Voyage of the Vikings Redux – Djupivogur, Iceland

Cruise Day 24 – Djupivogur, Iceland

Monday, August 14, 2023

Happy anniversary to us!  Our 41^st anniversary and as we did in 2016, we're celebrating it on the Voyage of the Vikings cruise.  Today we are in the very small town of Djupivogur on the East Coast of Iceland with a population of only 400.

We sailed from Stornoway to Djupivogur.

 

There isn't much to the town of Djupivogur, as you can see.

Sailing into Djupivogur

The first tender heads into toward town.

Djupivogur

I got up at 7:00 AM and was surprised and happy to see blue skies outside.  I didn’t have to get up until 7:30, so I went back to bed for a short time before getting up to get ready.  Unfortunately, when Val woke up she told me she wasn’t feeling well and felt like she was coming down with a cold or maybe worse, COVID.  We had a ship excursion scheduled for today, but it didn’t seem wise for her to go.  She wanted me to go on without her while she stayed on the ship and rested, so even though I hated to leave her by herself, I got up and got ready to go.

Our (my) tour today is a ship excursion called “Super 4X4: Snaedals Waterfalls and Bragdavellir Cottage”.  I had no idea what all that entailed, but I hoped it meant we would be going to some remote area.  After getting ready, I made my way to the World Stage to wait for my tour to be called.  I hated to do this without Val, but she wanted me to go so there I was.

There were a lot of tours called ahead of mine including a very popular one with ten different groups called.  I hope that didn’t mean ten full-sized buses as that would a lot of people.  In any event, I was glad I wasn’t on that tour.  My group was finally called, and I was on my way to the tender and to shore (I forgot to mention this is another tender port).

The weather was beautiful with mild temperatures and little wind.  I had come prepared with my heavy jacket, and it wasn’t long before I took it off, I was very comfortable in my heavy shirt.  The Super 4X4’s where very nice, modified Mercedes Sprinter Vans that had 4WD.  There were four of them and each held 12 people, but thankfully there was a maximum of 9 to a vehicle on this tour.

We set off on our adventure and I found myself having the whole rear bench seat to myself, very nice.  We drove for about 20 minutes out of town until we turned off onto a dirt road and I realized this was really going to be a 4X4 tour (so many of the so called “4X4 tours” are not that at all).  The going was quite rough and there were several water crossings so the 4WD was definitely needed.  We had a very nice young man for a guide who was great.  The area was amazingly beautiful with mountains, waterfalls, rock formations and sweeping vistas and no one else was around except for our group.  We made quite a few stops along our route and I will talk about them with some of the many pictures I took today.

Since we were way off the beaten path, I can't put names to most of places we visited today, but I do have a GPS on my camera that allowed me to mark some of the spots with colored teardrops above.  I say some of the spots because I forgot to turn it on during the first part of the day, so some of the locations are missing.  Djupivogur is the red marker on the far right.

Those buildings across the valley are the Bragdavellir Cottage and Farm that will be the last stop on our tour today.

This waterfall has four steps to it as it comes down.

 

This is as far north as we drove today.  From here we started back taking a different route back.

 

These were taken on the way back.

This is the Snaedalsfoss waterfall, the only one I could find identified on a map.

The ground cover is grass and moss and very soft.  Walking on the moss was like walking on a sponge.

Our last stop before we got back to the main road was the Bragdavellir Cottage and Farm for a snack of cake and some coffee or other drink.  The farm has built a few tourist cabins and a small restaurant to generate some extra money, so I hope they are successful as it is a beautiful area.

The Bragdavellir Cottage and Farm

After our snack, we drove back to the pavement and back into town.  This was a really great tour, one of the best of the cruise and I felt very bad that Val had missed it, but those things happen.  Besides the beautiful scenery we saw, I really appreciated that at every stop our guide had said, take as much time as you want, we are in no rush.  Most tours you feel very rushed to get in and out of a stop, so this was great.

It was a little after one when I got back and texted Val to see if she felt any better and wanted to hop on a tender and meet me in town to explore a bit, but she wasn’t feeling any better, so I decided to look around on my own.  I had heard people talking about the Eggs, and wondered what they were talking about.  As I got out of the van, our guide told me they were just around the corner, so I started walking in the direction he pointed.

The small harbor in Djupivogur.

The Eggs

One more view of the ship as I walk back into town.

It turned out to be quite a long walk and I’m not sure it was really worth it.  The Eggs turned out to be an artwork by the popular Icelandic artist, Sigurður Guðmundsson, consisting of 34 granite eggs lining the bay called Eggin in Gleðivík  (the Eggs at Merry Bay).  Each of the granite eggs represents one of the nesting birds found in the area.  It was quite interesting, but I’m not sure it was worth the three or four mile roundtrip walk.  I did run into a couple I had talked to while eating our cake at the Bragdavellir Cottage this morning, so I had a nice chat with them while we walked and as it turned out, we had a bit in common.

I made it back to the center of town and made an unsuccessful check of a shop for a t-shirt and then returned to the ship.  I got right on the tender and was soon back on the ship.  There has been a lot of tendering on this trip, but it has been very well organized, and I have been impressed.

Poor Val was still feeling poorly, and feeling very hungry because she didn’t want to expose anyone to what she had.  I immediately went down to the Neptune Lounge and picked up some food for her.  We had brought COVID tests with us, so before she ate, she wanted to take one and happily, it came out negative, so it looks like she probably just has a cold.  That’s not exactly good, but it’s better than having COVID.

I had something to eat too and then we had some anniversary cake for dessert.  Last night at the Pinnacle Grill after we had finished our meal, they brought out a huge piece of cake wishing us a happy anniversary.  We had already finished our desserts, so there was no way we could have eaten it last night.  We brought it back with us and put it in our refrigerator and enjoyed it as dessert today and it was delicious.

We sailed away from Djupivogur at 4:00 PM and enjoyed a beautiful sail along the Iceland Coast from our balcony.  I think a little food and a negative COVID test lifted Val’s spirits a bit and even though she is still feeling sick she isn’t feeling so down.

We sail away from Djupivogur and on to Reykjavik.

We relaxed until dinner and Val said she felt good enough to go to dinner so we did our usual evening routine and then returned to our room.  Tomorrow we’ll be in Reykjavik and don’t have anything planned so we relaxed and read for a while before turning in.

The sun sets late this far north so we got some nice views of the Icelandic coast as the sun set.