Glaciers, Waterfalls, and Black Sand

Day 7:

Another full day of travel in the books and the number of amazing sights just keeps stacking up. Although its a small country, it is quickly becoming apparent that it would take a lifetime or more to really see everything this place has to offer. In summing up each day, we find out more and more that we "missed". The biggest, best, hidden and most impressive are still out there and that really fills you with a hunger for more travelling. Its right on the border of maddening and inspiring... kind of like Hemingway.

Okay, our first stop was a bit of an unplanned one, but is well known from all of those Instagram travellers and of course... Game of Thrones. Fjaðrárgljúfur. That's Icelandic for "please have an easier to pronounce language". But seriously, its Fjaðrá Gorge, still difficult. Painfully beautiful, painfully screwed by tourism. Its one of those "you've got to come see this, but please don't" type situations... The gorge was cut out during the Ice Age and genuinely looks like James Cameron made it up in a studio. Walking down the canyon like our boy Jon Snow is strictly prohibited now due to the degradation of the landscape, yet somehow dozens were still down there... We chose the the mile-long uphill path was available for our enjoyment, complete with a viewing deck! Absolutely stunning. We had the opportunity to see it when it was cloudy with a little bit if rain on the way up and sunny and clear on the way back, which made the gorge look completely different!

Just 20 minutes down the road, we popped to the side for a minute to check out Foss á Siðu, a little waterfall situated on private property. It wasn't hugely impressive in terms of Iceland, but it is fun to see a waterfall from the road and stretch our legs a bit after some backroads driving at the last stop.

As we made our way to the next stop, we turned off the road to get a better look at Vatnajökull, the largest glacier in Europe. Also included in our pull off was a show of the power of glacial runoff... there were mangled pieces of a bridge that once crossed the river Ölfusá before a particularly high volume of water widened the river and made quick work of the man made bridge.

The next stop was one that we were all really excited to see... Svartifoss. Partially because we could easily translate it, but mostly because of the impressive basalt stacks that serve as a backdrop to the falls. It is located in Skaftafell, which used to be it's own national park, before joining the expansive Vatnajökull National Park. A decent hike later, we made our way to the falls and aside from being a bit smaller than we expected, the Black Falls did not disappoint. Unfortunately, there was a little Eastern European kid jumping on the viewing platform so the pictures we captured are a bit shakier than we would like, but those are secondary to hearing and feeling the falls. The basalt stacks were actually the inspiration for the wings of the Hallsgrímskirkja, clearly evident by the hexagonal shape. These columns are breaking off from the bottom, so the shape of the falls is ever changing and quite dangerous, but that may add to the allure of the unique waterfall. We realized that we should have cut out time to hike to and possibly on the glacier, but rain and tour buses coming in gave us good excuses to move on and add it to the "next time" list.

Another unplanned stop caught our eyes off the road, Fjallsárlón. We deduced from our next planned stop that "sárlón" meant something the the effect of a river lagoon, and the glacier coming up to the water's edge made it an a tempting stop. Let's say it did not dissappoint... large bits of blue glacier were floating in a frigid pond with the backdrop of the massive glacier. They offered boat tours, but we opted for the views from the rocky beach. Touching the glass-like pieces that floated to shore was another experience like no other, but we knew that more of this was in store for us at the next stop.

Jökulsárlón is one of those places exploited by Hollywood over and over, but it's again understandable due to its otherworldly look. Overall, it can be described in the same way as Fjallsárlón, but the chunks of glacier were much larger and there were dozens of seals swimming amongst them. Pictures will never do this place justice, but of course we still tried!

Across the street was the so-called Diamond Beach. A black sand beach where the pieces of glacier from Jökulsárlón make it out to sea, then are tumbled back onto the beach. The black sand really makes the chunks of ice stand out, whether crystal clear or frosty with a hue of blue. We spent a good amount of time here, almost in a daze of wonder. We realized that 3 of us had never touched the Atlantic Ocean, so we thought the calm ripples would be the perfect place to do so, far from the sneaker waves of Reynisfjara. One of us, cough... Tom ...cough! Didn't quite time out the set well enough and got soaked by the ice cold water. Hilarious? Yes. Fun? Less so.

One last hour of driving and we arrived at our little cottage in Höfn. We again lucked out in seeing the Northern Lights! This time they were significantly brighter and spread across nearly the entire sky. Simply amazing!

Next up, from the Southeast to East Iceland!Read more