Day 10, Sep 3: Reytharfjorthur to Skafta

Up to a sunny day with a bit of breeze. Broke camp and headed south along the 1 and alongside the Reytharfjorthur, the first of many fiords we’d coast alongside of. Scenery incredibly beautiful with the green lowlands climbing and giving way to the brown-purple scree and cliffs on the escarpments projecting into the sea, always ribboned with waterfalls, small and mighty. Farther out in the fiord, we saw a dozen or so large pens in the water and figured they were fish farms. We saw them in another fiord further south, too. Around the point and down one side and up the other of a new fiord – same breathtaking beauty with the sun shining just right for great views.

Stopped at Petra's Stone Collection. This huge collection of Iceland’s rocks and minerals is the life’s work of Petra, a local in Faskruthsfjorthur. She wandered the surrounding countryside and mountains, picking up those she thought worthy of note and brought them home. Almost all the pieces are from the east region of the country. She also collected figures, wood carvings, and several other things. As her collection grew, she invited friends, and later, the public to see it. The entire house is lined with shelves and etageres displaying thousands of rocks, some cut and polished, others simply cleaned. After she died, her daughters turned the home into a museum and it is a “must see” on the tour bus circuit.

Continued in and out of the fiords going south. Several of the fiords have sand bars across the mouth close to the Atlantic, sometimes completely cutting off the outflow except for a rushing rivers. These sand bars create lagoons behind them that have their own ecosystem. Passed a dairy farm, one of the few we've seen. More of the same glacier-carved landscape as we started to se the Vatnjokull Glacier on our right, its many arms reaching almost to the sea, here. Stopped in Hofn to see the set of huge stone eggs. Across outwash plains to Jokulsarlon.

At Jokullsarlon, a glacier arm comes almost to the coast and calves icebergs into a short river before dumping them into the surf. The surf breaks up the 'bergs into small pieces of ice that are washed back onto the beach, creating “Diamond Beach.” We stopped to see the ‘bergs (along with hundreds of buses and cars of tourists. It was the most crowded we’d been since Blue Lagoon.) A short drive south brought us to Fjallsarlon - another, smaller, less visited version of the same thing (glacier calving ‘bergs into a short river to the sea). Here, an outfitter will take you hiking onto the glacier or kayaking around the ‘bergs.

Continued south along the coast with the glacier looming large on our right. Entered the Vatnjokull National Park and camped at the visitor’s center in Skaftafell. Walked around and watched the sunset on the peaks in front of us. Marie hiked up to the nearby Svartifoss.Read more