The thought was first introduced by a family friend, Jane, that said there are two ways that people drive a road. The first way is driving it like you live there and that means you know the curves, bumps, details along the route and you are able to anticipate the road ahead. And the other way is like you've never been there before, so you are more cautious and slow moving - which usually leads to the 1st type of driver cursing that they are behind you.
I was driving from Thingvellir to Borgarnes last night and a man at an information desk suggested that I take route 52 to get there since it was a more enjoyable road. I think this man has a sick sense of enjoyable or maybe he was hoping to enjoy getting rid of another tourist.
A little background: There are a number of roads in Iceland that are "off limits" to anything not 4x4 and that includes most of the interior region of Iceland. You should see the trucks and their accompanying tires that are used on these roads. Now I am driving a Chevrolet Aveo which is as economy car as they come. This road (rte 52) was an "allowed" road by the Icelandic guidelines for my car type.
Now back to route 52 - imagine the most beat-up dirt road you can - include lots of loose scree and washboards in this image. Shrink it down to a little more than the width of my Aveo, but it meant to be a two lane road. Let's keep building this image to include breathtaking scenery along both sides of the roads to include large glaciers, fjords, lakes, rivers, valleys and moonscape, but you can't really look at these things in order to stay on the road.
Iceland has this dilemma that if they were to make the same safety requirements that the US has (guardrails, wide-paved roads, etc), the country would be bankrupt installing all of these things throughout its country for all of the areas that would need it. Remember this area has little vegetation due to erosion and geological movement, so everything is unstable and steep - up to 18% grade in some spots with hundreds if not thousands (I couldn't afford to look) of feet of drop on either side. Almost forgot to mention, they post these roads with an 80 km/hr (~50 mph) speed limit. To top it off there are free roaming sheep (sacred to Icelanders) that wander into the road at any time and now you have a great start to a new video game or what I had to do in order to get to Borgarnes for 50km. I knew I was in for a really hairy section when the posted speed limit changed to 30 km/hr or they put up a guardrail along a section.
The owner of the Bed & Breakfast in Borgarnes asked where I was came from and I told her the route I took and she was surprised that the road was even open. She said they only open that road for at most 3 months per year due to the weather and road conditions and I was lucky to make it. I totally agreed!
That road reminds me of a shortcut that Sue took me on many years ago. I thought we were going to die falling off the cliff. Then we saw a giant truck come rumbling down the mountain right toward us, carrying a giant redwood log. I could see the fear in the driver's eyes when he came around the corner and spotted us in our little VW microbus! Glad to hear that you survived.
ReplyDeleteI guess the road made Vermont dirt roads look like child's play. Glad you survived.
ReplyDeleteI have a new appreciation for bad dirt roads, especially since I keep finding new #1's to top the list. Like the twisty one leading to Dettifoss today that was shrouded in fog. Luckily, the road sat about 5 feet below the surrounding countryside, so I was basically in a luge run. And it was recently "improved" this year to allow cars like mine on them. I wonder what they did to improve it...
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