Tuesday, September 3, 2024

Sep 3 – Repairs, Hengifoss and Oxi Road

We have been waking up early so we walked around Seydisfjordur for a while because we didn’t want to call the repair person too early.

The view from the campground.

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A photosphere.

I was sure I had heard a rooster this morning. Sure enough at the house next to the campground.

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Everybody takes a picture of the rainbow road leading to the small church.

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An interesting store.

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The repair place was only 1/2 hour away up and over the mountain, just outside of Eggilsstadir.

Up the mountain that we couldn’t see in the fog last afternoon.

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A quick stop at Gufufoss lit by the morning sun.

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Then down the other side.

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It took us a while to get the location of the repair place. I called the camper van people, who called the mechanic. He called us and wanted to use Whatsapp to send us the location It seems that everyone here uses it but we don’t. I asked him to email us. But that never showed up so I called him back and he finally just gave us the name of the business to look up in Maps

It took about an hour for him to remove the broken piece, weld, grind it smooth and mount the tire. We were finally back on the road at about 11 am.

Driving beside a long lake to our first real stop of the day.

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The hike to Hengifoss is a tough one. 350 meters or 1150 feet in elevation gain in about 2.2 kilometres one way.

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We went up the left side and returned on the right.

The map may look here were zig zags but the path basically went straight up the mountain beside the ravine.

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You can just barely see the waterfall as the tiny white spot in the middle of the ridge line.

On top of the steepness of the trail, the wind today was brutal. It was stronger that that at the crater the other day and of course was coming straight at us as we climbed.

I didn’t take many picture son the way because just staying vertical in the wind gusts was hard work.

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Litlanesfoss is part way up.

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Getting closer.

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After the two paths joined it became a bit flatter.

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A nice boardwalk to the official viewing platform.

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Just to scare everyone, they left these rocks in place that fell from the canyon walls in 2022.

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But of course you can go farther if you want to do some rock scrambling. Jennie rested while I went on.

The walls around the waterfall have these beautiful very red layers.

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I am the little blue speck about 1/3 in from the left, below.

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Getting closer.

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This is as close as I could get before a  steep slippery wall stopped me, unless I want to get very wet.

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And a blurred one.

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A photosphere.

Heading back through the rocks.

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We had to cross a bridge to get to the right side path and the wind was funnelled through the small gap and became even more intense. I don’t think I have ever experienced wind that strong. It was a good thing the bridge had very high railings.

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It looked like such a long way down.

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Some people climbing up the left side.

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Down at the bottom there was a food that had blueberry sheep's milk ice cream that we had to try, even though the small cup worked out to cost us about $18.

Heading south you can take a long highway loop out to the east coast and back or you can take a very scenic dirt road short cut called Axarvegur or the Oxi Mountain Road. It was rough but any car could do it and they were. It was pretty busy.

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At one point a car passed us and the car in front of us way too quickly. A few turns later we came across what looked like the same car in the ditch having missed a sharp curve. We both stopped to check if anyone was in the car but it was empty so was not them. Later we saw the tow truck heading up.

The cliff side beside us was an amazing sight. It had layer after separated layer of lava showing how many eruptions must have happened here.

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There are always waterfalls to look at.

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Heading back down to sea level.

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Someone didn’t quite make a river crossing.

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I think there were fish farms out in the bay.

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We stayed the night at a campground in the village of Djupvogur.

We went for a walk after dinner.

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Our path.

Sep 3

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