Day 4 – Snaefellsnes Peninsula

Today was a long day but a feast for our eyes and minds. We are spending two days in a little town called Stykkisholmur with a population of about 1000 people. It’s located at the northern part of the Snæfellsnes peninsula which is in western Iceland. I can’t even find the words to describe the area. the wow factor is off the chart!

First on the to do list for today was Kirkjufell mountain and waterfall. We barely made it out of Stykkisholmur before we had to pull over for this gorgeous view

Stykkisholmur Iceland
Little break from skipping rocks…

 

Stykkisholmur Iceland 2
Just a pretty stop outside of Stykkisholmur

The waterfall was only a 20-minute drive. The map is rather deceiving as we are used the driving  distances in Canada. Here you can drive around the whole country in about 6-7 hours ;-). Of course we quadruple the driving time with all the stops to take photos.

Here’s the beautiful Kirkjufell mountain and waterfall. They were very impressive.

WaterFall Iceland
Kirkjufell waterfall
WaterFall Iceland
Bruce & Kasm at the foot of Kirkjufell waterfall

Our friends Linda & Derek are spending two weeks in Iceland and arrived here on Saturday, so we decided to meet up and spend the day together. After taking a few hundred pictures at the waterfall and making new friends we cut across the peninsula to meet up with them on the other side.

IcelandicHorse1
Icelandic Horses

There aren’t a lot of highways in this country. We had two options, go around the peninsula or take highway 54 to cut through which is what we did. Looking at the map, it seemed as if it would take us an hour or so to get to the other side but yet again we were fooled by the map! It look about 15 minutes.

Our plan was to do a hike from Anarstapi to Hellnar along the coast. Before meeting them we made a quick stop at the black church.

blackchurch Iceland
The Black Church

We finally made it to our meeting location. Distance wise, the hike is not very long but it did take us a few hours as we were in awe of scenery mother nature had granted us!  Between the 5 of us we must have taken over a 1000 photos.

Hellnar Hike
Kasm The Great

 

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Break time!

 

Linda & Derek - Hellnar Hike
Linda & Derek – Hellnar Hike

After the hike, we decided to drive around the Peninsula to check out the black sand beach and then head back to Stykkisholmur. The whole peninsula is only 90-km long but it houses a vast variety of  spectacular mountains, beaches of sand and pebbles, lava fields, cute little villages and much more. The western part of the peninsula, where we were, is the national park and is home to Snæfellsjökull, a 700,000-year-old stratovolcano with a glacier covering its summit. It’s one of the most famous sites in Iceland due to the novel  “Journey to the center of earth” by Jules Verne. It is the entrance leading to the center of earth. We passed this spectacular mountain on our way to the beach.

And then there was the black sand beach! I am almost embarassed to be writing about the natural beauty Iceland has to offer as I don’t think I have the vocabulary to give it a well-deserved poetic description!

I will let the photos do the talking

Kasm & Bruce - Black Sand Beach
Kasm & Bruce – Black Sand Beach

 

BlackSandBeach Iceland
Boys running down to the beach

 

BlackSandBeach
Black Sand Beach

 

BlackSandBeach
Yoga @ Black Sand Beach

 

The rest of the drive back was just as stunning. There were a lot of oooohhhs and ahhhhs between us in the car.

Our lovely friends treated us to dinner at Hraun. The lamb was delicious!

Linda & Derek, it was lovely spending the day with you guys. We hope you will enjoy the rest of your trip around Iceland and perhaps we will see you in another part of the world 🙂

And that’s it for Day 4!

 

11 thoughts on “Day 4 – Snaefellsnes Peninsula”

  1. Thank you for sharing. It is a real pleasure to read your words & to admire your awesome photographs. Enjoy your trip to the fullest!

  2. More great pictures!! I found out yesterday that a friend of mine and his wife from NB are going to Iceland in August. I will pass along your web site info to give them some ideas 🙂

    • Thanks Paul! That’s great. I think they will enjoy it very much. We loved it! It’s a fantasy land !! If they are up for a hike they should visit the hot spring river just outside of Hveragerði. It’s on the golden circle drive , not far from selfoss. Hope all is well 🙂

      • Thanks for the additional info Baharak, I will pass it along. They have booked a self-drive tour with guidetoiceland.is Based on your experience I am sure it will be great!

  3. How neat you got to meet up with Linda too! Haha love the yoga pose on the beach. Those Icelandic horses are gooooorgeous!! Love the pics as usual 🙂

    • Thank you! I think everyone should visit Iceland at least once! We are now in London but I’m not going to be able to post anything till I have access to decent Wifi! Loving it. Strange time to be here with the Brexit vote!

  4. Wow we’re in your blog! 😀 Iceland was so much more than I expected, what a nice day we had together!

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