One of the most obvious features about Iceland, is the sheer wetness of the place. It pushes way beyond Welsh damp and drizzle, even when it isn’t raining, and almost everywhere you look, you find a waterfall.
The Icelandic waterfalls are the tallest, the most beautiful, the most powerful, the most “add your own superlative to fit” and almost the first one we came across was the best.
Dynjandi of Fjallfoss is a truly beautiful set of waterfalls rising from the valley to a truly awe inspiring wall of water. It’s scale also makes it almost impossible to photograph.
To get to it you drive over the mountains from Latrabjarg and across into another fjord. Since just crossing to the other side of our fjord took more than 45 minutes, this made for a day trip on mostly metalled roads with the occasional bone breaking gravel track.
You climb higher and higher, rising into the soft damp clouds where vision disappears except for an occasional glimpse of a deathly fall to the side of the road, usually around a sharp bend as a car comes hurtling down towards you on your side of the road.
Given how few people can be found on a single day driving in iceland, it’s truly amazing how often you come across someone on a hairpin bend.
But then you reach the top, which can be smothered in clouds or bright sunshine, a state entirely unpredictable from the valley floor.
It’s a landscape unlike any other, this wet almost lifeless stretch of terrain, and your car rolls along the watershed, before starting the precipitous climb downwards.
And having parked the car at the bottom, one child retires back to the car daunted by the midges whilst the rest of us climb upwards.
Each of the falls is named, and the walk is not too high before you find yourself dwarfed by the main waterfall
It is truly beautiful, wherever you look. The fall of water is mesmerising (and wet on the face).
The view of the fjord is equally astonishing.
We saw many more waterfalls, but none more beautiful.
And on the way back to the hotel a decision was taken to “nip” to the red beach at Rauthasandur or Red Sands beach a beautiful red beach with a very pretty black church to photograph .
Most beaches in Iceland are black, but the beaches in the Westfjords are golden or pink so it was a one-off iceland opportunity.
Mostly the gravel roads were fine (though bone shattering) in a 4WD car but the hairpins on the way down to the beach were a bit hairy.
Both the beach and surrounding scenery was beautiful, but the weather was neither warm nor sunny which did take the gloss off the experience somewhat.
