11/2 Day 1
I flew from Akureyri to Reykjavik's domestic airport where Elisha met the 3 of us. We headed to the hostel Elisha had been staying at in the center of Reykjavik where we got to meet our tripcampers van (we highly recommend this company if you ever rent a camper van in Iceland).
We would eventually name our van Tyrion after Tyrion Lannister from Game of Thrones. For those of you not familiar with GOT, Tyrion is the witty, cunning, and wily dwarf. What Tyrion lacks in size and strength, he makes up for in mental acuity. He always seems to get to where he needs to out of resourcefulness. Our van was tiny, but it always got us to where we wanted to go and even some places that I think Elisha didn't really want to go (some steep passes). GOT is also mostly filmed in Iceland, which is part of the reason we chose the name.
Our little van was well set-up for it's small size. The back had a little table that pulled out revealing an electric cooler, a stove, a 19-L freshwater tank, a cooking kit and dishware, and some storage space. The bed folded up while driving, but when parked, you would put the front seats forward and the bed would fold out. Under the bed you could store plenty of things including all my luggage from greenland and our food. There were curtains to keep the light out for sleeping (not needed this time of year) and a duvet and pillow set. We could have gotten a van with a sleeping heater, but we figured with sleeping bags and the duvets that we would be warm enough, which we were. Especially since we'd crank the car's eat up right before going to bed. We had an inverter with the van so that we could plug in our batteries to charge and my computer to watch movies at night since it got dark so early (When we started the sun was rising around 8:30am and setting at 5:30pm but on our last days it was rising at 10:05am and setting at 4pm). The van also came with a GPS, which was nice for getting around in Reykjavik and figuring out how far the nearest gas station was. And they gave us a cell phone in case of an emergency, but it was also nice for calling ahead about times things were open and for calling the road condition hotline to see if passes were open.
Something that Iceland does amazingly is their weather forecasting and reporting. They have the best weather website I have ever seen. Puts NOAA's to shame. You can use it to easily find a myriad of forecasts and weather conditions in each small section of Iceland from aurora forecasts to cloud cover to precipitation to wind to temperature to earthquakes to volcanic eruptions to avalanches to pollution to sea ice cover. As you drive around you see little weather towers (similar to what I worked on at summit) everywhere giving exact conditions at thousands of spots around the country. They also have regular automated signs that give drivers the temperature, wind speed, and other things we were not sure of for the upcoming road. This is nice b/c knowing the temperature can help you gage if the road will be icy. Our van had an outside thermometer, so we didn't have to rely on these signs too much.
After picking up our van, we headed straight out to do the famous "golden circle". This is a popular tourist route that everyone who comes to Reykjavik does.
Our first stop was Thingvellir NP. This is a historically important place for Icelanders. Around 900AD the vikings established the world's first democratic parliament (Althingi) here. It is where they made all of the countries big decisions, including the decision to choose Christianity over paganism as the country's religion in order to stop the fighting between the 2 sides. In 1843, they finally moved the Althingi to Reykjavik. It's also a geologically cool place as it is one of the best places to see where the North American tectonic plate is separating from the Eurasian tectonic plate, essentially ripping the island of Iceland apart. The rift between these two plates is mostly deep in the ocean, but in Iceland it can be found on land. The plates are separating at a rate of 18mm per year, which is rather fast. It was cool to walk through the rift and jump between the plates. There were also some nice waterfalls and a clear river full of giant fish.
Next on the stop was a geothermally active area. There is a geyser there named Geysir, which is where all other geysers are named from. Geysir, when it erupts is a lot higher than Old Faithful, but it no longer erupts regularly after some major earthquakes changed the water table. However, a geysir nearby (Strokkur), erupts regularly (about every 5-8 minutes). We had lots of fun watching it erupt, and it might have been one of Elisha's favorite things on the whole trip. We get an extra kick out of geysers b/c if you combine our last names, you get Guyser.
Our last stop was the very dramatic Gullfoss (foss = waterfall in Icelandic). It's huge, powerful, and thundering through a canyon.
After the falls we drove in the dark to the town of Selfoss to do some grocery shopping. Along the way we passed by some of Iceland's famous geothermally powered greenhouses. After shopping, we went to Selfoss' local pool. Almost every icelandic town worth it's salt has a heated outdoor swimming pool (usually with a slide) along with several hot pots (hot tubs) of various temperatures. And also a cold tank. It's all heated geothermally, and they are popular with the locals. Visiting these pools is a great way for campers to get showers as they cost roughly the same as a shower in campsites.
But they have some hard-line rules. Before you enter, you must shower and shampoo. But you must do this naked, you can't do it with your bathing suit on. For Americans (especially younger generation Americans), this is not commonplace as we tend to shower with our suits on. Same with when you exit, you must shower in the nude and then dry off in a special area before proceeding to the locker area in order to keep the locker area from getting wet and slippery. This rule was probably the main thing that people who had been to Iceland before warned me about. You better follow it! You also take off your shoes and socks right as you enter the building before you even make it to the cashier, I guess to keep the floors clean. When we checked into the pool to pay, the lady sternly looked at us and said "you must shower naked before entering" knowing we were foreigners. When I got to the dressing room, I put on my suit for the walk from the locker area to the showers, but a guy cleaning the bathrooms popped out and pointed to my suit and said "drop it". and then followed me to make sure I showered naked. We got a good kick out of that!
But the pool was nice (especially nice since it was raining pretty hard) and the slide was fun. This pool had a lot of teenagers playing around, and we got a kick out of watching them horseplay around. They may have strict showering rules but apparently they have no horseplay rules. They ran around at full speed, wrestled, climbed up the slide and just did a million things that would have gotten them immediately kicked out of the Estes Park pool.
After the pool, we drove to the town of Hveragerdi, where we drove out of town a little bit to Reykjadalur, a geothermal area to camp.
11/3 Day 2
Hiked in the morning up to Reykjadalur which is a geothermal area with bubbling mud, fumeroles, and super hot hotsprings (>220F). There is a small river, which they coin a "hot springs river" which is rather warm due to all the hotsprings coming into it. In the summer, it'd be nice to just soak in the middle of the river, but in the cold of the winter, it was best to soak in little pools in the river where the hotsprings came entered.
After soaking we did some additional grocery shopping at Elisha's favorite store, Bonus, which is a discount grocery store. Grocery stores, even in Reyjavik after short opening hours (typically 10-6), so you have to strategize when you'll be in a big enough town to have a grocery store and at the right hours. After shopping we started along the Ring Road--Route 1 which circumnavigates the island to see some of the roadside sights of the SW.
Iceland has so many waterfalls that eventually you no longer stop or slow down to look at them and then eventually only give a second glance to the big ones. This first part of the drive had lots of waterfalls and some of the famous big ones. We stopped at Seljalandsfoss which was a beautiful falls that you could actually go behind. Near to it we walked to another hidden falls that was hidden behind some big rocks that you had to climb over or under to see it. From Seljalandsfoss, which is near the ocean, you could see the jagged Vestmannaeyjar islands. At a little cabin by the hidden falls is where I saw my first furry friend in over 6 months. A very friendly cat that let me carry him around for a while. Back on the road again we saw our first view of Eyjafjallajokull, the famous volcano that closed down all of Europe's airports several years ago.
At dusk we arrived at the mighty Skogafoss in Skogar where we camped beneath a towering mountain and right by the thundering falls. That night as we were cooking we saw some northern lights.
11/4 Day 3
We woke up at dusk and checked out Skogafoss and then hiked up the long set of stairs to the viewpoint down on Skogafoss. We went back down to the van, had breakfast, and then went for a hike on the Fimmvorduhals trail. Normally, in the summer, you'd take a 4WD "super bus" to get to Thorsmork and then hike one way back to Skogafoss (14.5 miles). The trail goes through the most recent eruption site of Eyjafjallajokull and past the newest mountain in Iceland. It goes over 2 passes and you hike between 2 huge glaciers. Well, this time of year the busses weren't running, so we just decided to do an out and back for as far as we could go before it would be too dark.
We ended up hiking 16 miles in total and almost made it to the top of the big pass on Eyjafjallajokul. After going past skogafoss, you hike along a really cool canyon with other huge and nice waterfalls for a long time. The whole time you have views of Eyjafjallajokull and it's icecap. You also start to get some views of the Myrdalsjokull icecap. Eventually we crossed a rickety bridge over the river and headed towards the pass. At this point we were hiking on snow. We went as far as an emergency hut from where we could see the pass (and a nice trekkers hut on top of the pass), but we decided to not go for the pass so as to not have to hike too much in the dark. On the way back down, we had nice views of the ocean and the icecaps as they were lit up pink by the setting sun. We ended up having to hike for an hour or so in the dark, which wasn't too bad.
Once of the most amazing parts of iceland, at least this time of year, is the sunrises and sunsets. Because the sun is so low on the horizon, sunrises and sunsets last for hours. And b/c there is usually clouds, they are really brilliant. And I'm often not up early enough to see sunrises, but in Iceland in the winter, no problem since towards the end of our trip it was rising as late as 10am!
We camped another night beside the falls.
11/5 Day 4
We continued along route 1. We stopped at the Solheimajokull glacier where we hiked a bit on it, on a path the tours use. Further along route 1, before reaching the town of Vik, we stopped at some various unique coastal formations, like basalt pillars, seastacks, and black beaches, all with nice views of the volcanoes.
Just after Vik, we took an off the beaten path dirt road inland toward Pakgil. It was a scenic drive and Pakgil was in an interesting canyon. On the way back, we jumped a river, found a trail that we followed a bit, before leaving it to climb a small peak that had great views of Eyjafjallajokull, the Myrdalsjokull glacier, and surrounding peaks. Also in the far distance we could see the white mountains of Vatnajokull NP and the icecap of Vatnajokull (The world's largest icecap outside of the Poles).
Upon return to Rte 1, we continued towards Skaftafell with nice mountain scenery. When it got dark, we pulled over to camp. We ended up camping in the Skeidararsandur which is a big black sand area with braids of rivers everywhere, both caused by glaciers. This is one of the dangerous areas (for the van) in windy weather (>15 m/s) b/c you can get bad sand blasting damage. And this area is a major reason I got full insurance for the van. But I had been paying attention to the weather, and there was not to be much wind in the next couple of days, so it was safe to camp. It was a perfectly clear and cold night, but unfortunately no Northern lights.
11/6 Day 5
We started early during a beautiful sunrise driving towards Skaftafell and Vatnajokull NP. The mountains and glaciers were beautiful and it was crazy just how big the glaciers were, coming almost down to the road and the ocean.
At the NP visitor center, we had breakfast and then did a loop hike, the Skaftafellsheidl loop. First we hiked up along a long ridge that looked down on the giant Skaftafelljokull glacier and gave great views of the mountains across the glacier and several glaciers feeding into this bigger glacier. We could see at least 4 such glaciers. Near the top of the ridge, we took the trail that went up to the Kristinartindar pass. Normally this would give great views down to the glacier and to Morsarjokull glacier on the other side, but unfortunately fog had moved on the pass. As the pass was snowy, Elisha decided to wait for me as I climbed the last bit up to the top of Kristinartindar peak (3700 ft), which of course was also unfortunately fogged in. There was a log book at the top and I was the first person to be up there in November other than 1 ranger. It was fun going back down b/c I could basically ski down since it was snow-covered and steep.
Finishing up the loop on the other side of the big ridge we could see part of the Morsarjokull glacier, it's lagoon, and braided river valley, as well as the massive flat glacier Skeidararjokull in the distance. We finished the loop in the dusk. The last part of the trail went by a nice waterfall and through an actual mini forest. First real trees I had seen in a long, long time!
We still had a touch of light upon our return, so we drove next door to the Svinafellsjokull glacier, which had a little iceberg lagoon. This might have been one of my favorite of the glaciers b/c the blue colors of the glacial face and the icebergs was just stunning. We decided we'd camp here, but we drove back to the visitor center to cook (it had a covered area as it was raining) as well as free wifi. Inside the visitor center they had the gear from an English undergraduate glaciology research expedition that was recovered, I think in 2006 when it was spit out of the glacier. In the 1930's a group of undergrads were up on the icecap doing a research project. 2 of the undergrads went up to hike the tallest peak in Iceland, which was nearby. That afternoon a storm came in, and they didn't make it back to camp. The storm raged for 11 days, hampering rescue efforts. They eventually gave up and the bodies were never found. But then in 2006, their ice axes and other gear showed up at the tongue of the glacier. No human remains were found (probably crushed by the glacier).
We camped the night at the foot of the Svinafellsjokull glacier.
11/7 Day 6
I got up "early" and went out to the glacial lagoon at dawn. There were nice views of the glacier and up the glacial valley towards some of the peaks above. But unfortunately, soon a dense mist came in. It was super thick and most the time you couldn't see much more than 100 yards. It was sort of a bummer day as this was supposed to be a super spectacular portion of Rte 1 as we went by many glaciers, peaks, the tallest mtn in Iceland, and the famous Jokulsarlon lagoon. Our first stop was the Kviarjokull glacier. We could see the tongue of it in the distance along a pretty river valley, but we decided not to hike to it due to the rain. We continued along Rte 1 which goes through the Breidamerkursandur a huge glacial sandbar. We stopped at Fjallsarlon (glacial lagoon) where you supposedly should be able to see Fjallsjokull glacier, but the fog was so dense, that although it was close by, we couldn't see it. But the icebergs in the lake were cool floating in the mystic mist. From there we continued to Jokulsarlon, the very famous glacial lagoon where giant icebergs float that have calved off of the massive Breidamerkurjokull glacier. Again the icebergs were really cool floating in the soupy fog, but it was kind of disappointing to not see the glaciers and mountains beyond.
B/c the day seemed not too great to really see much (this ended up being our worst day weather-wise in Iceland), Elisha suggested I do the glacial ice cave tour. I had been interested in doing one, but they were a bit pricey. We enquired, and they were cheaper than they had been when I looked on-line, and they had a space opening up b/c someone was a no show, so I decided to go for it. It was expensive, but definitely worth it. We drove in a super van (suped of 4WD van with huge snow tires) and went on a 4WD road to get to a glacier coming down from the Vatnajokull icecap. We then drove on the glacier for a short bit before arriving at the famous crystal cave. The cave can only be entered from November until April b/c when it warms up, it's a full river running through it. It is the river that carves out the cave. But in the winter when the melt is much less, you can walk into the cave. It was a really cool experience. The blue of the ice in the cave was spectacular. And the ice made for unique shapes and patterns that almost looked like the Northern Lights. The color of blue is just hard to describe! So beautiful!
While I was on the tour for a couple of hours, Elisha explored the beach (diamond beach) right near the Jokulsarlon. When I got back, we did some more exploring of the beach. It's a black sand beach with beautiful crystal-like icebergs resting on it that have come from the glacial lagoon. There is a river from the glacial lagoon to the ocean that is the shortest river in Iceland (maybe 200m long) and it delivers icebergs to the ocean, which get cleaned off by the waves and deposited on the beach. Some of the icebergs sit in the lagoon for 5 years before they melt enough to be able to float on the river into the ocean. It was an awesome sight as the ice was so beautiful and contrasted so sharply with the black sand. And the icebergs had such cool shapes. We drove back to Fjallsarlon to see if we could see the glacier yet. We hiked up really close to it. It looked awesome (huge walls coming out of the lagoon), but we could just barely see it through the mist.
We made the decision to stay another night in the area to hope for better weather. That night we drove to just outside of Hofn to Hoffell where there was a small collection of slightly developed hot pots that we soaked in amongst the mist and enjoyed some wine.
After soaking, we drove back to Fjallsarlon to camp. During the night, we got our first taste of the famous Icelandic wind. We were awoken in the middle of the night to crazy winds. We were worried about the sand as we were parked up on top of a moraine. So we drove down and hid the van behind some construction stuff. It was a wildly windy night, but in the end, no damage to the van.
11/8 Day 7
The good news about the ferocious wind was that it cleared out the mist. So we awoke to nice views of Fjallsarlon and the giant glacier (interesting side-note, we watched The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and this glacier was featured in it, but not during the Icelandic part of the movie but during the Himalayan part. We got a kick out of that!). We hiked down to the glacial and lagoon edge, then we drove back to Jokulsarlon where we could now see all the glaciers around it and the mountains above it! A breathtaking view for sure! It was cool to see it clear after having seen it all misty.
We then continued on the road back to Hofn. Along the way we saw several more glaciers and lots of nice mountains. It was crazy to see the landscape after having imagined what it looked like when we drove through the dense fog the night before. We stopped to take a short hike to Flaajokull glacier. We also tried to go to Hoffellsjokull glacier, but the last 4km of the road was closed for some reason. As we were driving along the valley full of glaciers we also happened upon a herd of reindeer, which was cool. Reindeer (caribou) were brought to iceland for hunting. Iceland only has one native land mammal, the arctic fox. There are mice here now that were stowaways. On occasion polar bears float in from Greenland, but they are killed or removed b/c of how dangerous they are. In the water, there are many mammals though. Arctic seals and I think something like 23 species of whales including orcas and blue whales. Iceland is one of the best spots in the world to whale watch, especially in the summer, but you can also see whales in the winter. There are of course several domestic mammals around. There are tons of sheep. I think we read 3x more sheep than people. Also Iceland is known for it's beautiful horses, of which we saw many.
At Hofn we did a slight detour to see some nice coastal sights and some old Viking ruins. We continued past Hofn along a nice coastal road with beautiful mountains on one side and the wild coast on the other side.
As we were driving, both Elisha and I saw the biggest and closest shooting star we had ever seen. Couldn't have been more than a couple hundred meters above the ground. A meteor that almost made it to the ground! It was so bright that we joked it was aliens. But then driving along the next fjord there were these super bright lights down in the water, illuminating the fjord water. It looked supernatural. There was a boat there, and we figured it was looking for the aliens. But probably using special lighting for fishing.
We camped along one of the fjords past Djupivogur but now I can't remember if it was Berufjordur or Reydarfjordur. But it was a beautiful sight with mountain cliffs above us and the fjord below us.
Can you tell I like glaciers??
I flew from Akureyri to Reykjavik's domestic airport where Elisha met the 3 of us. We headed to the hostel Elisha had been staying at in the center of Reykjavik where we got to meet our tripcampers van (we highly recommend this company if you ever rent a camper van in Iceland).
We would eventually name our van Tyrion after Tyrion Lannister from Game of Thrones. For those of you not familiar with GOT, Tyrion is the witty, cunning, and wily dwarf. What Tyrion lacks in size and strength, he makes up for in mental acuity. He always seems to get to where he needs to out of resourcefulness. Our van was tiny, but it always got us to where we wanted to go and even some places that I think Elisha didn't really want to go (some steep passes). GOT is also mostly filmed in Iceland, which is part of the reason we chose the name.
Our little van was well set-up for it's small size. The back had a little table that pulled out revealing an electric cooler, a stove, a 19-L freshwater tank, a cooking kit and dishware, and some storage space. The bed folded up while driving, but when parked, you would put the front seats forward and the bed would fold out. Under the bed you could store plenty of things including all my luggage from greenland and our food. There were curtains to keep the light out for sleeping (not needed this time of year) and a duvet and pillow set. We could have gotten a van with a sleeping heater, but we figured with sleeping bags and the duvets that we would be warm enough, which we were. Especially since we'd crank the car's eat up right before going to bed. We had an inverter with the van so that we could plug in our batteries to charge and my computer to watch movies at night since it got dark so early (When we started the sun was rising around 8:30am and setting at 5:30pm but on our last days it was rising at 10:05am and setting at 4pm). The van also came with a GPS, which was nice for getting around in Reykjavik and figuring out how far the nearest gas station was. And they gave us a cell phone in case of an emergency, but it was also nice for calling ahead about times things were open and for calling the road condition hotline to see if passes were open.
Something that Iceland does amazingly is their weather forecasting and reporting. They have the best weather website I have ever seen. Puts NOAA's to shame. You can use it to easily find a myriad of forecasts and weather conditions in each small section of Iceland from aurora forecasts to cloud cover to precipitation to wind to temperature to earthquakes to volcanic eruptions to avalanches to pollution to sea ice cover. As you drive around you see little weather towers (similar to what I worked on at summit) everywhere giving exact conditions at thousands of spots around the country. They also have regular automated signs that give drivers the temperature, wind speed, and other things we were not sure of for the upcoming road. This is nice b/c knowing the temperature can help you gage if the road will be icy. Our van had an outside thermometer, so we didn't have to rely on these signs too much.
After picking up our van, we headed straight out to do the famous "golden circle". This is a popular tourist route that everyone who comes to Reykjavik does.
Our first stop was Thingvellir NP. This is a historically important place for Icelanders. Around 900AD the vikings established the world's first democratic parliament (Althingi) here. It is where they made all of the countries big decisions, including the decision to choose Christianity over paganism as the country's religion in order to stop the fighting between the 2 sides. In 1843, they finally moved the Althingi to Reykjavik. It's also a geologically cool place as it is one of the best places to see where the North American tectonic plate is separating from the Eurasian tectonic plate, essentially ripping the island of Iceland apart. The rift between these two plates is mostly deep in the ocean, but in Iceland it can be found on land. The plates are separating at a rate of 18mm per year, which is rather fast. It was cool to walk through the rift and jump between the plates. There were also some nice waterfalls and a clear river full of giant fish.
Next on the stop was a geothermally active area. There is a geyser there named Geysir, which is where all other geysers are named from. Geysir, when it erupts is a lot higher than Old Faithful, but it no longer erupts regularly after some major earthquakes changed the water table. However, a geysir nearby (Strokkur), erupts regularly (about every 5-8 minutes). We had lots of fun watching it erupt, and it might have been one of Elisha's favorite things on the whole trip. We get an extra kick out of geysers b/c if you combine our last names, you get Guyser.
Our last stop was the very dramatic Gullfoss (foss = waterfall in Icelandic). It's huge, powerful, and thundering through a canyon.
After the falls we drove in the dark to the town of Selfoss to do some grocery shopping. Along the way we passed by some of Iceland's famous geothermally powered greenhouses. After shopping, we went to Selfoss' local pool. Almost every icelandic town worth it's salt has a heated outdoor swimming pool (usually with a slide) along with several hot pots (hot tubs) of various temperatures. And also a cold tank. It's all heated geothermally, and they are popular with the locals. Visiting these pools is a great way for campers to get showers as they cost roughly the same as a shower in campsites.
But they have some hard-line rules. Before you enter, you must shower and shampoo. But you must do this naked, you can't do it with your bathing suit on. For Americans (especially younger generation Americans), this is not commonplace as we tend to shower with our suits on. Same with when you exit, you must shower in the nude and then dry off in a special area before proceeding to the locker area in order to keep the locker area from getting wet and slippery. This rule was probably the main thing that people who had been to Iceland before warned me about. You better follow it! You also take off your shoes and socks right as you enter the building before you even make it to the cashier, I guess to keep the floors clean. When we checked into the pool to pay, the lady sternly looked at us and said "you must shower naked before entering" knowing we were foreigners. When I got to the dressing room, I put on my suit for the walk from the locker area to the showers, but a guy cleaning the bathrooms popped out and pointed to my suit and said "drop it". and then followed me to make sure I showered naked. We got a good kick out of that!
But the pool was nice (especially nice since it was raining pretty hard) and the slide was fun. This pool had a lot of teenagers playing around, and we got a kick out of watching them horseplay around. They may have strict showering rules but apparently they have no horseplay rules. They ran around at full speed, wrestled, climbed up the slide and just did a million things that would have gotten them immediately kicked out of the Estes Park pool.
After the pool, we drove to the town of Hveragerdi, where we drove out of town a little bit to Reykjadalur, a geothermal area to camp.
11/3 Day 2
Hiked in the morning up to Reykjadalur which is a geothermal area with bubbling mud, fumeroles, and super hot hotsprings (>220F). There is a small river, which they coin a "hot springs river" which is rather warm due to all the hotsprings coming into it. In the summer, it'd be nice to just soak in the middle of the river, but in the cold of the winter, it was best to soak in little pools in the river where the hotsprings came entered.
After soaking we did some additional grocery shopping at Elisha's favorite store, Bonus, which is a discount grocery store. Grocery stores, even in Reyjavik after short opening hours (typically 10-6), so you have to strategize when you'll be in a big enough town to have a grocery store and at the right hours. After shopping we started along the Ring Road--Route 1 which circumnavigates the island to see some of the roadside sights of the SW.
Iceland has so many waterfalls that eventually you no longer stop or slow down to look at them and then eventually only give a second glance to the big ones. This first part of the drive had lots of waterfalls and some of the famous big ones. We stopped at Seljalandsfoss which was a beautiful falls that you could actually go behind. Near to it we walked to another hidden falls that was hidden behind some big rocks that you had to climb over or under to see it. From Seljalandsfoss, which is near the ocean, you could see the jagged Vestmannaeyjar islands. At a little cabin by the hidden falls is where I saw my first furry friend in over 6 months. A very friendly cat that let me carry him around for a while. Back on the road again we saw our first view of Eyjafjallajokull, the famous volcano that closed down all of Europe's airports several years ago.
At dusk we arrived at the mighty Skogafoss in Skogar where we camped beneath a towering mountain and right by the thundering falls. That night as we were cooking we saw some northern lights.
11/4 Day 3
We woke up at dusk and checked out Skogafoss and then hiked up the long set of stairs to the viewpoint down on Skogafoss. We went back down to the van, had breakfast, and then went for a hike on the Fimmvorduhals trail. Normally, in the summer, you'd take a 4WD "super bus" to get to Thorsmork and then hike one way back to Skogafoss (14.5 miles). The trail goes through the most recent eruption site of Eyjafjallajokull and past the newest mountain in Iceland. It goes over 2 passes and you hike between 2 huge glaciers. Well, this time of year the busses weren't running, so we just decided to do an out and back for as far as we could go before it would be too dark.
We ended up hiking 16 miles in total and almost made it to the top of the big pass on Eyjafjallajokul. After going past skogafoss, you hike along a really cool canyon with other huge and nice waterfalls for a long time. The whole time you have views of Eyjafjallajokull and it's icecap. You also start to get some views of the Myrdalsjokull icecap. Eventually we crossed a rickety bridge over the river and headed towards the pass. At this point we were hiking on snow. We went as far as an emergency hut from where we could see the pass (and a nice trekkers hut on top of the pass), but we decided to not go for the pass so as to not have to hike too much in the dark. On the way back down, we had nice views of the ocean and the icecaps as they were lit up pink by the setting sun. We ended up having to hike for an hour or so in the dark, which wasn't too bad.
Once of the most amazing parts of iceland, at least this time of year, is the sunrises and sunsets. Because the sun is so low on the horizon, sunrises and sunsets last for hours. And b/c there is usually clouds, they are really brilliant. And I'm often not up early enough to see sunrises, but in Iceland in the winter, no problem since towards the end of our trip it was rising as late as 10am!
We camped another night beside the falls.
11/5 Day 4
We continued along route 1. We stopped at the Solheimajokull glacier where we hiked a bit on it, on a path the tours use. Further along route 1, before reaching the town of Vik, we stopped at some various unique coastal formations, like basalt pillars, seastacks, and black beaches, all with nice views of the volcanoes.
Just after Vik, we took an off the beaten path dirt road inland toward Pakgil. It was a scenic drive and Pakgil was in an interesting canyon. On the way back, we jumped a river, found a trail that we followed a bit, before leaving it to climb a small peak that had great views of Eyjafjallajokull, the Myrdalsjokull glacier, and surrounding peaks. Also in the far distance we could see the white mountains of Vatnajokull NP and the icecap of Vatnajokull (The world's largest icecap outside of the Poles).
Upon return to Rte 1, we continued towards Skaftafell with nice mountain scenery. When it got dark, we pulled over to camp. We ended up camping in the Skeidararsandur which is a big black sand area with braids of rivers everywhere, both caused by glaciers. This is one of the dangerous areas (for the van) in windy weather (>15 m/s) b/c you can get bad sand blasting damage. And this area is a major reason I got full insurance for the van. But I had been paying attention to the weather, and there was not to be much wind in the next couple of days, so it was safe to camp. It was a perfectly clear and cold night, but unfortunately no Northern lights.
11/6 Day 5
We started early during a beautiful sunrise driving towards Skaftafell and Vatnajokull NP. The mountains and glaciers were beautiful and it was crazy just how big the glaciers were, coming almost down to the road and the ocean.
At the NP visitor center, we had breakfast and then did a loop hike, the Skaftafellsheidl loop. First we hiked up along a long ridge that looked down on the giant Skaftafelljokull glacier and gave great views of the mountains across the glacier and several glaciers feeding into this bigger glacier. We could see at least 4 such glaciers. Near the top of the ridge, we took the trail that went up to the Kristinartindar pass. Normally this would give great views down to the glacier and to Morsarjokull glacier on the other side, but unfortunately fog had moved on the pass. As the pass was snowy, Elisha decided to wait for me as I climbed the last bit up to the top of Kristinartindar peak (3700 ft), which of course was also unfortunately fogged in. There was a log book at the top and I was the first person to be up there in November other than 1 ranger. It was fun going back down b/c I could basically ski down since it was snow-covered and steep.
Finishing up the loop on the other side of the big ridge we could see part of the Morsarjokull glacier, it's lagoon, and braided river valley, as well as the massive flat glacier Skeidararjokull in the distance. We finished the loop in the dusk. The last part of the trail went by a nice waterfall and through an actual mini forest. First real trees I had seen in a long, long time!
We still had a touch of light upon our return, so we drove next door to the Svinafellsjokull glacier, which had a little iceberg lagoon. This might have been one of my favorite of the glaciers b/c the blue colors of the glacial face and the icebergs was just stunning. We decided we'd camp here, but we drove back to the visitor center to cook (it had a covered area as it was raining) as well as free wifi. Inside the visitor center they had the gear from an English undergraduate glaciology research expedition that was recovered, I think in 2006 when it was spit out of the glacier. In the 1930's a group of undergrads were up on the icecap doing a research project. 2 of the undergrads went up to hike the tallest peak in Iceland, which was nearby. That afternoon a storm came in, and they didn't make it back to camp. The storm raged for 11 days, hampering rescue efforts. They eventually gave up and the bodies were never found. But then in 2006, their ice axes and other gear showed up at the tongue of the glacier. No human remains were found (probably crushed by the glacier).
We camped the night at the foot of the Svinafellsjokull glacier.
11/7 Day 6
I got up "early" and went out to the glacial lagoon at dawn. There were nice views of the glacier and up the glacial valley towards some of the peaks above. But unfortunately, soon a dense mist came in. It was super thick and most the time you couldn't see much more than 100 yards. It was sort of a bummer day as this was supposed to be a super spectacular portion of Rte 1 as we went by many glaciers, peaks, the tallest mtn in Iceland, and the famous Jokulsarlon lagoon. Our first stop was the Kviarjokull glacier. We could see the tongue of it in the distance along a pretty river valley, but we decided not to hike to it due to the rain. We continued along Rte 1 which goes through the Breidamerkursandur a huge glacial sandbar. We stopped at Fjallsarlon (glacial lagoon) where you supposedly should be able to see Fjallsjokull glacier, but the fog was so dense, that although it was close by, we couldn't see it. But the icebergs in the lake were cool floating in the mystic mist. From there we continued to Jokulsarlon, the very famous glacial lagoon where giant icebergs float that have calved off of the massive Breidamerkurjokull glacier. Again the icebergs were really cool floating in the soupy fog, but it was kind of disappointing to not see the glaciers and mountains beyond.
B/c the day seemed not too great to really see much (this ended up being our worst day weather-wise in Iceland), Elisha suggested I do the glacial ice cave tour. I had been interested in doing one, but they were a bit pricey. We enquired, and they were cheaper than they had been when I looked on-line, and they had a space opening up b/c someone was a no show, so I decided to go for it. It was expensive, but definitely worth it. We drove in a super van (suped of 4WD van with huge snow tires) and went on a 4WD road to get to a glacier coming down from the Vatnajokull icecap. We then drove on the glacier for a short bit before arriving at the famous crystal cave. The cave can only be entered from November until April b/c when it warms up, it's a full river running through it. It is the river that carves out the cave. But in the winter when the melt is much less, you can walk into the cave. It was a really cool experience. The blue of the ice in the cave was spectacular. And the ice made for unique shapes and patterns that almost looked like the Northern Lights. The color of blue is just hard to describe! So beautiful!
While I was on the tour for a couple of hours, Elisha explored the beach (diamond beach) right near the Jokulsarlon. When I got back, we did some more exploring of the beach. It's a black sand beach with beautiful crystal-like icebergs resting on it that have come from the glacial lagoon. There is a river from the glacial lagoon to the ocean that is the shortest river in Iceland (maybe 200m long) and it delivers icebergs to the ocean, which get cleaned off by the waves and deposited on the beach. Some of the icebergs sit in the lagoon for 5 years before they melt enough to be able to float on the river into the ocean. It was an awesome sight as the ice was so beautiful and contrasted so sharply with the black sand. And the icebergs had such cool shapes. We drove back to Fjallsarlon to see if we could see the glacier yet. We hiked up really close to it. It looked awesome (huge walls coming out of the lagoon), but we could just barely see it through the mist.
We made the decision to stay another night in the area to hope for better weather. That night we drove to just outside of Hofn to Hoffell where there was a small collection of slightly developed hot pots that we soaked in amongst the mist and enjoyed some wine.
After soaking, we drove back to Fjallsarlon to camp. During the night, we got our first taste of the famous Icelandic wind. We were awoken in the middle of the night to crazy winds. We were worried about the sand as we were parked up on top of a moraine. So we drove down and hid the van behind some construction stuff. It was a wildly windy night, but in the end, no damage to the van.
11/8 Day 7
The good news about the ferocious wind was that it cleared out the mist. So we awoke to nice views of Fjallsarlon and the giant glacier (interesting side-note, we watched The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and this glacier was featured in it, but not during the Icelandic part of the movie but during the Himalayan part. We got a kick out of that!). We hiked down to the glacial and lagoon edge, then we drove back to Jokulsarlon where we could now see all the glaciers around it and the mountains above it! A breathtaking view for sure! It was cool to see it clear after having seen it all misty.
We then continued on the road back to Hofn. Along the way we saw several more glaciers and lots of nice mountains. It was crazy to see the landscape after having imagined what it looked like when we drove through the dense fog the night before. We stopped to take a short hike to Flaajokull glacier. We also tried to go to Hoffellsjokull glacier, but the last 4km of the road was closed for some reason. As we were driving along the valley full of glaciers we also happened upon a herd of reindeer, which was cool. Reindeer (caribou) were brought to iceland for hunting. Iceland only has one native land mammal, the arctic fox. There are mice here now that were stowaways. On occasion polar bears float in from Greenland, but they are killed or removed b/c of how dangerous they are. In the water, there are many mammals though. Arctic seals and I think something like 23 species of whales including orcas and blue whales. Iceland is one of the best spots in the world to whale watch, especially in the summer, but you can also see whales in the winter. There are of course several domestic mammals around. There are tons of sheep. I think we read 3x more sheep than people. Also Iceland is known for it's beautiful horses, of which we saw many.
At Hofn we did a slight detour to see some nice coastal sights and some old Viking ruins. We continued past Hofn along a nice coastal road with beautiful mountains on one side and the wild coast on the other side.
As we were driving, both Elisha and I saw the biggest and closest shooting star we had ever seen. Couldn't have been more than a couple hundred meters above the ground. A meteor that almost made it to the ground! It was so bright that we joked it was aliens. But then driving along the next fjord there were these super bright lights down in the water, illuminating the fjord water. It looked supernatural. There was a boat there, and we figured it was looking for the aliens. But probably using special lighting for fishing.
We camped along one of the fjords past Djupivogur but now I can't remember if it was Berufjordur or Reydarfjordur. But it was a beautiful sight with mountain cliffs above us and the fjord below us.
Can you tell I like glaciers??
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| diving into the rift between Europe and N. America |
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| Gulfoss |
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| Tyrion |
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| Seljalandafoss |
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| hot springs river |
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| hot springs river |
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| skogafoss |
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| skogafoss |
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| first furry friend I had seen in over 5 months! |
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| skogafoss |
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| eyjafjallajokull |
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| skogafoss |
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| eyjafjallajokull |
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| eyjafjallajokull |
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| eyjafjallajokull |
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| seljandafoss |
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| Church in Vik |
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| jumping between europe and north america |
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| in the crystal ice cave |
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| shortest river in Iceland |
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| old viking settlement |
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| top of the peak! |
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| driving on the glacier |
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| hot pots near hofn |
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| this glacier is featured in secret life of walter mitty |
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| super jeep to the ice cave |
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