Easter in the East

Over the Easter weekend, a group of us had planned to go to the 'I Never Went South' music festival in the Westfjords. We were going to stay at Hotel Núpur, where my whole Icelandic adventure began. However, snowstorms hit on the day we were going to drive up and road closures meant it wasn't possible to get there. I was upset not to return to Núpur, although relieved as I had agreed to be driver and I'm not quite sure I could handle experiencing a 'white-out' high up on a mountain pass. The car had already been paid for so we needed to find another way to spend three days and eventually decided to head off to the Eastfjords.

Something we hadn't really thought about during our quick decision process was the 600km we would have to drive in one day. I've found that my sense of perspective related to distance has changed somewhat during my time here. 600km certainly seemed extreme, but manageable. However, it's the same as me deciding to drive from my village in the South of England to Edinburgh, staying one day, then driving back: something I would never even consider doing.

We stopped at a few places on the way including the fishing village of Höfn, which had a lovely harbour.

Along the way, we also saw dozens of reindeer. Unfortunately we never got close enough to take a good picture and embarrassingly, this is the best I got.

Our hostel. Berúnes, was lovely and the owner told us that his family had lived in the tiny hamlet for around 400 years.

The next day, we had the opportunity to explore the Eastfjords. Two members of our group were geologists so this meant we started the day with a (rather long) visit to a local rock museum, and a hunt for some kind of rock along the shore.

I was more interested in the local children's playground.

We had a long drive round the windy fjords and ended up in Seyðisfjörður, probably my favourite town in Iceland.

Later, we drove around Lagarfljót lake. The area holds both the largest forest in Iceland and a Loch Ness-type monster. We only saw one of these things.

We hiked to two waterfalls: Litlanesfoss and Hengifoss.

The drive home the next day was very, very long but we made a few stops on the way. My favourite was Svartifoss, yet another waterfall: beautiful but very touristy.

Despite being sad to not make it to the Westfjords, it was great to finally see the Eastfjords, and a very different way to spend the Easter weekend.