The Ultimate Iceland Roadtrip part 2

After car number three broke down on us last week, Ilona and I attempted another road trip in our 'new' staff car this week. We went to explore Snaefellsness, the western peninsula of Iceland. If you're planning a trip to Iceland in the future I can definitely recommend this area, it was beautiful and there were hardly any other tourists. We made it into a two-day trip and stayed in Olafsvik overnight but you can easily spend more time in the area. It is a little over an hour to drive there from Reykjavik and it's not far from the Ring Road if you're taking a tour of the whole island.

As we couldn't go whale watching last week (due to the car breaking down halfway there) we decided to try again on our way to the peninsula. So we stopped in Reykjavik and got on the boat for the morning cruise. And we got lucky! We had some amazing sightings. There were 3 or 4 humpback whales swimming, playing and feeding around our boat for over an hour. They got really close so we got a good look at these giant animals. This was my fourth time whale watching here in Iceland as I didn't see anything the previous times so I was extremely happy. In addition to the humpbacks we also saw a Minke whale. A pretty good morning!

After the successful start of our day we went on to Snaefellsness. We had a full schedule with cliffs, waterfalls, beaches and hotsprings that we wanted to visit. One of our first stops was a mineral spring. The whole village used the spring as their water supply and there was a tap where you could try some of the water. These people must really have gotten used to this water because I almost spat it out, the huge amount of minerals in it made it really disgusting. Another interesting stop was the beach at Ytri Tunga (with yellow sand instead of black this time) where a colony of seals was living. So in addition to the whales, we also spotted seals today. They were all sun bathing on the rocks, very cute! We tried to find Sönghellir cave by driving up a mountain on a gravel road with a sign saying it was 'impassable' but our little car made it up. The cave was a little disappointing but the view was definitely worth it.

I'm almost getting tired of all the waterfalls, almost because they are still super beautiful, there are just so many of them! We saw about a hundred more and could even see one from our hotel window. At most of these waterfalls though, we were the only visitors. I don't know if Snaefellsnes is not very popular among tourists yet or if it was just quiet but I loved it. We drove along the coast line where we saw some beautiful cliffs. In general, the scenery when driving around the peninsula is breathtaking, you don't even have to leave your car. My favorite stop was Landbrotalaug, a hotspring in the middle of nowhere. There were two natural pools, the one we tried first was around 50 degrees Celsius and we didn't last for more than five minutes. The second one was a lot smaller and 'only' 40 degrees with a beautiful view of the mountains in the distance. A must do!