Iceland Day 3: Road Warriors

We spent basically all of our third day in Iceland in the car.  We were up by 7, hit the road by 8 and had a four hour drive along the south coast out to Vatnajokull glacier.  We went in search of Svartifoss waterfall, which is a short hike, but mostly we just wanted to drive along the coast and see the territory out there.  It was unbelievable.

I never realized how much I love driving when I have beautiful unknown territory around me.  I was loving riding in our 4x4 on these roads, through a landscape that looked otherwordly in color and shape.  Kristen played DJ and we chatted, and the 4 hours passed quickly. Here's some of what we saw:

The not-so-early morning sunrise in Iceland's winter (9:00am) 

Country church in Vik

Further east along the southern Ring Road - frozen ponds, glaciers, and volcanoes abound. 

Rt 1 near Eyjafjallajokull (yeah, THAT volcano that shut down Europe in 2010)

We arrived at Skaftafell, which is at the foot of the Vatnajokull Glacier (see below) and just took in the scenery for a moment.  I would like to add here that in the 4 hours we spent on the road driving out there, we MAYBE saw 6 other cars. Total. The entire time.  Bliss!

Vatnajokull glacier (largest in Europe) 

The hike out to Svartifoss isn't long, about 1.5 miles, but when we arrived at the visitor's center we saw signs that said that the trail was VERY icy and that the walk should not be attempted without crampons (ice picks that attach to your shoes).  We didn't have those, and neither did the visitor's center (big oversight on their part I think!).  So we decided it had been worth the drive all the same, seeing that amazing landscape, and so we turned around and headed back to hit all the sites that awaited us on the ride home.  

Our first stop was the beautiful black sand beach of Reynisfjara.  There is a gorgeous basalt rock formation that came from a volcanic eruption.  When the cold water hits the hot lava it cool so quickly that it crystallizes in a way and forms a hexagonal pattern in the rock. Thus, there is wall which looks like a haphazard, hexagonal staircase.

I've never seen rocks form like this.  From the above picture you can sort of tell how the rocks look like feathers on a bird, they formed in such intricate, fluid patterns.  It's really beautiful.  There's a cave there too and since it's so cold, it's full of icicles from the sea spray when the tide is high that look like fangs (think Sarlacc pit from Return of the Jedi).  

The beach itself was gorgeous.  Something out of a dream, really.  IMDB just told me that part of the recent film Noah was filmed there.

I lived on an island with a volcano for the better part of a year and the black sand beaches in the north had similar features, caves, striking rock formations, but nothing like those hexagonal basalt columns and pebbly beaches.   

We pressed onwards to Skógafoss, a big waterfall still further westward on the main road back to Reykjavik.  In addition to seeing a beautiful waterfall, I fulfilled my goal of meeting and petting some fuzzy Icelandic ponies.  They were wholly uninterested in my affection after they found I had no snacks to offer them.  

Then we climbed a lot of stairs to the top of the waterfall to get this lovely view: 

Then we climbed back down the stairs and got THIS lovely view: 

Mmmm.  Waterfalls.  Is there anything prettier? The spray of ice cold glacial water on my face, beautiful icicles decorating the rocks.  And we weren't even done with waterfalls that day.  We had one more to go.  We hopped back in the car and headed to our last stop of the day, Seljalandsfoss.   

You can actually walk behind Seljalandsfoss when the path isn't covered in ice.  It was beautiful but the real stunner of this stop for me was Gljúfurárfoss, which is set back about a 500m walk from Seljalandsfoss, and it's in a cave you have to shimmy back to.  But it was so beautiful.  I used to work at a an outdoors store in high school, and it had a little stream in it where you could test fishing rods, and it also had a rain cave, where you could test the waterproof jackets.  This waterfall was a for REAL rain cave.  

That's not snow, it's the water droplets suspended in air reflecting my flash.  

Inside a real rain cave.  

In order to get into the cave, you had to navigate a series of small rocks sticking out of the ice cold stream flowing out of the cave.  The only problem was that because it was so cold, they were covered in ice, so that made their navigation all that much more exciting.  I had a few close calls and almost went in the drink, and Kristen did, soaking her leg and one of her boots with near freezing water.  We were glad it was our last stop.  No one can handle wet clothes in that kind of cold and wind.  

We were pleased with the day, even though it was a long one. We got home, cleaned up, rested a bit and then went into town for an earlier dinner.  We ate a restaurant that was nothing to write home about but I did discover that chicken is more expensive than salmon in Iceland. Gotta love that.  Chicken of the sea? It was great salmon too.  Once again it was too cloudy that night to see any Aurora Borealis, but the forecast for Saturday said that the skies would be clear.  We were ready to hit the road again the next day, but with a less ambitious itinerary this time.