We decided to make a trip to Snæfellsnes peninsula in western Iceland. The peninsula is relatively small so you can circle it in one day.
While surfing on the internet to find some cool places, I stumbled upon this farm Olkelda where you can find a mineral spring and fill your bottles with carbonated water and drink it. The water is very special because it has much larger quantities of minerals than ordinary drinking water. Also, the color of the ground where the water pours out is distinctly red, as you can see in a pic below. This is probably because iron oxidizes in contact with oxygen. While drinking it, you can taste the iron a little bit (it feels like the water is mixed with some blood). Also, you can nicely feel the bubbles.
This water is apparently very healthy and it has been used as drinking water at the farm for centuries and still is. It was analyzed that this water is good for people who suffer from heart and kidney diseases as well as diabetes. We filled up 3 big bottles and drank them for the rest of the day. In the evening, we even cooked a stew with this water and it turned out great!
We passed by some ugly beach where seals usually appear if you're lucky, but all we saw were lots of slippery seaweed.
Then we came to the Black Church of Budir, a small black church in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by mountains and fields. We walked around the church and wanted to get into, but some guy told us not to enter because there are people getting married inside. What a nice surprise! They came a bit later and I managed to take one quick photo of them. I think they looked really cute, happy and a little bit cold.
Our next destination was Rauðfeldsgjá Gorge where you can walk up to and climb inside it. This was the most challenging walk in our lives since the path inside was full of flowing water and frozen slippery rocks. Probably it isn't a very good idea to go there in the winter, I guess it's easier in the summer. But, it was so much fun and we had to watch for every step and be careful not to fall. After some time, we came to the part where there was a rope which helps you to go up and further, but we didn't have any appropriate equipment for that so we went back.
entrance
the view when you come out of the gorge
Near this gorge is a beautiful coastline with strangely shaped rocks, like this one in a pic below.
Some random pics from the same place:
We stumbled upon more cool places.
took a few stones from this volcano for souvenirs
Slowly, the day was coming to an end so we looked for a place to stay for the night. We found a place near the road where there was no living soul. The view of the snowy mountains was amazing. We cooked our dinner and enjoyed the sunset with beautiful colors shown in the mountains.
our stay for the night
cooking the most delicious stew with fresh salmon, potatoes, tomatoes, onions...
And again, we awed the most amazing aurora borealis in the sky! We were so lucky.
Day 7
The last day of our trip was spent in the capital city, Reykjavik. You can see how our drive to the city looked like.
The whole day the wind was blowing so hard we couldn't explore the city at all and unfortunately, we don't have any pics from this day. So we decided to go to some pub to drink beers and we found the one with a happy hour where a pint of beer costs around 4,5 euros. This was acceptable since the other pubs served beers for double the cost. We drank three rounds and went to the shop to buy something to eat. The next morning we went to the airport.
Short story:
We had return tickets (Budapest-Reyjkavik) and we came to Budapest in the afternoon. The day before we found one guy from the application Blablacar who was going to our home country (Croatia) and could take us with him for a smaller amount of money than the bus. So we made a deal with this guy that he would pick us up at midnight in Budapest so we had some time until then.
We decided to treat ourselves a little bit so we went to the cinema and then to the restaurant. We enjoyed our time there and it was time to meet with the guy. We came to the place where we were supposed to meet and he didn't come. We called him on the phone and first he didn't answer. Then on the second try, he answered, but we apparently woke him up after a good sleep. He wasn't even going anywhere and he explained that his friend will pick us up and he gave us his phone number. So we talked to the other guy which said that he was at the Ukraine border and that it would take him a couple of hours to get to Budapest. We were a bit annoyed and tired and didn't know what to do since it was midnight and also raining...
We were wandering around and decided to sit on dirty ground in the subway and cover ourselves with our sleeping bags and try to sleep a little bit. There wasn't anyone around us except for one homeless guy. He approached us and we gave him a bag with some food we had with us. He was so happy, he even started to cry. In return, he gave us an old electric water kettle he took out of his bag. We thanked him but later we tossed it in the garbage... After that, we tried to sleep again, but two guys passing by threw us some coins on the floor. It was so funny we couldn't fall asleep anymore because to them, we were looking like homeless people trying to sleep there. 😅
At that point, we decided to find some pub to spend this money on beer.
After some time, we called this guy who needed to pick us up and guess what he told us. That he'll come probably in the morning! Okay, that was it. He screwed us up so we decided to take a morning bus home. When we came home I was really happy to take a shower, eat something and go sleeping. The next day we were back to our old routines, Denis to work, me and Emanuel back to college, and all I could think of is „I can't wait to travel again“...
This was one hell of an adventure and I am not often saying this for other countries, but I would gladly come back to Iceland one day! There is so much yet to see and experience!
The end.
Have a great day!
All photos are taken by us.