Iceland Day 7 - Northern Lights & Sleeping in a Garage

I guess I forgot something last Blog. On our 3.5h drive to our next place it happended. A lot of people go to Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Greenland or Alaska to see it. Go there for weeks and weather is so shit or it just doesn't happen. We got lucky - and saw the Northern Lights!

We instantly stopped on the side of the road, jumped out of the car with all our gear. It was great to see. What a spectacle! The sky turning into colors I've never seen before stars in the background, full moon on the other side (wich was not neccesserely an advantage). The road was not specifically the foreground I was looking for but it did the job, haha. I was just overwhelmed so I didn't really care.

Arriving late at our AirBNB our host was still super nice. She showed us our place, which basically was a transformed garage with two beds. We had to walk outside and go in the house to take a shower. We had a water heater in our room though were we made our Ramen, haha.

Going to bed right away we knew tomorrow will be a long day once again.

The goal was to head to Haifoss for sunrise. On our way there again I felt like being on a different planet. Haifoss is one of the highest waterfalls in Iceland and you can view it from a cliff across the valley. Two things we didn't consider. 1. The way there was nuts. We had to cross what looked like a frozen river/lake situation and pure offroad/snow.

2. Standing on that cliff across the waterfall at 80km/h wind speed is not that smart/easy - just one of anothre near death experience.

It was so beautiful though. We also saw a snow grouse, but I wasn't able to take a picture. Getting back in the car wasn't to easy either. We litteraly parked on ice and with the wind it was hard to stand, not slide and open the door at the same time.

After that we went to Gullfoss where we didn't spend that much time because it was super crowded. The waterfall was really pretty, but we came to Iceland to be far from people and this was definately not the place to experience that.

We left and just a little later we got to meet some real locals. There were icelandic horses right on the side of the road so we stopped and went to pet them. They were just as nice as Icelandic people. Not shy, we could just walk up the them and take some snapshots. Some of them were even playing with us biting my jacket and Marcos knee, haha.

The afternoon we took slow trying to find something to eat. We got some burgers and pizza, hung out at our place and left again for sunset, this time spending it at Seljalandsfoss. In the summertime you can walk behind the waterfall which is really cool. Unfortunately in the Winter its closed to to all the ice. It was quite busy, but not as bad as Gullfoss. I got a couple good compositions with not to many people in them. With the last composition I moved really close to the waterfall. After like 5 minutes I had ice all over me, my camera, my bag and my tripod. It was only like -5°C but that did the job haha.