Iceland 6: Dettifoss & Hverir

Top Tips:

- It's a long drive from Skaftafell to Myvatn. If 6 hours in the car is too much for one day, you can stop in Egilsstaðir in the east highlands for overnight. We found the drive manageable for one day.

- Dettifoss is an attraction worth driving across Iceland for. 

- Lake Myvatn is a major tourist attraction, yet is under-serviced for hotels and restaurant options.

- Lake Myvatn is the perfect destination for those with a short time (less than 3 days) to see Iceland. You could fly into Akureyri and drive there in an hour. Myvatn has the greatest variety of attractions in a small area, showcasing a diverse range of lava types, pseudocraters, volcanos, geothermally active areas, and hot springs.

Hverir

Thursday, September 5

Today was a long day in the car – driving a good 6 hours to Lake Myvatn. The route started along the 1 highway heading east along the coastline. Soon the landscape changed from the glacier sprawling from inland and farming territory by the coast, to a rugged cliffside drive beside the crashing ocean waves. It was like an Iceland version of the Aussie Great Ocean Road, except the road spent only a few kilometers at the edge of the coastline.

We couldn’t help but stop to enjoy this scenery, which was about an hour from Skalafell. After the coastal drive there was a short tunnel, where our GPS lost reception and never quite recovered for most of drive today.

Egilsstaðir

From here the landscape changes again into more farmland, and we eventually left the coast to drive north on the 939 shortcut, towards Egilsstaðir. Most of this portion of the drive – for a few hours past Egilsstaðir – was dominated by farms and rolling hills, and this was the plainest scenery relative to the rest of the journey. We stopped in the town Egilsstaðir, which harboured several hotels but from its surroundings it didn’t appear to be a summer tourist destination. We grabbed lunch near the gas station and pressed on towards Myvatn.

Dettifoss

About a half hour south of Myvatn we reached the turn-off to Dettifoss. This landmark was on my list of attractions to see, and honestly by this point in the trip I couldn’t recall any specifics about what each attraction was, except that this was obviously a waterfall of some kind. Exhausted, we decided to rather drive the extra distance to Dettifoss today than to retrace our tracks to it tomorrow. We followed an unpaved road almost 20km into the grey desert, which was predominantly flat reaching towards distant mountains. The grey monotony of the scenery here felt surreal, like being on the moon. Actually, there’s plenty of places in Iceland where you could feel like you’re on another planet. After driving a fair way on the road, to see that the scenery was only getting more monotonously grey, we wondered how good could this waterfall possibly be in this dreary flat landscape that stretched out as far as we could see.

Driving on the ring road towards Dettifoss

Finally we saw a sign for Dettifoss, and followed the short road up a steep hill that was a bit bouncy with deep corrugations on both sides, leading to the parking lot. At the hilltop we could see the falls ahead, and even after all of my written hints to myself about the beauty of this place, I was in awe.

Mike’s first words were “It’s like the grand canyon!” - albeit a smaller version and with a large waterfall in it. We were inspired with an energy boost to take the trail into the canyon towards the waterfall.

Dettifoss is the largest and most powerful waterfall in the canyon, but you can continue to walk beside the river within the canyon to see some waterfalls further up, and walk along the top of the canyon to the smaller Hafragilfoss waterfall for some other canyon views.

Given the nature of the drive towards this attraction, what we found was an unexpected surprise and that’s what impressed me the most about this place.

Hafragilfoss

Standing at the edge of Dettifoss

The contrast of the bland, monotonous landscape with the hidden canyon oasis that harbours Dettifoss and Hafragilfoss

Hverir

We returned to the 1 highway and took a second small stop at Hverir, which is a geothermally active area with bubbling mud pots and smoke holes. Once you get past the sulphuric stench associated with the steam, it’s a beautiful place to take a short walk.

Accommodation

Finally, arriving around 6pm, with a GPS that still thought we were in a tunnel on the south coast, we checked into the Hotel Reynihlid, which is in Reykjahlið (not to be confused with Hotel Reykjahlið which is across the road). Lake Myvatn is a pretty large lake – it takes well over half an hour to drive around the whole lake. But the address for this hotel just said “Lake Myvatn”, so we kept following signs to the lake, which took us along the south border of the lake and directly away from our hotel that was on the east edge of the lake. This hotel was not the best experience for us. Having arrived in a hungry state and unfamiliar with the area, the concierge told us that the hotel’s restaurant is open but will not serve us, only large groups. So we can’t eat at the hotel, we will have to eat at the bistro next to it. When we asked him what our options were to eat in this town, he again just directed us to the bistro saying that most other restaurants are hotel associated and they will probably not accept guests from another hotel to eat there. That was just weird, and we were hungry. The bistro was packed and smelled greasy, serving predominantly American food like hamburgers and sandwiches (we did eat lunch there the next day though and it was actually a good place to eat).

Dinner - Daddi's Pizza

For dinner we drove up the road to a pizza place Mike had seen called Daddi’s Pizza. This was our cheapest meal of the trip as the four of us shared a large pizza. Everyone loved the pizza, it was a thin crust with puffy edges and the toppings were just right. My family is still raving about the pizza place, and I’m not sure if it’s just because we’d eaten junk food for that whole day and it felt amazing to eat something with some substance, but the pizza was good enough that my wheat-free-by-choice father wanted to go back the next day for lunch.

Icelandic horses on the south coast

Back to the hotel, the rooms were comfortable although the beds where a bit lumpy and the least comfortable compared to the rest of our hotels. We were irritated that the hotel restaurant would refuse us service. On both mornings for breakfast (one late and one early breakfast) there were things missing – like drinking water, cutlery, or during our late breakfast many of the foods weren’t being replenished.

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