Fog, Fjords, and a Friendly Stranger at a Viking Café.
Iceland Road Trip
From Seljavellir to Egilsstaðir: A Quiet Day on the Map.
We started the day slowly, with a cup of coffee in hand and a table covered in postcards. Writing to friends in faraway places has a grounding effect, especially when the world outside is gray. The Seljavellir Guesthouse was quiet that morning, with low and steady clouds. We sealed our Postcrossing cards and reloaded the car, driving east through the fog.
Breakfast arrived from a N1 gas station in Höfn, which surprised us. The chocolate croissant was better than it should have been, flaky and rich, like something from a French café rather than a gas station.
Ghost Light and The Road to Stokksnes
With heavy skies above us and light rain on the windshield, we took our time along the fjords, stopping to take photos whenever the clouds parted enough to reveal a shape behind them. The weather wasn’t particularly dramatic. It was quiet, moody, and almost cinematic. Iceland was grayscale.
At Stokksnes, we arrived at the Viking Café, where visitors pay a small fee for access to the radar station trail and the dramatic black sand beach. Inside the café, we were greeted by a barista with a warm southern accent and the kind of easy hospitality that makes you want to linger.
He told us how he had left Spain, not just in search of change, but in quiet protest against the rising tide of overtourism. As more and more properties were converted into short-term rentals, local housing had become unaffordable. Even working full-time, he could only afford what he called a prison cell—a cramped, joyless apartment that felt more like survival than living. Eventually, he chose distance. He traded crowds for stillness, and noise for volcanic black sands. Somehow, he landed here, in one of the most remote corners of Iceland, serving coffee and sharing stories with travelers like us.
His warmth and sense of humor shone as brightly as the bleak weather. In a place that felt almost abandoned, his presence felt like someone had turned on a light.
We wandered the black sands of Stokksnes, climbed up toward the old radar station, and gazed down at the Viking village, an abandoned movie set built for a film that never happened—until Netflix intervened and gave it new life in The Witcher: Blood Origin. We didn’t go down to explore it fully; seeing it from above, nestled in the grass, felt strangely more poetic.
Djúpivogur, a harbor that whispered “Stay”
We stopped near the old bridge outside Djúpivogur to enjoy the open view and water. The stillness there caused us to pause for longer than we intended.
We fueled up in Djúpivogur, a quiet and charming village. There was a beautiful harbor, the type that sailors like us are immediately drawn to. Fishing boats. rusted bollards. A rhythm that we recognized. It’s one of the places I’d like to return to, possibly on a future voyage aboard Bagabonda. It felt like a place full of stories that you could only hear if you stayed long enough.
Fog, Ford, and Fosse
From there, the road became rougher—gravel tracks leading to fog so thick we couldn’t see more than 30 meters ahead. The landscape disappeared. And, while the scenery concealed itself, the tourists did not.
Let’s just say that not everyone knows how to drive on gravel, and even fewer appear to understand the rules of the road when visibility is zero. There were times when the greatest danger was not nature, but the humans who stumbled through it.
But we made it—first to Foldafoss, a quieter waterfall in the mist, and then to Fengifoss, which we reached after a short walk along a damp trail. We hiked up to the falls, still shrouded in soft rain and fog, the kind that beads up on your sleeves and brows but never fully drenches you.
Fluff, food, and fading light
By the time we arrived at Hotel Eyvindará, we were exhausted. The kind of tired that settles into your bones. We grabbed a quick bite—nothing fancy, but satisfying—and collapsed onto what might have been the fluffiest pillow in Eastern Iceland.
We set an alarm for the Northern Lights, hoping for a rare break in the cloud cover.
But when the alarm rang, the sky was still a solid slate of gray. No green, no glow. Just the comforting sound of rain on the roof and sleep waiting just below the surface.
Sometimes that is enough.
