Látrabjarg was clouded over this morning so we turned south down Route 614 toward Rauðasandur. The road descends from in a series of 180-degree switchbacks on a narrow gravel track with no guardrails. The beach appears below you on the descent, 7 miles of it laid out across the bay before you reach the bottom. Carioca handled the descent without issue despite the tight hairpins.

The sand gets its color from crushed scallop shells accumulated over thousands of years rather than from volcanic activity and is very different than the black basalt sand found on almost every other beach in Iceland. The Westfjords sit on some of the oldest geology in the country, 10 to 15 million years old, with no recent volcanic activity.

We walked the beach and then climbed into the mountains above the eastern end. The views back over the full length of the beach from above, put the scale of it into perspective in a way that walking it does not. Temperature was 49°F, no wind.

We are camping on the beach tonight and enjoying the sunny weahter