Iceland 2026 Part 2 – The East

Day 5 – Hofn to Egilsstaðir

On Wednesday we left Hofn and drove to Vestrahorn. This is a beautiful mountain that has a long road out to the Stokksnes headland. Of course, it has an entrance fee, but we thoroughly enjoyed the drive. Pete wanted to film the area by having his drone following our car, so I did the driving out here. It was really a lot of fun, although very cold with the sea winds blowing. The mountain was partly hidden by low clouds, too. Below on the left is my photo, and on the right is the raw footage from his drone.

From there, we drove through our first tunnel, then meandered along the Ring Road through the East Fjords. We stopped at a few little towns along the way: Berufjörður, Djúpivogur, Breiðdalsvík, and Stöðvarfjörður. No, we can’t really pronounce the names either. This is not a language one picks up in 13 days, especially since nearly everyone there also speaks English. I noticed that almost every little town has one brewery and one church. I joked that it’s a fine line between Saturday night and Sunday morning!

The scenery in this part of the country is incredible and luckily the weather cleared up! The drive is a little white-knuckle-y but not too bad. The route is a lot longer than it seems, because in every fjord you have to drive inland and back out. But the views were amazing! We pulled off at one place, drove on a road that was barely a road, and just sat in a field chilling out for a while, looking across the water back to the mountains on the other side. The kind of afternoon that makes me want to never come back home!

Of these towns, we spent the most time in Djúpivogur. We actually went to the brewery there, where we shared a flight of their brews and Pete had a soft pretzel. According to Google, Djúpivogur has a population of “approximately 404”! That seems very specific for an approximation, in my opinion. I would guess that some of the towns are even smaller. We also stopped in Stöðvarfjörður but the cafe there was apparently out of business. The only one in business was at some place called Petra’s Stone Collection museum that required a $17pp entrance fee for some unlabelled rocks. But we did watch the clouds roll down the mountains into the fjord, which was really amazing.

After a long day of mostly driving, we made it to Egilsstaðir. This is a larger town – not big enough for a stoplight, but there was a pizza place, a restaurant at a hotel, a gas station, a Bonus supermarket, and more. It’s also a nice base for several other stops. We stayed 2 nights in Egilsstaðir and managed to do our laundry despite the machines being shared among guests. (The listing really should say that. We got lucky but I think the couple in the next apartment never had a chance to do their laundry. Fortunately we didn’t smell, I mean, see them again!)

Day 6 – Second night in Egilsstaðir

The next day, from our base in Egilsstaðir, we drove to Seyðisfjörður, an artsy town known for its famous blue church and the rainbow street leading up to it. It also has a beautiful harbor, though I was disappointed to see a big cruise ship there. I’ve since learned that there are cruises that circle the island and pull into several ports. I’m not a fan of the cruise industry and its impact on the environment, but to each their own. I know it makes Iceland more accessible to people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to visit.

The drive to Seyðisfjörður is exactly what I mean. It went over a mountain pass called Fjarðarheiði, which is a gorgeous drive. But you’re very aware of being on the top of a mountain, and having just driven up, knowing you have to go right back down the other side. The road frequently closes in the winter when ice or snow makes it too dangerous to pass. Fortunately we had a sunny and relatively warm day, and other than my phobia of falling off the side of a mountain and dying, it was totally fine.

It also takes you right by Gufufoss, a beautiful waterfall that you can pull off to see. No tourists, no paid parking, no restrooms, no gift shop. Just a gorgeous cataract right by the road. There is a long paved path from the town to the waterfall as well.

Once we got to Seyðisfjörður, we took some time to stroll around town and take pictures. Then I convinced Pete to climb a very steep hike up to Tvísöngur, a word which means duet in English. It’s a cool acoustic art installation with five domes meant to represent the pentatonic scale. And the acoustics are something else! My voice sounded so good inside; I could probably be a professional vocalist if it sounded like that normally.

After the hike we grabbed a coffee (Pete) and a hot cocoa (me) and a bite to eat, then headed back across the mountain pass back to Egilsstaðir.

We took a short break in our apartment before backtracking a short distance along the same East Fjord road we had driven the day before. The scenery was so pretty and Pete wanted to fly his drone and get some video of a particular waterfall we’d noticed, one you couldn’t reach by car.

While Pete was flying, a woman from another van at the same pull off approached me and asked if we’d like her to take our picture. Except: she only spoke Spanish, so I got to practice my communication skills! I can say that 4 years of DuoLingo paid off a little bit. I was able to explain that he was flying a drone, which was really far away, and he couldn’t stop. I thanked her and asked if she was from Spain, and she asked if we were from Canada. We chatted a little more, all in Spanish, and she even complimented me on my ability to speak it. I was really touched and, surprisingly maybe, this is one of my favorite memories from our trip.

We drove back a ways and stopped at another place he wanted to fly. By this point, I have discovered my new favorite hobby: sitting on a hill somewhere and looking at mountains. Nothing else. Just being there, both in nature and in the moment, surrounded by God’s glory. It’s even better than sitting on a beach and staring out to sea.

At this location there were also some more sheep. In fact, sheep are all over Iceland, so I did a little research. Apparently they are all domesticated. In the spring, the farmers release them into the wild to feed on the summer grasses. In autumn, they gather them back up, sort them by ear tags, and keep them inside, fed with hay, during the long and dark winter months. In the fjords, some of the winter days are so short that the sun never rises above the tops of the mountains. Sólarkaffi, or “Sun Day”, is celebrated in late January in fjord towns such as Siglufjörður when the sun finally shows its face again!

We went back to our apartment for a short nap, since we knew we’d be out late that evening. Then we drove out to Borgarfjörður eystri, another fjord, in order to visit the puffin colony at Hafnarholmi. This was such an incredible experience! We spent about an hour and a half there, ate dinner in the nearby town (Bakkagerði), then we went back for another hour and a half!

The puffins are right beside the boardwalk. In fact, there was one I could have reached out and touched it, but I didn’t – they bite and I assume it’s illegal. I took about 1300 photos and video with my camera, but my iPhone photos were pretty good too! We got back to Egilsstaðir about 10pm. Fortunately it never gets completely dark this time of year, so we had fine visibility for the drive home.

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