We started our trip on the morning of 17th of July. We left sunny Reykjavík at 11 am. 12 hours and 7 cars later we arrived in rainy Seyðisfjörður, after driving through a wind storm on the south-east corner, where we witnessed the UFC (the Unique Flying Caravan). We spent the weekend on LungA art festival. Despite being cold and wet, we really enjoyed the festival and the beautiful surroundings of Seyðisfjörður.
Sunday afternoon we hitchhiked to Egilsstaðir. We decided to spend the night at a hostel to be able to dry our clothes before heading up to the highlands. Early Monday morning we hit the road again. Before we knew it, we were at the first geothermal pool, Laugarfell. The pool and its surroundings are very beautiful, and there is a perfect spot for camping next to the pool. The pool itself turned out to be too hot to have a dip. At the pool we met a lovely family from Flúðir, who gave us a lift back up to the main road.
At the main road we found our next lift shortly. Some nice workers from that area drove us all the way up to the next pool, Laugavallalaug. The valley is a beautiful spot, but it is a bit hard to imagine that someone actually used to live there, so far up in the highlands in the midst of all that ‘nothingness’. The upper pool is now only a small stream of burning hot water, but the warm waterfall and the lower pool were at a perfect temperature. It was quite amazing to go in the pool and bathe in the warm waterfall!
Next stop was supposed to be Aðalból, where we wanted to camp for the night and try to find someone there, heading to Askja the next day. Someone told us that it would be best to go back to a junction near the road to Snæfell to hitch a ride to Aðalból, so we headed back there… We ended up spending 4 hours on that junction, without anyone going up there. No one was willing to go that road, not even when we offered to pay for the trip! After making chilli coffee by the side of the road, we decided to start walking back in Kárahnjúkar direction and try to hitchhike at least up to the camps at Kárahnjúkar. After walking somewhere close to 10 km, we decided to call it a night and put up our tent by the side of the road. Therefore we spent that night out in the middle of nowhere, just us and the nature!
On Tuesday morning we got up early and hoped to be able to catch some workers heading up to Kárahnjúkar. Lady Luck was on our side and sent us an angel! This angels name is Kári. Kári took us first up to Kárahnjúkar work camps and gave us bread with smoked lamb and bread with smoked salmon and coffee. After the delicious breakfast he ended up taking us all the way to Brú í Jökuldal! It was a bit windy there and we expected to have to wait a while before seeing a car, so we set up a small haven, made from our backpacks, our mattresses and our blankets. Luckily enough, we didn’t have to wait that long until Tobias and Christian picked us up. We had managed to hitchhike all the way up to Askja! How amazing!
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