A cold and windy november was followed by a december, that brought no snow, but – against all expectations – better weather. With 8 degrees outside one could even think about leaving the gloves at home when going outside…

But Iceland fulfilled at least one promise in the second half of december. The sun didn’t show up before 11 am anymore, just to set again at about 2 pm. This made it kind of difficult to go exploring for people like us, that tend to sleep in! But nevertheless we couldn’t stand going back to Germany without having experienced a true Icelandic winter! So we took a car up in the North of the island…

Shortly after midnight on the day after our last university exam we arrived at a fjord near Djupavik in the Westfjords. More precisely: At Krosnesslaug, a swimming pool (open air, of course), less than 20 meters from the shore of the arctic sea and perfectly heated so that we could swim some laps and neither froze nor got boiled.

The swimming pool in Krosnesslaug is open 24/7 and only every once in a while someone comes by to check if everything is still working fine.

We really enjoyed the little exercise after we had sat in the car for 8 hours. After a short detour in the 40-degrees hotpot we were so tired that we could do nothing more than slog along to our roosting place, where we fall asleep immediately.

When we woke up the next morning, we found ourselves in the eye of a grown up cyclone. We relinquished another bath and only filled up our waterbottles at the next stream. Back in the car we drove all the way back along the shore we had only passed in darkness the day before.

Behind each and every bend a new amazing view on the wild landscape of the Westfjords revealed itself to us. Unfortunately, wind and rain was a bad combination for taking photos. A fact that Nils’ lense had to learn the hard way. We still pray for it to return to the world of the living…

Over and over again, Nils withstood the cold and the bad weather to ban at least some pictures onto the sensor of his camera. In the meantime I decided to stay with our heated seats (and the Harry-Potter-audiobook) inside the car…

 

This article is part of a series called “Winterroadtrip – On the hunt for the Icelandic Winter“.

The next one will be up tomorrow! Winterroadtrip II

 

All about winter in Iceland

Our first hike on a glacier: Where the Ice is blue

… And then right into one: Into the glacier – coming soon

 

A big thanks to our friends over at átak carrental who sponsored the car for this trip!