Day three saw us drive round to the far side of Iceland through the eastern coastal fjords. Much of the day was grey with only intermittent glimpses of blue peeking through clouds threatening to burst but never doing so.

Throughout, the landscape seemed sparse and barren with long stretches of straight empty road reinforcing the sense of solitude and isolation I had started to feel yesterday. Nick had burnt a CD to play in the car that had Sigur Rós’s Takk album on. The atmospheric harmonies was the perfect soundtrack and one could instantly tell that their music was heavily inspired by their native land.

Driving through miles upon miles of similar terrain meant there was a certain languid monotony about the day. However, both Jeff and Nick had the good sense to swap their wide-angle lens for some macro and telephoto opportunities that arose. Being the only non-driver of the group, I was content to enjoy the ride to soak in the scenery and music, letting any creative juices flow through my mind rather than my camera. It was almost hypnotic.

I only really woke up, in the visual sense, as we started to leave the coast and drive up a snow covered mountain. The view from the top looking down into the valley was breathtaking. Snowball throwing aside, we took a quality moment to enjoy the panorama.

Toward the end of the day we reached another waterfall at Hengifoss. It was a fair steep climb and we were rapidly losing light so we had to make haste. Alas my lungs packed-in halfway up, the path was starting to get narrow and precipitous and there was a high wind blowing. Only Jeff made it to the top. Whilst waiting for him to return, I sat there alone to watch the sun set and contemplate the vast open land below.

The South-East coast, great plugs of lava jutting out of the sea, the A1, the main arterial road around Iceland, turns to gravel for long stretches!! Waterfall after waterfall, cascading out of the tops of mountains, appearing up glacial valleys with no tourists to spoil the views.

“STOP!’ I shout and slam the brakes on, “Reindeer”, a reindeer and her calf are gently trotting along the water’s edge of a fjord. Back in the car we wondered what we’d see next.

Before the afternoon light gave way to dusk, we drove of to see Hengifoss a very dramatic and high waterfall. The map in the carpark (this was a tourist attraction) explained the waterfall was about 2 miles away and looking up, it appeared it was all uphill!! Nick’s headache prevented him starting, Raof managed to reach Litlianfoss (pictured with Hengifoss in the distance) The route became a bit treacherous after that, about -3º and ice covered rocks with sheer drops to a freezing raging torrent below - and failing light. All worth it because Hengifoss is magnificent.

The sky was very clear Monday night but unfortunately the aurora was not visible. However I did get a long exposure photo of the start, and there is a faint green and red glow towards the north, so it looks like it was there, but very faint.

On Tuesday morning, after we had established that all three of us snore, the first thing we did was to get some earplugs from the chemist in Höfn, before picking up some more groceries, petrol, and blank CDs so I could burn a compilation to play on the car’s stereo. I’d always wanted to listen to the opening strains of Sigur Rós’s Hoppipolla while driving through Iceland, and so I finally got the chance after we passed through a tunnel to the north of Höfn and arrived in Austfirðir, the Eastern Fjords.

We found one of Iceland’s numerous waterfalls in the first valley we drove past, the sort of waterfall that, had it been in England, would have been signposted and crowded with tourists. This being Iceland, however, the waterfall was probably nameless, and just one of probably thousands around the coastline, all of which carve the surrounding mountains into the wonderful shapes you see all over the island.

Further round the coast, after yet another amazing waterfall, Jeff spotted a pair of reindeer trotting along in the shallows by the water’s edge, so we stopped the car again to get some shots. Then our breath was taken away.

On the map, we could see where the road left the coast, followed the river along the bottom of a valley, and then headed over the top of a mountain. However in front of us, as we drove, all we could see was a snow-capped mountain ridge, roughly 1km high, with no sign of a road. However sure enough, the road began to climb, and as it did, the temperature began to drop. For the sake of posterity, we stopped as soon as the thermometer on the car’s dashboard reached zero and exchanged a few snowballs, and took some pictures looking back down to the valley. The road continued to climb, and the temperature bottomed out at minus 3 celsius.

Things returned to (relative) normality on the other side of the ridge, with a snow-free drive along a lake that took us all the way to our next stop in Egilsstaðir. After dropping off our baggage we drove back along the lake through one of the locals’ favourite holiday spots, an area known as Hallormstaður which is covered with minature Icelandic Dwarf Birch trees - probably the closest thing to a forest in the whole country. Our destination was a waterfall called Hengifoss, Iceland’s third highest waterfall, however the waterfall itself was so far from the road and so high up that only Jeff managed to make it, a splitting headache defeating me before I could climb the second flight of steps, and exhaustion overtaking Raof half way up.

We stopped for a meal in town that evening, at a place where the clientele all seemed to be construction workers of some description, before heading for the basement in the hotel to download our pictures onto the laptops and then test the efficacy of the earplugs.

Yesterday my mind was filled with images of rocky barren landscape. Even though we had a taste of snow traversing a mountain range, the other side of which remained snow-free and would not prepare us for what lay ahead.

Heading out of the valley and lowlands again into another mountainous area we soon came across more snow. Slowly but surely as we kept on climbing higher everything around turned to white. Here came that feeling of isolation again, only magnified to an extreme.

The air was clear and crisp. Freshly fallen snow a few days before remained pristine. Two to three feet deep in places the only traces of high winds today were those impressed upon the snow forming sweeping channels between the rocky surface underneath. At Dettifoss the snow was left untouched by wind or man and was so deep and smooth it looked like someone had poured cream over it. None more so than at this point did I sense the remote solitude of this island. You can’t but help to sit and admire the view nature laid out before us.

We would not have witnessed the magnificent waterfall at Dettifoss had it not been for some skillful driving by Jeff. One family we helped lay victim to deep snow and we were almost stranded ourselves at one point. Thankfully, Jeff managed to coax our four-wheel drive into pressing on.

As delightful as the drive through the snow on day 3 was, we weren’t prepared for what we experienced on day 4 by any means. Like any good story, the drama reached a peak half way through the trip, and left us quite breathless by the time we arrived at our accommodation for the night.

The landscape immediately beyond Egilsstaðir was quite hilly, and we passed a deep ravine with a river (and, inevitably, a waterfall) at the bottom and a very tall bridge over the top. We also came across an abandoned barn with a semicircular corrugated iron roof, which gave us a few opportunities to experiment with the low light settings on our cameras, and provided a nice abstract for me.

As we headed higher into the mountains, the temerature dropped still further, and the snow around us got thicker. It had fallen a few days ago, and we had seen it on the news on TV on day 1, but had shown no sign of melting and was as soft and powdery as a brand new fall. In places it was three feet deep, and added gentle contours to otherwise rugged landscapes, giving the taller mountains an alien appearance, as if we were on the moon.

I had read about Dettifoss, the most powerful waterfall in Iceland, which was at the end of a gravel road 30km from route no 1, and which on the map at least looked like a straightforward drive, especially for a four wheel drive like the car we had hired. However as the road got further north, the snow got deeper, and eventually we were almost beached as the tracks cut about two or three feet into the snow and the bottom of the car was being lifted up by the deep snow in the centre of the road. We were on the verge of giving up when we saw another 4×4 approaching from the opposite direction, so we waved them down and Jeff, our driver at the time, got some advice on how bad the road was. Assured that it was nothing that our vehicle couldn’t cope with, we pressed on, and somehow managed to make it to a steep, icy downward slope, at the bottom of which we assumed was the main car park for Dettifoss (it was hard to tell under all that snow). The waterfall itself was a bit of a disappointment (to me at least) but the walk to and from the waterfall was something else. The snow was ankle deep, we spotted a pair of grouse in full winter plumage, and the snow had smoothed off all the rough edges, hiding such everyday hazards as steps, meaning we had to watch every footfall.

After learning how to use the various 4×4 modes properly while sitting in the car waiting for me and Raof to return, Jeff managed to negotiate the snowy road back to the ring road with much improved confidence, however we did have to stop on the way to help a family who had been assured by the locals that their small white Toyota Yaris would have no problems in the deep snow. I don’t know how the Icelanders would have managed it (though I have a feeling it would have been achieved) but it was too much for our new friends, so after freeing them from the snow we assured them it was a nice waterfall, but not worth all that trouble!

We met them again at Namafjall, another hot spring area near lake Mývatn, where the steam emanating from the ground had frozen as it emerged, forming unusual shapes like grass made of ice, and filling the air with the eggy Marmite smell familiar from Krýsuvík on day 1.

By the time we reached Mývatn, the temperature had reached minus 9, and we still had a way to go to get to Rauðaskriða, our farm accommodation, so we drove non stop through more snow and past more lakes and waterfalls before switching to the special low-ratio 4WD mode to climb up the snowy path that led to the farm, which felt, as had much of the day, like we were in the middle of nowhere. The lack of internet (which we were told was broken) only added to the impression!