Ring Road part 2 – Snæfellsnes Pennisula

While not technically on the Ring Road, the Snæfellsnes is a peninsula in the west of Iceland. It is fairly popular day or overnight excursion from Reykjavik so we decided to add it on to our road trip.   Before leaving, I added places that seemed visit-worthy to Wanderlog, an App and website that can be used for trip planning. I had previously used Tripit, but found it lacking in some respects. It took me a while to figure Wanderlog out, but I found it very useful on this trip.  After loading all sites and attractions that looked interesting into the trip, I then moved them into the relevant day and ordered them along our drive. We could then view the possible stops for the day and decide if we wanted to stop or skip particular sites.  Wanderlog would then send the address to Google or Apple maps which made driving from stop to stop very straightforward.  Here’s what our first day looked like.

 It was close to 11:30 by the time I picked up the rental car, stopped by a grocery store to get a few things and picked up Angie.  We set off in our older Dacia Duster 4wd small suv from Blue Car rentals and got use to what it would be like drive while masked with the windows part way down. Some of the road was familiar to us as we had driven it several times on our prior trip to Iceland, but I was surprised at how much seemed new me.  We passed by the first possible stop, which was the Hvammsvik Hot Springs as it was early in the day and it was neither practical nor relaxing for me to go into a public space like that with covid.  We left highway 1 (the ring road) fairly quickly and went through our first tunnel; a three mile long 165 meter deep tunnel under the Hvalfjörður fjord near Borgarnes. 

We enjoyed the sun and views of farms and the changing landscape as we left Reykjavik and headed out to the Snæfellsnes peninsula.

We also decided to skip the next stop, Eldorg Crater, which was a smallish volcanic crater in the middle of a large flat expanse. It was a short ways off the road and involved a several mile hike up to the rim. We decided our time would be better spent elsewhere so continued on.  We made a quick stop at the Gerðuberg Cliffs, which are basalt cliffs, but we didn’t linger as we expected to see other basalt cliffs on the trip.  We did stop at Ytri Tunga, a beach and popular resting spot for seals.  This was our first experience with paid parking, which was very common at pretty much any attraction that would draw tourists. Tracking the paid parking is automatic with license plate readers on both the entrance and exit of the lots. the parking fee, usually around $8 for a passenger car, can be paid by app, on a website, or through a machine located in the lot.  For the most part we didn’t mind paying to park, but it did grow tiresome at the end of the trip and at places where we really just wanted to stop for a couple of minutes.   

In any case, we enjoyed walking around Ytri Tunga beach for a while, before making the next stop at the much photographed black church at ​Búðakirkja

From the church we continued on towards Hellner and pulled into a stop where we saw many other people walking up to a crack in the cliff.  The walk was a bit longer and steeper than it looked from the street. The view was nice on the way up, but the main destination was to walk around through crack in the cliff to look at the hidden creek and canyon.  That required rock hopping or walking in the stream and it was fairly crowded with people, who were not always very polite, so we didn’t spend much time here. 

We proceeded on and stopped at Arnarstapi, a small fishing village.  There wasn’t much to see here, and it was pretty windy so we didn’t stay long. On the way out, we passed a food truck that received high ratings for its fish and chips. It was late in the afternoon and the next stop was the hotel that wouldn’t have many eating options for me, so I ordered the fish and chips.  The fish and chips were delicious, with piping hot fish and crunchy non-greasy batter. I ate as quickly as possible as it was cold and windy at the picnic table by the food truck.  We checked in to the Foss Hellnar and were given adjacent rooms in a small outbuilding from the main hotel.  Foss is a Iceland chain that in our experience were nice, but certainly not luxury level.  Angie had a nice dinner while I stayed in my room.  I took a walk down to the cliffs and up to a nearby church later in the evening as the sun was setting.  

 We awoke to broken blue skies without much wind in the morning. After having breakfast in our separate rooms, we set off, stopping briefly at the Hellner lookout before making an unplanned stop at Lóndrangar and taking a nice short walk out to the unique rock formation on the shore cliffs.  We then made a stop at Djúpulónsperlur​ beach and enjoyed the walk down to and around a black sand beach.  Our drive had us circumnavigating Snaefellsjokull, the glacier on the top of Snaefellnes mountain, but never quite caught a glimpse of the glacier. Even when the sun was out and most of the mountain was visible, the glacier stayed shoaded in clouds.  

After leaving the beach we headed to Saxholl crater.  This crater was located just off the road with a series of stairs that led up to the top of the crater.  The wind was picking up by this time, so we didn’t stay long.  From Saxholl crater got back in the car and made the short drive, including about a mile on a bumpy dirt road to the Rauðhóll trailhead, which led us on a windy, cold, and pretty loop up another crater and around the crater’s rim.   The grey skies and blowing wind didn’t lend for great photo opportunities. 
From Rauðhóll, we stopped at Ingjaldshólskirkja, another Icelandic church for a quick photo and then took a short side road and walk to see the ​Svöðufoss waterfall.

From Svodufoss we had a bit of a drive Kirkjufell, one of the most photographed sites in Iceland and certainly one of the most popular spots on the Snaefellnes peninsula.  It was very photogenic, but it was near impossible to get a photo without people getting in the way.   That was the last stop of the day before completing our drive to Stykkisholmur, a fishing town on the north side of the peninsula.  I had found a room at the Stykkisholmur Inn, for the night so checked-in there before walking back to the Fransiskus Hotel, a converted monastery, where we both had planned to stay, to meet Angie and walk around the town a bit. It didn’t take long to figure out that there was very little to do. It was a cold and windy Sunday afternoon. We did walk past the Baldur ferry, a vehicle ferry that makes regularly scheduled trips between Stykkisholmur and Brjánslækur in the Westfjords, and up to a view point a the end of the harbor and then briefly looked for a suitable restaurant. Not finding anything, we made our way back to our respective lodging. Angie had an unsatisfactory meal from the food we had with us, and I made a visit to the town’s grocery store and bought a frozen Thai curry and rice meal that I heated up in the microwave in the guesthouse’s common dining room.