we got used to the sight of snow-covered roads on the mountain by the time we left seydisfjordur and had to drive over another mountain road, but this time well paved.

more and more snow was around as we drove up north to dettifoss. and what we didn't expect was the fact that we had to walk 800 metres on snowy trail to see the fall. it was not just snowy, it was like we were walking on snow and no brown-ish dart was there to be seen. i put on three layers of thick socks and my feet were still pretty much frozen.


snowy waterfalls were becoming more and more normal to us. nevertheless, dettifoss in snow was (kind of) worth the trek. i believe that this fall without snow would be a lot less charming than what we saw.



by the way, dettifoss had the most smelly public toilet i came across in iceland.

due to all the cold and wind, we didn't want to stay long. so we moved on to a volcano crater called viti. it was supposed to be a short walk from the car park, like two or three hundred metres. however, the last part of the road up there was covered in thick snow and all the cars seemed to park at another area and walked up 800 metres to the crater. we wanted to walk, too. ( at least i did) but as i stepped out of the car, i knew it was impossible for us. the wind was so strong and we weren't equipped.


we drove around lake myvatn . more than half of the lake was frozen, with a view of hverfjall volcano at the back. the volcano had such an amazing snowy pattern on it. i stood on the frozen lake once to take a photo, and i regretted that i didn't have ice skate shoes with more. or that i didn't even know how to ice skate. it was my dream to ice skate on a frozen lake in nature.

we made two big mistakes. first by booking a room at guesthouse stoeng. yes, it was cheap. but we would rather pay more for a better place. the guesthouse was quite old, though it seemed like they tried to renovate once in a while. what worse was the shared kitchen, situated in a separate building which was very inconvenience. also, the kitchen was old and gloomy. nobody would like to sit and have a meal in there. the only nice thing there was breakfast with geysir bread and lots of homemade stuff, hams and jams.

the worst was our second mistake, the 4-kilometre unpaved road to the guesthouse. as we got nothing to do, we decided to go to the guesthouse quite in the afternoon. we knew it was quite far away but that wasn't the problem. the problem was the very poorly maintained road towards the guesthouse, 4 kilometres long. probably because it was in winter, but still. the road was wet with lots of muddy holes, made it very unpleasant for both the driver and passengers.


none of us wanted to go on that road again and we almost gave up by staying at the guesthouse for the rest of the day. but despite the crazy wind, the sky was clear and it turned pink in the early evening. we didn't want to waste such a lovely day so we went out anyway. it was one of the most beautiful sunset skies we saw in iceland.


yet we were happy to leave for akureyri in the next morning.