Second week in Iceland (part 1)

As I ended the previous post with Stykkishólmur, I am starting this one with it — the same place, but the following day, the beginning of the second week of my journey. After I spent the night uncomfortably in the car, on the outskirts of the town, I woke up early morning and decided to go for a walk. It was chilly, but the sight of the rising sun and the silence made that morning beautiful. Only the sound of the wind and the wing flaps of seabirds that passed me occasionally broke the total silence.

As the ferry departure was only in the afternoon, I had the time to explore the whole town and its surrounding area. A small hill close to the town, Helgafell, provides a great panoramic view on the hundreds of isles and the peninsula itself.

After a couple of hours of freezing on the ferry deck, in such a strong wind, that you can hardly breathe, I arrived to Brjanslækur. From there, I took the direction towards the westernmost point of Iceland, and started my trip in The Westfjords. For a while, the paved road runs between the coastline and the steep hills. Then, the road turns, and you need to cross those hills. On the top, you are not just facing snow, but a whole new scenery. You get a glimpse of the magnificent Arnarfjörður, and the puckered hills that stand around it. At the tip of the fjord, you can find the oldest steel ship in Iceland, that beached in 1981. The huge abandoned ship looks kind of spooky, however, the information panel placed next to it reduces this feeling.

This is the point, where the paved road turns into a gravel one towards the West. About 50km more until Látrabjarg, and the conditions are not exactly the best for a city car (like the one I had). These tracks are full with potholes, the skipping stones can damage the car, and the loose surface can result skidding. If these were not enough already, these roads are usually narrow, and blind summits are common. As Yessica, a fellow blogger, describes it perfectly, the "zigzagging network of narrow, cliff-hugging gravel roads ensures that only local villagers or brave tourists dare enter" The Westfjords. It might sound dangerous at first, but you can get used to these conditions... after a few hundred kilometers.
And the scenery is worth it...

After the rough drive, around 11pm, my car arrived to the Látrabjarg cliffs, however, covered in dirt from top to bottom. It is the westernmost corner of The Westfjords, and Iceland (almost Europe too, but apparently, there are some tiny Portugese islands in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, which are a little bit further to the West).

However, this region is visited mostly for its birdlife and the fearless puffins. You can get so close to these colorful pigeon-sized birds, that you can nearly touch them. The thousands of birds are nesting on the steep cliff face, that rises some 440m above the churning sea. I got to know from Anton, during couchsurfing, that a couple of days before my visit, someone fell off the cliffs, because the soil was too loose. This is not the sort of information you like to hear, especially not before your visit. At least it made me more cautious about where I step, as I tend to forget about the dangers when I am absorbed in taking photos.

But let me show you a few close-ups of the puffins, a selection of the hundreds of pictures I took in about an hour.

/click on the pictures to see them in bigger size/

The night, after this eventful day, was spent at the Hvallátur camp ground, in the car again, a couple of km from the cliffs.