At this point we have landed in Reykjavik, bought all the food we could find and packed up one of our resupplies. The best-laid plans have gone slightly awry, leaving us in a difficult situation… a 10-day supply of food and no solid way to get to the northern terminal. After dropping off refueling 1 at the local bus stop to be held in Landmannalaugar, I rushed to the airport just in time to catch the flight north to Akureyri. The flight took us over beautiful black deserts and volcanoes until we entered the green valley surrounded by mountains in which the city is located.
We had a wonderful stay and time to visit the area and pack our big resupply for the highlands. However, we couldn’t post it until 10am the next morning, which meant we would miss our bus to Húsavík, half of our journey to the terminal.
After posting, we headed out of town and set up shop with our thumbs out hoping to find some kind passersby. At this point we do not expect to travel the 250 kilometers (156 miles) to the northern terminus, as much of northern Iceland is remote and has very little traffic.
A friendly local picked us up in no time and promised to take us to Husavik. We stopped at waterfalls and a few places of interest along the way and learned a lot from the locals, very proud and knowledgeable.
We were dropped off at a junction with 11km to the next busy road and another 30km to Husavik. We began the walk to the busy road trying to hitch a ride on one or two cars that passed by every half hour. Within 2 hours we were picked up by a lovely Brazilian family on a road trip holiday that took us to Husavik. We grabbed a quick late lunch and got back on the road.
At this point it’s four in the afternoon and we’re barely halfway there. We plan other routes if we can’t get beyond this point and also emergency campsites. But after an hour and a half, a German couple who were also traveling by road picked us up and took us a very long way to a campsite near Dettifoss.
It’s pretty remote now and we suspect this is our limit, but the first car that eventually passes picks us up and takes us just a few miles to the site we planned for night 2. Now this is really our limit. Or so we thought. First car again! A young Icelandic couple was heading on a work holiday to a remote northern town and would cross the last crossing to reach our place! But even better they took us there. About 20 km from there in the late afternoon. How lucky we were to find them.
Raufarhofn is the end of the earth. That’s what it feels like anyway. We checked into a lovely hostel and had a wonderful meal at the local hotel. About the only people we saw were the hotel owner and the hostel owner. It was cold, an extremely cold wind that passed through us enough to make us uneasy about what might come.
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