The Other Diamond Beach

The main activity of the day was scheduled to be a visit to an ice cave in the glacier. This promised to be one of the highlights of the two weeks so we had to be at the cafe at Jokulsarlon for 1pm. With the late start this meant we had to think about how to spend the morning so we decided to visit the 'other' Diamond Beach at Jokulsarlon.

The lagoon exits to the sea via a narrow channel. In fact, this is how the ice makes its way to the sea to be swept back onto the beaches of black volcanic sand. There are beaches on both sides of the channel and it is the left one which most people visit, as did we during the 2016 trip and also yesterday when we first arrived here. Why the left hand one? Well, it is the nearest to the Jokulsarlon car park but mainly it's because most of the ice diamonds arrive there.

The right hand beach has far less ice but it is also less crowded and we thought we'd check it out. Yep, less ice and less people but we felt the other beach was the best. We stayed a while a took some photographs but the waves were much stronger than yesterday so we had to keep grabbing our tripods and running. Then all of a sudden we needed to leave for the ice cave trip.Read more