We sailed from Reykjavik to Isafjordur overnight. We expected to see pretty much the same landscape, but in the West Fjords the landscape is very different. We didn’t see a lot of Lava fields the way that we had outside of Reykjavik, and we did see mountins similar to what you see in Hawaii. These are some views of Isafjordur as we pulled in.
Isafjordur from the boat
Isafjordur from the boat
Isafjordur from the boat
The pilot meeting the cruise ship to take us into the harbor.
View from the ship
View from the ship
This is a port that has a very tiny dock in it’s harbor so we had to tender into port. It went more smoothly than it had in South Queensferry and we got on shore quickly.
We met our Tour guide Petur at the bus with our group and headed out to see Dynjandi Waterfall and Sudureyri a fishing village. Petur is a college student who lived in Sudureyri until he was 16 when he and his parents moved to Reykjavik. He now attends university in Reykjavik but he lives back in Sudureyri during the summers and leads tours. He was quite knowledgeable about the area and really knew the history of the area. We drove from the ship along the fjord and towards a tunnel that had been built through a mountain. The roads were single lane, including the tunnel, with little areas to pull off when you see a car coming in the opposite direction. Whoever has the pull-offs on their side is the one that does not have the right of way. The tunnel, which was built in 3 years was 9 kilometers, and even had a turn off the main tunnel that we would take on the way back from the waterfall and to the fishing village. It was quite interesting. What took us 10 minutes to go through the mountain used to take 50 minutes to go up and over.
The views from the bus were really beautiful but there are a lot of reflections from the bus windows.
View from the bus
View from the bus
View from the bus
A little lake where we stopped to let people use the rest rooms. Everywhere you look here is just beautiful. It’s incredible scenery in every direction and at every turn.
View from the bus
View from the bus
We arrived at Dynjandi waterfall and we had 45 minutes to visit the falls before we needed to be back on the bus. We decided to try to make it to the top of the path just below the main falls, so we had to run most of the way up but it was well worth the views from the top.
View of the falls from the bottom
View of the falls from part way up the trail
Here we are standing about half way up looking down on the lake beyond the parking lot. You can see the busses in the parking lot where we started our hike up the falls – they are the little white spots on the right just below the middle of the photo.
View of the falls from the top of the trail just below the main falls.
Conrad at the top
Shawn at the top
Looking down on the falls
This view is from the very top of th trail, as high as you could go. You can see the busses now even smaller in the parking lot, and the whole lake. We were way up there!!!
The sign at the falls.
A view of the lake from back down in the parking lot.
A view from the bus of the clouds over the mountains.
We left the falls and headed back into the tunnel the way that we had originally come but instead of staying on the road back to Isafjordur, we took a sharp left turn inside of the tunnel and went towards Sudureyri a small fishing village. We toured the fish processing plant which was right beside the dock where the fish came in. We had to put on hair nets and white coats to tour the factory.
Then we walked through the tiny town of Sudureyri. There are 260 people who live there, and 70 of them are children – as Petur said, there’s not a whole lot to do there.
Towards the far end of town we stopped at a fish drying hut and Petur explained that an Icelandic snack is made from fish dried completely to the point where the fish are so hard that in order to get a piece to eat you have to pound the fish with a hammer, which he did for us, and then you could take little flakes off, and eat them like chips. It was actually pretty good. We had a very good coffee at a little cafe in town and headed back to the ship just in time to relax for a short time before we had dinner.
Our guide Petur telling us about the Icelandic Snacks
The view at the harbor in Sudureyri