high winds. Even when flying my drone back to me, it was almost comical to watch the drone feed as my drone was flying into 30 mph winds and getting bounced up, down, and all around. It would have been funny if I wasn’t afraid my drone would be smashed into rocks before making it home.
I wish I could say my time in the north was as magical and enchanting as the photos portray. And in retrospect it was. But during the 4 days I was there, I actually was somewhat uninspired. I had just come off an incredible week sailing in one of the most remote parts of the world, surrounded by even more incredible landscapes. So I felt like I was just going through the motions, in addition to the fact that I felt like I had been away from home too long, away from my Sal. I did cover all the ground and stops that I had planned, and I really enjoyed them. The connection to the landscapes just came a little later than normal, once I sat down and started to edit my pictures, where the magic was already in the files.
