East Iceland: The Mývatn District → Seyðisfjörður 17 May

17th May 2008
The Mývatn District → Seyðisfjörður

Via: Route 1 - Route 93

Our original plan after leaving Leirhnjúkur is to visit Dettifoss, the largest waterfall in Europe in terms of water volume discharge. In fact, we have been checking all the roads status weeks before we land on Iceland. Snow seems to melt more slowly here than the rest of the island. Dettifoss is the first regret of this trip. The journey to Seyðisfjörður is approximately 224km, takes 4 hours. Weather: Cloudy, 9°C.

Vistas of the Drive

Route 1


The first road that leads to Dettifoss is the rugged F862. It is closed.

Our last chance of seeing Dettifoss is gone. The second and last road Route 864 to it is closed as well.

Cant imagine that a bridge has only 1 traffic lane.

At this point, we notice the fuel indicator in the car is not optimistic, it shows we will run out of petrol before reaching the next petrol station. I cant help but to worry, we are back in the wild again.

After an hour of drive, we arrive at a small town. Delight to see a self service petrol kiosk 500m ahead. But the happiness is short lived as there is a problem with the credit card reader, it keep insisting for a 4 digit passcode when ours are of 6 digits. And there is no one around to assist us. Most of the petrol kiosks in Iceland allow 6 digits passcode.

Another bridge on Route 1. Impressive looking when close up.

We are halfway thru the journey and so does our petrol tank. The only worrying point is the fuel indicator shows "Distance to empty is 102km" and GPS shows we have 120km more to go before we reach our destination. And the worst thing can happen is there will not be any town from here until we reach Egilsstaðir, the largest town in East Iceland.

We are lucky. Never expect to see this after 20 mins of drive. Fellabær is the twin town of Egilsstaðir.

The saviour.

Once we cross this bridge, it will be Egilsstaðir. It is the service, transportation and administration hub of East Iceland.

Airport of Egilsstaðir

Supermarket!!! The Bonus Store is the biggest supermarket chain in Iceland. The sacred place in our heart in this trip.

Route 93

The remaining stretch of 27 kilometres of Route 93 links Egilsstaðir to Seydisfjördur over Mount Fjarðarheiði and we are driving over it.

This is the view of Egilsstaðir, taken on the way up to Mount Fjarðarheiði.




On Mount Fjarðarheiði.




View of Seyðisfjörður


As we descend from Mount Fjarðarheiði, we saw this beautiful unnamed waterfall.




The rapid downstream of the waterfall.

This was taken when we walk back to the car after seeing the waterfall. The car is a small dot at the end of the path. How magnificent the mountains are and how minute we are.

This is where we park the car to take a closer look at the waterfall. Really thankful of the fine weather to see such a good view. We have reached Seyðisfjörður.

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