more photos from Iceland – here is the third day, including the legendary Puffin Road!


Eighteen percent? That’s nothing – try 43% later in the day!


Infinite regression of sheep.


Strange tower at sunset.


Behold the northern lights. From on top of a mountain pass, with a terrifying opaque fog creeping up behind us – we outraced it, and we got this perfect view!


Green rainbow.


First rays of morning. We of course wake up overcast!


Clouds at sunrise.


GOATS! This is the one example of a goat herd that we found in Iceland – the rest was all sheep or cows or horses.


Fisheye lens in late dawn.


Highway 1.


The Icelandic horse… bred for hardiness, temperament… and that New Wave haircut.


Behold the mane.


A fisherman in a reflecting lake.


Roads in Iceland have this nasty habit of being made of dirt, and crossing severe hills.


A roadhorse. Sometimes they really do cross their fences and get out.


New Mexico has Shiprock. Iceland has …


More sheep, more sheep!


An old sign, repainted many times between about 1940 and now. Red and white!


Car is stuck? Well, car was – at the time – deemed stuck. Behind the car is a locked gate; gotta make a three-point turn on the one-lane road, with the hills to either side descending at a 35% grade. We put the car into reverse, and found ourselves spinning without motion …

only upon further investigation did we realize that the wheels were unmoving, it was the car that we didn’t put into gear. You see, as opposed to second and fourth (the other gears on the bottom half of the shifter layout), reverse requires an extra oomph – a further pull back on the stick before it actuates. Until one yanks hard, one is led to believe that the car is stranded and unable to move.

You don’t actually have the car in gear, dumbass! will be a recurring theme.


Old sign, with a tractor in the back.


Highway 60 – sign gantries into infinity.


Route 60 through a canyon. A very modern road – built between 2006 (when our map came out, showing it as a dirt goat-path) and now… it has lane markers and shoulder markers and the curves are non-threatening and in general, it is quite an enjoyable drive.


Hide and go sheep.


Cue the pastoral scene. A farm along highway 60.


The western fjords… heading straight into the sun, so excuse the crappy lighting!


A Viking cairn – perhaps the oldest highway sign possible to find, other than the markers of Rome’s Appian Way. These piles of rocks mark the trail, and some date back to the 10th century – and the most amazing part is, that they are so close to the modern rights of way: those Vikings did an excellent job of finding the optimal route through.


Less than 20 feet away from the old Viking trail is the modern road.


The road across the next fjord.


Beware the roadsheep.


The good ship Garðar. Built in 1913, and washed ashore in 1981… and left there.


Majestic lake, or perhaps a small puddle?


The shadow of a cloud in the shape of Iceland. We found that seriously awesome.


The westernmost point in Europe – this rock outcropping, part of a sheer cliff with a hundred foot drop to the ground below.


And here is the cliff, from a safe vantage point.


Garbage pod from the future. Your guess is as good as mine, as it totally looks like it came in on a monorail that was built in the mid-2060s.


The puffin road. Note the leftmost bird: yep, that’s a puffin. And note the road we have to take to get to the cliffs where they traditionally breed. Nope, not the one heading off to the west – that’s the road we were just on, that leads to the westernmost point in Europe. Note the trail heading southeast.

Note that the roads heading west and southeast are labelled to be the same quality. This is patently false.


Oh it starts off almost reasonable-like. It’s one lane, and on occasion you can’t see what’s past the hill, but it’s passable.


Now that’s an omen if I ever saw one.


Third floor: lawnmowers, cooking and baking equipment, men’s pants. Third floor. Going down! Yep, that’s at least a thirty-five per cent incline, and it only gets worse. I wish I had had the wherewithal and self-awareness to take photos of the way down, but no, I was busy losing all command of my bodily waste disposal functions… alternating thoughts of doom between “dying in endless agony on the way down” and “after we turn around, not being able to scale this grade, and therefore dying in endless agony on the way up”.


Bottom of the hill. Yep, this is the “rescue station at Keflavík”. Not to be confused with the Kevlavík airport in the southwest corner of the island; this is a different place with the same name, and good luck landing a plane here.


And where are the puffins? Well, mating season is over; they’ve left for the winter. They ain’t here no more. We fail – there will be no puffin hugging today.


Going back up the hill of eternal death and/or eternal death.


Having climbed back from puffin extinction, we’re now on the main road again. Not that this one is the epitome of safety, but hey, at least it isn’t a terrifying doom grade that consists of little more than two tracks in the rocks and the grass.


Back to the cliff road.


Same ship as the last time – and now it is illuminated by the sunset. Look at that, I shot directly into the sun, and I managed not to fail completely!


Gangsta Dan. We were having a fisheye war and randomly taking photos of each other from approximately 2 feet away, and this one – despite being totally into the sun, came out halfway all right, I think.


This is where I poke the camera through the deck railings of the old ship, and take a photo with the fisheye lens.


The road to sunset.


And the road past it.


A town at dusk.


The obligatory waterfall. Foreground lighting on the pebbles provided by a trusty Maglite 4D (Billy Club Edition).


The coastline, in late dusk.


The very first northern lights photo of the night!


And the second one. Don’t mind Iceland’s excellent quality roads!


Northern lights over the nearest hill. Note the purple band between the two green ones!


A particularly bright flare-up.


And another. Best way to take pictures of northern lights: just keep shooting – think later! I had the camera shutter open 30 seconds at a time, and I’ve left all the actual work to the processing phase. This exposure happens to be 60 seconds – there are also 90, 120, and 150 to be found in this post.


Foregrounds provided by my Maglite incandescent (yellow) and Dan’s Maglite LED (white). In case of emergency, use Maglite 4D to smash whatever is threatening you.


All these photos were taken with my fisheye lens. Implication being, this display was huge – all the way across the sky from horizon to horizon! this is the one reason I bought this lens; so I could take it all in!


Northern lights, and a meteor too!


New vantage point. Staying away from the fog that is behind us!


Note the meteor at the lower left of the aurora, just above the mountain.


More, more, more!


The lights split in two momentarily.


The Milky Way at left, framed perfectly by an enormous display of northern lights.