Once moored in Seyðisfjörður nothing happened particularly quickly. We had to wait to disembark as ambulance staff needed to take off an unwell passenger first. Then we waited for the bus …. About an hour and a half later we were dropped at Egilsstaðir airport. Then we waited again … Eventually someone came to man the Hertz booth and gave us (in exchange for lots of money!) the keys to a Skoda Kodiaq – apparently a four-wheel drive car – something which was revealed when I asked about gravel roads and he said we could go anywhere in Iceland whatever the roads.
So, once we had worked out how to start the enormous beast of a car and gingerly manoeuvred it out of the parking area, we headed off on the main Route 1 ring road heading for Höfn. This took us around three hours and involved a lot of heading west, then south and then east as we went round inlet after inlet, the road closely following the sea. To have done anything else would have been tricky with mountains, and at one stage steep scree and mud hills on the inside of us. The soggy weather did nothing to dampen our amazement at the sheer scale of the landscape – a series of superlatives all strung together still didn’t really do it justice. This has clearly attracted filmmakers with the area acting as a filming location for various films including the James Bond movies Die Another Day and A View to a Kill, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, and Batman Begins. What better introduction to the land of ice and fire.
Höfn is a fishing port and is said to be the langoustine capital of Iceland, so there seemed to be just one choice for supper. A quick Google search revealed a restaurant on the harbour called Pakkhús to be the most recommended spot, so we dutifully headed down there. What we hadn’t realised is that the first week in October is also Golden Week in China meaning that what felt like half the population of China had descended on Iceland and Höfn in particular. The restaurant was clearly used to this though and gave us a buzzer to notify us when a table became available. In the end, this wasn’t too long, but …. whatever the wait, it would have been well worth it. Langoustines baked in butter followed by a Crème Brulé with liquorice could perhaps be considered my perfect meal. Friendly service from a Polish waiter (apparently Poles are the largest immigrant community in Iceland) who was about to move to Denmark rounded off the experience perfectly.
Digestion of this excellent meal seemed to start me thinking (not something which happens often) and I suddenly wondered about whether, being as far north as we are, we might see the Northern Lights. I had heard that there were some apps which gave reliable forecasts and so downloaded a recommended one. Once I had worked my way through extensive start-up screens, it announced to me that the best time to see the Northern Lights in our location was …. now. Never one to refuse the instructions of an app, we jumped in the car to head out of town a little and get away from the lights. Sure enough, we did see them. Perhaps not the colourful curtains of lights that you see on Instagram, but nevertheless, definitely the Northern Lights. Iceland – wow …..
