Reynisfjara Beach

About 15 minutes before you reach Vik there is another right turn that takes you to this black sand beach. Here you can walk westward along its huge expanse back towards the viewpoint I just visited, or stay at the eastern end and admire the basalt rock columns and those iconic sea stacks. Or you can get swept away to your death by the waves. 😱

This beach is renowned for its sneaker waves. All beaches have these, when a huge and unexpected wave suddenly arrives, but here they can be particularly fierce and with the beach dropping away suddenly close to shore it can be fatal if you get swept away. It's no trouble if you keep your wits about you and don't stay too long or too close to the shoreline but there's open ocean for thousands of miles from here so waves can be huge.

I stayed quite a while. The tide was out so I could walk around the headland to the other side, being careful as I did so because of the incoming waves. Hopefully I got some nice shots of the stacks and waves breaking. The stacks are covered with nesting birds which you can't really see in the photos. Helpful. 🙄

There are a lot of tourists here making photography tricky so patience is needed. I'm wondering if they should actually be called Ants, those tourist Penguins, because they really do get over everything. 😂

There's a cafe here too and that was my next stop, not only to get a coffee but also to grab an evening meal before finding the campsite for tonight. (Last photo)

I enjoyed today, being a Penguin visiting here and the waterfalls etc and seeing how different it all is in summer and how generally things are changing.Read more