Travels with rarecat: Enchanting Eastern Fjords

Our journey around the ring road continued on to the east coast where the fjords were an important part of the landscape. In many instances, the ring road goes around the tip of each peninsula and then alongside the fjord on either side of a narrow strip of water. In some places, the driver was able to take advantage of long tunnels (one supposedly as long as 8 km) to cut through the mountains and shortened our trip. But the drive around the fjords yielded some astonishing scenery. I was lucky that it was my turn to sit in the front seat on the bus for the day and so was able to capture some road trip scenery I wouldn't otherwise have seen. Doubly lucky because this was my favourite kind of scenery - snow-capped mountains at almost every turn.

We had a nice break at Petra's Stone Collection - her collection of rocks and minerals from the area since 1946. It was an amazingly diverse collection set in the most beautiful landscaped garden. The most wonderful thing was as we drove up to her place, the fog had started to roll in and we couldn't see what was beyond the water. When we came out of the garden, it was like a different world outside. The same thing happened as we arrived at the restaurant at Breiodalsvik. We couldn't see where we were but when we came out, the most beautiful mountain range greeted us. It was magical!

By mid-afternoon, we were almost at our overnight hotel in Höfn. I had earlier mentioned to our guide that everyone came back from Iceland with stunning photos of the Vestrahorn. He told me it was right across from our hotel in Höfn. So I was all excited about the prospect of a good photo. Sadly, when he pointed out the Vestrahorn to me on the bus, that was the only photo I was able to get of the iconic mountains, already half shrouded in fog. He asked the driver to drive us up a gravel road to the top of a lookout hoping to show us the magnificent view of the mountains and the glacier, but we couldn't see a thing. The Vestrahorn was behind fog the whole time we were in Höfn, even though it was sunny. The fog just sat there.

We took a walk along the waterfront to the Höfn harbour and was lucky get some good shots of eiders, fullmars, black-headed gulls and arctic terns - the late afternoon light was perfect. It seems that I was lucky with the wildlife on this trip but not so with the iconic landscapes. Them's the breaks, I guess.

The ring road cut through snow-capped mountain ranges

The waterfront when we arrived at Stidvarfjordur to see Petra's Stone Collection

The same waterfront after we spent a good part of the hour in the garden

One of my favourites

A boardwalk lined with whale bones

Breiodalsvik where we had a delicious lunch of fish chowder

Fog was rolling in again after we took some photos

The local version of the sun voyager in Reykjavik

A short drive from Breiodalsvik is Merry Bay in the town of Djupivogur where there are egg sculptures of all the birds in Iceland. They all look the same to my untrained eye. I was more interested in the scenery...

As we continued our drive down the Eastern Fjords towards Höfn, there was more mountain and fog scenery.

We stopped at this spot to see an almost hidden waterfall coming out of a narrow gorge. This is the bottom half of a beautiful waterfall Fossadalur, too bade we couldn't get to see it.