A very long day in Iceland

The day after our car breakdown was very, very long and therefore this post describing it is going to be very, very long as well.

That morning, we woke up at 6 am in order to go to the police station and then go on with our trip to Olafsfjördur, more than 400 kilometres away, where we had to sleep that night. However, although 6 am is quite early in the morning, we were not the first ones, since a ferry was leaving nearby at 6:30 am and our guesthose was full of people taking that ferry.

We went then to the police station in Eskifjördur. We explained the policeman what had happened to us and that we would like to have some official document produced by him. It took him a while to understand it (I guess we were the first visitors with such a request in years). The policeman even mistook me for a British (he said that a "British guy" was there complaining about a rental car), what is not a positive sign for him (do I really look like British?) but very positive for my English (yiha!!!!!).

After two hours and two calls from the Spanish Embassy in Oslo, we left the police station with our official document (in Icelandic), driving towards Jökulsárgljúfur National Park, the visit we would have liked to do the previous day, but where we could only pay a short visit. The trip was quite tiring (I was driving) and an important part of it was on an unpaved path.

We visited then Dettifoss, the most powerful waterfall in Europe and we got impressed by it. Two days without a waterfall was something unbearable for us, je, je, je. It is not especially beautiful but it is so powerful, you can feel its strenght just right there. We drove five kilometres away from it and had lunch inside our rental car, looking directly at the waterfall from a hill nearby.

Then, we drove to Asbyrgi (see picture below), in order to get some information on the national park, as we still had two hours to walk around it. Asbyrgi was the place where we wanted to sleep the night before, in a campsite. However, our stay there was rather short, since when we left the Information Point with a lot of information, we discovered that our left rear wheel had a puncture...
It was the first time that we were facing such a problem in our own. We got a bit down and nervous, and we could not even find the jack in our Toyota Corolla Sedane. We asked a man who was parked close to us, he turned out to be Spaniard and not to have changed any wheel in his life... He wanted us to put the jack (finally, we found it) just under the fuel tank! Then, Sonia went inside the Information Point asking for some help there and I was left alone with my Gasol T-shirt. Suddenly a group of Spaniards from Bilbao appeared, started talking to me and in five minutes they took charge of the situation and changed the wheel for us (with a lot of smiles and fun, I must add).

Then, we had to drive about 80 kilometres to Húsavík, the closest important town, where we had a Toyota garage. Húsavík is also a very remarkable city because its whale watching (and hunting) industry. The views there were amazing, driving close to the ocean with the snowed peaks in the background. Thanks Lord, the puncture was not a very big deal and we solved it after thirty minutes and not much money.

After a short walk in Húsavík, we went to Lake Myvatn. We had planned to spend a whole day there, renting a bike. All we could do that day was driving around it, stopping our car and taking some pictures in thirty minutes. The place was very, very beautiful and we both enjoyed it, but we both would have liked to have more time to spend there... Maybe in our next visit to Iceland...It was getting dark and we still had to have dinner and arrive to our guesthouse in Olafsfjördur. As we were a bit tired of not having proper dinner the days before, we decided to have dinner in Akureyri, the second town in Iceland, just in our way to the guesthouse. We had to drive more than an hour and then arrive to Akureyri... I was surprised by the fact that the Big Four auditing firms have an office there, because the town is not that important, it really looks like a small fishing town. We had an amazing dinner in the only suitable place we found: I ate a burger and Sonia chose the most delicious rice I have ever tasted.

Once our stomachs were busy with food, we drove one more hour to Olafsfjördur. The last five kilometres were through a tunnel under a mountain and well, you know, I get very nervous when driving through tunnels. Anyway, we made it safe and entered our room at midnight: more than 16 hours and 400 kilometres after waking up. That was our last night in Iceland and all I can say is that we sleep like babies.