Iceland: Day 6

On Day 6 of Supertrip 2011 Robyn and I set off to find Dettifoss, the most powerful waterfall in Europe!

It was encouraging to see the trail started like this:

And later on, the trail looked like this:

After hiking through mostly-unmarked trails and - seriously - thigh-deep snow drifts, we finally encountered a waterfall. "Dettifoss!" Robyn exclaimed:

'Twas a magnificent waterfall, but it wasn't Dettifoss! It was Selfoss, a feeder waterfall to Dettifoss.

THIS is Dettifoss, discovered about 30 minutes later after hiking along the edge of the cliff pictured above:

Due to the snowdrifts, we couldn't navigate down to a better spot to capture a photo of the magnitude of Dettifoss, but I highly recommend watching the short clip above to get a sense of how monstrous this waterfall is.

After Dettifoss, we had a long stretch of driving to do - we didn't see any more "attractions" on this day. We still saw some cool things though! We drove through a lot of fjords and saw some great mountain scenery, shown further down.

Here is an N1, the only gas station in Iceland that accepts a VISA pin number longer than 4 digits (mine is 6, schmehhh). Some N1 stations had tasty restaurants inside (hot dogs, the most popular fast food in the country).

We got to go through another TUNNEL!! I love tunnels.

Neat shot of tiny farmhouses/barns and a cool "striped" mountain.

Here's the same type of striped mountain but erosion has caused the stripes to turn into steps! So cool!!

Finally, we got to Djúpivogur, where we were spending the night. Fun fact from Wikipedia: the highest temperature ever recorded in Iceland was recorded here in 1939 - 30.5 degrees Celcius!

At we were past the half-way point in the trip, suddenly the meals at the hotels seemed alarmingly expensive. $40 entrées every night (per person) were adding up in our heads. We started our plan of eating more frugally, which this night included buying groceries and making sandwiches in our hotel room. This was my favourite discovery on the trip:

It's basically cream cheese.... mmmmm, bacon.

STAY TUNED for Day 7: Icebergs and glacial lakes, dogs riding boats and a really amazing basalt rock formation on a waterfall!