We had come to expect stunning waterfalls from the Icelandic landscape but still weren’t prepared for quite how amazing the ‘foss’ in and around the Myvatn area are. We weren’t planning the detour off the Ring road but in the end we followed the advice of anti-clockwise travellers and headed off Route 1 to Detifoss. It was well worth the detour.

A short walk over rocks got us closer to the spray. But not as close as these folk.

See those tiny people over there?

A short walk stumbling across black volcanic rocks led us to the smaller but equally spectacular, Selfoss.

The roaring river creates a waterfall with the greatest volume of water in Europe.

There’s a road that nips around to the other side but we were led to believe that the road was waaaay too rough and slow going for our liking. Or our poor wee camper. So after exploring the falls, we retraced our steps to the reliable Route 1.

We had a long day of driving after our waterfall treat, stopping at fishing villages along the way. We had some amazing scenery to keep us interested.

I love Icelandic ponies with a rocky mountain backdrop.

We learnt first-hand why so many cars heading in the other direction were so dirty – the Ring Road around the country is not quite finished in parts of the East. It was slow going through the gravel and mud with steep switchbacks up and down the mountain sides. Stunning views but basically no road. But we made it.

When we finally reaching the bottom of the mountain and hit the coastal road we could just make out the brightness of the sun out to sea. It really did look like the bulk of the cloud cover was over all of Iceland.

At the end of a long day of driving we finally reached Hofn. The town is famous for it’s lobster baguettes so we rewarded ourselves with a meal at a casual wee diner. As with every town in Iceland there was also a swimming pool fed by geothermal springs. We spent hours in the hot pots and playing around on the warm water waterslides in the dark. It was ace.