Often squeezed into an overnight stop on a self-drive tour of Iceland's Ring Road, the East makes a superb short break destination in its own right. With five days to lavish on the little-visited Austurland region, you can not only dawdle through the breathtaking East Fjords, but also spend time hiking in the mountains of Borgarfjörður Eystri and exploring the waterfalls, canyons and dormant volcanoes of the island's rugged interior.
East Iceland's main hub, the modern town of Egilsstaðir lies in a broad valley near the northern tip of Lagarfljót. Rumours of a serpent-like monster, known as the Wyrm, have been floating around this glacial lake since 1345, but the 740-hectare birchwood of Hallormsstaðaskógur seems just as fanciful as you drive along the lake's southern shore.
While forests are a rarity in Iceland, waterfalls appear around every corner. One of the country's tallest, 128m Hengifoss plunges over humbug striped cliffs of black basalt and red clay at the threshold of the Highlands. Delve deeper into the interior and you'll discover more cascades at Laugarfell, as well as hot springs and the 1,833m trekking peak of Snæfell, King of the Mountains. A short distance from the new hydroelectric dam at Kárahnjúkar, the Jökla River has gouged out the 200m-deep, 8km-long Hafrahvammagljúfur canyon. When the dam was commissioned, river levels dropped, revealing extraordinary basalt columns in Stuðlagil canyon, further downstream.
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Vermont, USA
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A new dawn for the Garifuna community
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The rebirth of old JEDDAH
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