Snæfellsnes Peninsula

This is a gorgeous peninsula that sits south of the Westfjords, that Steve and I commonly referred to as “Snuffleupagus” (the beloved Sesame Street character) before we mastered the pronunciation - sny’ fuls ness.

On the way there, we passed the ubiquitous enormous waterfalls without name -

… until we came to the numerous islands in the fjords, that are unique here…

… and the isolated church (which was not - unique, that is).

Our first day started out sunny where our lodging was, allowing us to enjoy this distant waterfall (yay! basalt columns!)

… and another church amid lupines -

But by the time we reached the west end of the peninsula, where the majority of sights were, the clouds had lowered, and it rained all afternoon. We actually parked at one of the spots, hoping the weather would clear, but bagged it after an hour.

(that’s me, fighting gale force winds and carrying my camera in a plastic bag, in case I could get a shot)

So, we headed out early the next day, to cover the entire peninsula in one day. We started with broken lava fields covered in moss and lichen -

… stopped at the oft photographed Kirkjufell and its attendant waterfalls (which were quite puny in our estimation, after our many weeks of waterfalls throughout our wanderings)…

We headed on to this little heralded canyon (Raudfeldsgja), that was so cool!

Inside, it narrowed quite quickly, and had you feel like you found a secret place

Looking back out gave you a glimpse of the beauty of this peninsula -

We then hiked along the coast, on a 2 km trail between two small towns…

… that had some fabulous basalt formations…

… arches…

… and cliffs.

This was my favorite of the entire hike:

Some scenes looked almost made up or staged -

Moving on, we visited Londrangar cliffs…

… before we reached the west end of the peninsula at Djupalonssandur (Black Lava Pearl Beach).

It was huge…

(the people near the water and the cars in the parking lot give scale)

… and gorgeous (with the namesake lava pearls) -

The color variety in the surrounding rocks was eye-catching:

Again, it looks like a painting…

We were thrilled that the sun came out for our last hike of the day at Bjarnafoss -

The “official” trail ended at the bridge across the stream (where you could get really nice pictures)…

… but once we saw people hiking up nearer the falls, we knew we had to try!

You can see the people in the picture above, but it doesn’t begin to show the pitch.

Where we came from:

Our goal -

On our way back to our lodging, we passed a small lake and finally saw what we had been wondering about all month. All the swan pairs everywhere, but no cygnets. At last!

Finally, tucking in at 2330…