Iceland: Landmannalaugar

Today was the day I headed into the highlands of Iceland to drive to Landmannalaugar! I woke up this morning and headed out after a quick breakfast. Last night it was so foggy when I arrived at my guesthouse that I didn’t even realize it was completely surrounded by mountains. When leaving the guesthouse, I was treated to this beautiful view!

The highlands of Iceland are a rugged place. They’re only accessible via roads known as the F Roads; many of Iceland’s roads are numbered and if they have an F in front of the number, that means it falls in that category. These roads are regulated as to the type of vehicle you can use on them. Anything except a 4×4 is actually illegal, and there are patrols that drive through to monitor safety, adherence to the vehicle rule, and to make sure people aren’t pulling off the road too far. Iceland is very protective of its unique ecosystems, and there was actually a patrol vehicle that went by just as I started out on the road that paused to scold another person near me about going too far from the road with their vehicle. The road I needed to take to get to Landmannalaugar is F208. I started at the western side and had a pit stop at Hrauneyjar Highland Centre before hooking up to F208, because there are no gas stations or stores in the highlands and I didn’t want to get hungry. Below are a few photos of the beginning of my journey on F208.

As you can see, it’s not very mountainous right at the beginning, but very soon they started to appear! The road was very bumpy, although I definitely found as the day went on that my standards for “bumpy” were radically revised. At the beginning, I was going 35km/h on roads like the one above, and by the end of the day I was going on roads much bumpier than that one at 50-60km/h! The road is really only 1.5 car widths across (sometimes skinnier, sometimes wider), so when a car is approaching one of you has to pull off the road so that only two tires are still on the road and wait for the other person to pass. People with really intense off-road vehicles (including some off-road buses that look like moon exploration vehicles) go much faster than people with cars like the one I have, which was a little overwhelming to be passed when the road is so skinny. The rental car I have is a Nissan Qashqai (diesel and manual), and I found it did pretty well with the whole day. There’s actually this whole thing I read about with rental car companies in Iceland, where if you see a non-4×4 rental car on one of the F-roads and take a photo of it and send it to the rental company you get a reward, and the person renting the car gets fined $1000! (Can’t guarantee the accuracy of this, but it was a fun thing to read.) The F-roads are only open in the summer (usually starting in late June), and there’s a website that you can use to check the road conditions anywhere in the country. In the winter, the roads are not open and are completely covered in snow and ice.

The drive through the highlands was really beautiful! I find so far in Iceland every time I turn a corner I’m like, wtf Iceland, how are you this ridiculously good-looking? The road was dry and easy to manage, because I don’t think it rained in the highlands when it rained on the west coast yesterday. I stopped quite a bit on the side of the road to take photos, as did many other people, which lead to a group of us leap-frogging over each other a bunch. It was comforting to have a small group of other people around, because I’m traveling alone and basically felt like I was driving on the moon (or on another planet), so it makes you feel more safe to have other people being aware of you.

Landmannalaugar is in the Fjallback Nature Reserve, and it has campsites, horse tours, a hot spring bathing spot in a river, and a small shop in the summer with basic groceries. There’s a river before you get to the main centre that you have to drive across if you want your vehicle to be in the main area, but as I’d read ahead of time, the levels were very high due to the melting of snow on the mountains and only much larger vehicles could get across (as below). There’s a parking lot by the river with a footbridge, so I just did that instead.

There’s a really popular hike that most people do called Laugavegur, which takes you up to the mountain Brennisteinsalda through the Graenagil Canyon and over a lava field. Most people do a loop that ends at the base of Brennisteinsalda, but on the map I saw that there was a trail that went a bit farther up in a slightly bigger loop over top of the mountain and down the other side, so I decided to do that. I wanted to be able to get a peek at the blue-tinged mountains that are behind Brennisteinsalda.

The first part of the hike in the canyon was very manageable. Once it got into the lava fields, I had to be careful not to get off track because the trail was twisted through many of the rocks (which were sharp!), but I was motivated by the great view!

The lava field at the base of the mountain actually steams a lot because it is giving off so much heat! Lots of people were taking photos with the steam, so I got a fellow traveler to snap my photo for me. He actually took some really good ones – I find with random people taking your photos it can be SO hit or miss. There were definitely people who took my photo later on in the day who took completely strange photos which I didn’t end up keeping.

I would like to note at this point that it seems like Icelanders have a beef with switchbacks. Like, every time there’s an ascent or descent of a mountain (on the road or on hiking trails), instead of going back and forth and being nice to whoever’s going up, someone has clearly thought to themselves, “NOPE. LET’S GO STRAIGHT UP.” Which is exhausting. I wear orthotics and I have realllyyy tight calves even with regular stretching. And while the uphills made me sweaty and disgusting and out of breath, the downhills were what completely killed my knee. My left knee was in so much pain that at some points I sort of galloped down chunks of the descent (which, since I was at the TOP of Brennisteinsalda, was very long and steep) just to spare my knee as much as possible. Luckily, I had these views to make up for it!

At the bottom, there was an open field-like area that had sheep grazing in it! I saw so many sheep again today! I have to say that the sheep in Iceland seem to lead a pretty charmed life. You know, just grazing on lush green grass at the foot of rhyolite mountains. Or grazing on the grassy side of a small hill. Or napping with their little sheepy family in a bed of flowers in the sun. I’ve discovered that every time I drive by sheep on the road, I need to crow “SHEEPLINGS! AWW!” to myself alone in the car.

 On the way out of the open area a few minutes before the trail linked back up with the main loop, I saw this beautiful reflection in a pond, and suddenly the knee pain and extra distance were totally worth it. It also helped that since I was back on level ground and the trail was more established, my knee wasn’t actually hurting anymore. But we’ll pretend it was healed by the beauty of Iceland.

I decided not to do the hot spring at Landmannalaugar after my hike, even though I smelled like a foot, because 1) it was very crowded and 2) I knew I had a long drive ahead of me to continue on to the east coast where I’m staying tonight, and just wanted to get started with that. Shortly after leaving, I encountered this giant still lake. Confession: I had such a ridiculous time choosing which photos of this lake to include in this post. “No, THIS beautiful reflecting mountains lake shot. No THIS one.”

(See what I mean about the sheep?!)

So. You may recall the vehicles driving through the river to get to Landmannalaugar? Well, luckily the western segment of F208 didn’t have any rivers to cross, but as I had been stressed about, the eastern segment did. This was probably the number one thing I was worried about re: my Iceland trip. I watched videos on YouTube of people driving through rivers on F208, I read about how to do it properly, and I also read lots of horror stories of people flooding their engines or damaging the undercarriage of their cars (which is not covered by any car insurance you can get for rental cars). The photo below is of the first river I encountered. I had watershoe sandals with me specifically for this purpose: I put them on and walked into the river to see how deep it got, what the terrain was like underwater, and whether there was a route I could take that would stay more shallow. This one was just under knee height, which I had decided as my guideline on whether to be alarmed. In the photo below, the 5 in the circle is indicating a speed recommendation of 5km/h for the river crossing. The road ends at the water and picks up again on the other side, so you really have no choice. If I didn’t do the river crossing and turned back, I would’ve had to go all the way back to where I started in the morning (2.5-3 hours drive), then hook up to a highway and come around on the south coast (probably another 5+ hours), so I was very determined to do the crossing.

And I did it! I felt like a badass afterward. Until I encountered another river. I walked this one again, and it was a similar depth so I did it and felt good. And then there was another. And another. And another. I had to drive through more than 25 rivers today. It was stressful, and every time I finished crossing one river I’d hope to myself that maybe that was the last one but they just kept COMING. But I did it, and I’m fine, and the car is totally fine, and now I feel like a champion.

I got pretty grumpy after all the rivers started happening and didn’t get out of my car to take photos because I was tired and just wanted to get through the damn thing. Also, I wasn’t entirely convinced that if I got out of my car I wouldn’t refuse to get back in again and throw a hissy fit and try to make someone else drive through all the rivers for me. So there’s that. I’m staying near Kirkjubaejarklaustur (say that five times fast!) tonight, and tomorrow will be visiting Vatnajökull National Park! Glaciers! Black sand! Waterfalls! (Oh my!) Below is a map of where I went today.