Viking Sushi boat tour and admiring the Geysir

We shockingly didn’t have a HUGE list of locations to visit before our Sushi boat tour in Stykkisholmur at 3pm, so we opted for a little bit of a sleep in, knowing as the days go on the schedule does get quite intense. The Ólafsvik campsite was well taken care of, they had washing stations for dishes, a nice area to eat, lots of spots to camp and the drive into town is really nice along the coast. We had our morning oatmeal, skyr and made some hot beverages to enjoy while we drive to the next destination, roughly an hour away. But not before first stopping off again at the local church to check it out during the daylight.

**It was quite difficult to not include the sights along Snaefellsnes coast, especially since it’s so close to Ólafsvik, but we would have needed an extra day in that area and unfortunately it wasn’t possible with our itinerary. The truth is, no matter what you do in Iceland, you’re going to be swept away with sights you’ve never seen. Sure I wish we could have made this work especially since there were quite a few changes later in our travels that would have allowed for it, but sometimes things don’t happen as planned and you don’t know until it’s happening. And then if you have excursions book for certain days.. you have to make sure you are there still. That’s the negative aspect about them. You loose the flexibility to let your adventure evolve on a day to day basis. While we enjoyed all of our excursions, it was a little bit of a relieve after our scuba diving one. We had almost a week with nothing booked, so if we decided to take longer in some areas, or cut others out we could without messing too much up.

We arrived in Stykkisholmur for around 1pm, perfect timing to photograph the local church in that town. This one I was really excited about photographing, and was so happy it was still sunny out by the time we got there! I wanted those dramatic shadows, and bright highlights. As I was having fun using my Superstopper ND filters, my husband was getting some aerial footage off from the coastal line. We basically did full coverage of this church. As the time progressed the clouds started rolling in, but they were situated perfectly so that the sun could still peak through and, if anything, their presence gave me more interesting elements to incorporate into the images. It couldn’t have worked out better!

This is another relatively small town so it took us only a few minutes to get to the harbour for our departure on the Viking Sushi boat. I had heard from a few sources that this tour was a must do so we looked into it during our planning phase, and it won us over. We really wanted to do something on the water and this was a great match to our other interest: Sushi. No, there wasn’t a full spread of sushi, but we did get to eat fresh scallops and sea urchins complete with wasabi, ginger and soy sauce! Mmmhmm! It was quite a unique experience, and it was enhanced by a fabulous tour of some of the small islands off the coast of Stykkisholmur (one of which even had sheep on it oddly enough). We even learnt about some folklore stories of trolls and elves. The tour went for about 2 hours, and we arrived back at the harbour just in time to complete our dinner sans sushi. We found a nice spot to fry up some hot dogs, and then continued on our way.

On the way back heading down to the Reykjavik area was when we took route 47 instead of going through the tunnel. At some time…. it started raining again, and kept going until we arrived at the Geysir at about 11:30pm. The rain didn’t keep us from making stops along the way though. I mentioned the drive around the bay was beautiful; We stopped 3 separate times! The rain, while annoying for photography, added interesting atmospheric effects which really gave the ride back a different feel.

And the SHEEP! There was so many sheep around this area. Mind you, there’s sheep everywhere, but it was still rather new to see all these adorable livestock animals have free range.

When we got to the Geysir, it was late enough that the area wasn’t swamped with other tourists, but we had missed the golden light. (Can’t repeatedly stop for 10 min at a time without sacrificing elsewhere!) It was quite nice and remarkable to witness regardless. The frequency of the eruptions vary, but it was never more than 5 min. We were there for maybe 30 min and we got to see it go off 7 times! Sometimes it would go off two times back to back, sometimes it would be a small burst and other times it would be substantially larger. We had originally planned on squeezing Gullfoss in before heading to a campsite to sleep, but my husband was concerned for lighting. The drone isn’t terrible in low light, but it doesn’t flourish either, and he was very disappointed in the quality of low light performance from the Gopro hero5. Instead, we decided to head back to where we need to be 8am in the morning; Thingvellir National Park.

Was this the best way of planning out destinations? Maybe not. We did have to take the same road the next day again to get to F35. I’m not a fan of back and forth and my husband REALLY isn’t. BUT because we did it this way, we were able to enjoy the Geysir without bus loads of people. So for these particular situations, if the distance isn’t astronomical, I’d say it’s worth it to squeeze a highly popular tourist attraction in to a more favourable timeslot.

This night we rolled into our campsite at Thingvellir for 1am!! Wow! What an improvement.