Each day in Iceland seemed to be better than the last. When morning came on day four, we awoke to the frantic calls of thousands of Arctic Terns, coupled with the rushing sound of a river of glacial water and the occasional throaty groan and crack of icebergs bonking against one another on their way out to sea. This is Jökulsárlón. Fjallsárlón Then we got back in the car and started driving back west toward Reykjavík. But we hadn't quite had our fill of iceberg lagoons, so we stopped at another: Fjallsárlón Skógafoss We had another stop to make for a few more hours of exploring and hiking. Skógafoss is postcard perfect (in fact we took our Christmas card photo here). This waterfall is also the trailhead for a veritable parade of waterfalls that leads hikers for miles up into the highlands. We obliged and followed the trail for a few hours until hunger and the desire for sleep eventually drove us back to the Skógafoss parking lot, where we camped for our last night in Iceland. Since Iceland's bright skies at night were such an important aspect of our trip (enabling us to hike, drive, play at all hours), I couldn't resist shooting one last frame of Skógafoss at exactly midnight on our last night in Iceland. As usual, not a soul in sight.
Vík We took a photography and hiking (and lunch) break on the cliffs just west of Vík. In the distance (below left) are the sea stacks of Reynisdrangur. Loftsalahellir And then we explored a Viking cave, where council meetings (and legend has it, executions) were held in saga times. Vatnajökull The rest of the afternoon and evening was spent roadtripping into glacier country. Vatnajökull, the world's largest ice cap outside the poles, spills down from the highlands via crumbling outlets of ice called glacier tongues (see below). At the end of the day, we reached our destination, Jökulsárlón, and promptly car-camped in the parking lot. We flew into Reykjavík around 10:30 pm on a Saturday night, via Icelandair. We picked up our rental car (which we reserved ahead of time from a rental company near the airport) and immediately drove straight to Reykjavík City Hostel, where we pitched our tent at the conjoined Reykjavík Campsite, which was crowded with colorful tents of other visitors with the same idea. Though bedtime didn't finally arrive until around midnight, it was still twilight—which is about as dark as the island gets in July. We dined on packaged trail mix and granola bars and snuggled up in our brand new, zip-together sleeping bags, which we bought for this particular trip. Day one dawned (only figuratively, since it never actually got dark) in a drizzle of rain, which explains the lush grass sprouting all over Reykjavík. After spending the first half of the day exploring downtown Reykjavík via the shopping district, most notably Kolaportið, Iceland's only flea market. We ate hot dogs from a food cart for lunch and stopped by a grocery store for a couple day's supply of food on the way out of town. Our objective for the rest of the day was to see the points on the Golden Circle, or basically 3 main spots to visit within an hour's drive of Reykjavík. Our first stop after a visitor center for afternoon coffee and ice cream (below), was Þingvellir, which is an area of historical, cultural and geological importance (something about Iceland's first parliament being established there), but mostly lots of lush grass, pretty waterfalls and rugged cliffs. Þingvellir After hiking around and taking lots of pictures of the scenery and each other, we got back in the car headed this time toward Geysir, the beautiful water geyser from which all geysers worldwide derive their name. On the way, we stopped in Laugarvatn to order pizza and watch the world cup finals with a bunch of wool sweater-wearing locals. We also stopped pretty frequently to befriend herds of Icelandic ponies (below), who seemed bored but sociable.
Gulfoss Our last stop of the night, which occurred in total solitude around midnight, was our encounter with Gulfoss, the largest volume waterfall in Europe. We camped in the completely empty parking lot, this time opting to sleep in the back of our 4x4 rather than pitch the tent for a brief overnight. Our sleep was so fantastic that we decided the next morning to skip setting up the tent and opted to sleep in the back of our car each night after that.
I don't just take pictures! There's more on my facebook page.
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