Day-1  (Reykjavik to Vik)

Start off with an early breakfast and we bump into Sheeja, the wonderful hostess at the hotel who is from our home state of Kerala in India! Wow, talk of meeting Indians all across the globe. After some nice chat with her, we head back into our room and after loading our luggage & getting onto our motorcycle, we hit multiple glitches right at the start. The GPS power cable snaps, the helmet intercom doesn’t switch on and the list goes on.

Anyway, we head to the Bike rental place with no GPS but a rough sense of direction from my previous evening’s trip there. Half an hour later and a mighty thanks to the friendly crew at Biking-Viking we fix all the problems and were soon riding out of city limits and the traffic is thinning out. After all 80% of the Iceland’s population stays in this capital city of Reykjavik.

As we are out city, the traffic is sparse but accompanying us are heavy cross winds that was tossing us all over the road, but the ever changing spectacular & rugged landscapes kept up our spirits. We take a small detour to the small town of Hveragerdi. Strolling the calm streets of this place, we spot the numerous greenhouses that make use of the unique underground geo-thermal activity in the area and they are foggy with the thermal-powered warmth trapped inside. These greenhouses have been a big part of the town’s formation, and the cultivation of cut flowers, garden plants and vegetables which is now a year-round activity thanks to thermal energy. The first greenhouse was built in 1930.

Our next stop was the Kerid crater, which was formed after a volcanic explosion 3000 years ago. Even here it was difficult to hold our camera and stand still as the wind was shaking us continuously in the open spaces.

We then proceeded further on the highway stopping for lunch briefly and then headed to the beautiful Seljalandsfoss waterfalls. Its among the top attractions in Iceland.  The waterfall drops about 60 mtrs and is part of the Seljalands River and has its origin in the volcano glacier Eyjafjallajokull. One of the interesting things about this waterfall is that visitors can walk behind it into a small cave. Due to all our riding gear we gave the walk a miss.

From here he continue east a few more kms and land at the famed Skogafoss waterfalls on the Route 1. This waterfall which is about 25 meters wide and drops about 60 mtrs is situated on the Skógá River at the cliffs of the former coastline. That coastline has long receded seaward and would easily be about 4-5 kilometres from the present falls. The locations & surroundings of these are absolutely breathtaking.

Finally, we made our way to the southernmost village in Iceland, Vik, our destination for the day.

We close with a sumptuous dinner of Pan fried Charr fish, with potatoes, salad & soup finished with a nice apple pie desert.

Dinner service in this part of the world closes by 9.00pm, but being summer, its all bright sunlight outside that gives a false impression that the time is about 4-5pm. We have to adapt to that new reality so as not to go to bed on an empty stomach.