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This should be watchwords for everyone… regardless of circumstances, but today on day 6 of the Icelandic Express passing through. Getting out of the house this morning was something else, especially since blogging for two hours since 6.15am.
So on the way to Fontur, the road is quite rough but we thought hey this car is a 4X4 and it should make this road with no issues… well we did make the road with no issues aside from a blown fuse for the cooling fan which caused the engine to overheat but we saw it and flipped a fuse and we were good to go. You might ask where Fontur is …
It was windy as hell yesterday and going to the end of nowhere in Iceland, since Fontur is the most northeastern point of Iceland, off the Ring road and truly off the beaten path, it is kinda scary in someways. If you shut down or anything happens to you out there, you are pretty much SOL until someone comes by, which could be in an hour or 5 days. However is it beautiful out there and there is something enchanting about there being nothing between you and the North Pole except the Greenland Sea.
The wind was that strong that I could try to fall over and the wind would keep me upright!
Hanging over the cliffs at Fontur when there is nothing separating you from the wildness of the Ocean and the North Pole, it is truly an exhilararing experience. The waters were so rough….
This is the direction were heading into…. to the END of Iceland!!
Just so one has some context of where in Iceland we were… I love the big wheel Icon of the 4X4
The cliffs and the water combined for a truly surreal experience out there….However leaving all of this and heading down a road that doesnt exist on your GPS… well it did exist on the GPS, but it didnt exist in reality… maybe not such a good idea…..so of course we decided to take the road less travelled… BY ANYONE…. and then for the next hour and half, proceeded to pray to someone that our car would not break an axle, get a flat, overheat or generally shut down at the edge of nowhere!
The rocks on the road were “Yay high” and after bashing the crappiness of the SUV in terms of our A/C shutting down earlier in the trip, we were petting good old 4X4 and praising her for getting our asses out of a tight bind. I can’t really convey how tense that 90 mins was to us, since it wasn’t the fear of the car breaking down, but rather the consequences of breaking on the End of nowhere…..our contingency plans included
- Breaking into the lighthouse for shelter if we stalled… although it was now 10 km away
- Breaking into a farmland stable which was about 4km away
- Jogging in a 40mile headwind to the only campers we saw on the way… about 30km away
- Waiting in the SUV till help arrived
Thankfully none of those scenarios played out….. but everytime we hit a rock or spring, or the axle crashed into a rock, there was palpable wincing and pain in the car. I grimaced to the point, I had to get out of the car to help guide Lev over rocks, but also not to hear the car creak and groan!!!
Lesson for this trip : Go back the same damn way you came! Even though Trinidadians invented everything, we have our limits at inventing roads from nothing!!
So after that experience, we were just glad to get back to the main dirt road … at which point we happened to see some Sheep Shearing…
