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!
