Fjallsárlón Glacial Lagoon

Time to start unwinding this one. We have to keep this trip relatively short as compared to others in order to meet Sydney when she returns on Friday. We have spent the last spent the last few days near Höfn, a fishing town in southeast Iceland. Our departure point is some 5 hours east, in Reykjavik which translates roughly as Smoke Cove. Apparently the first explorers of Iceland saw the steam from the geothermal vents and thought it was smoke and incorporated that fact when they named Reykjavik.

Not without a few stops along the way. The clouds have parted and we took advantage of that and revisited Jökulsárlón and Fjallsárlón Glacier Lagoons and the visit was a polar opposite of yesterday. Foggy yesterday, cloudy but bright today. The tide was coming in yesterday, going out with a vengeance today like someone pulled a plug causing the water to rush out. This caused the ice in the lagoon to flip and move like they were motorized. The plug at the outlet reformed in front of us with iceberg collisions and constantly changing water levels. Quite the site!

Alas the nice weather did not last. Driving the coast meant we dipped further south and after we passed through Vík, the southernmost village in Iceland the rain picked up a bit. We made the best of it during our visit to the Black Sand Beach a bit more wet than we would like. Quite the dramatic place, tall cliffs surrounded by a black sand beach make it quite a beautiful place to visit. On top of that the next landmass directly south of the beach is Antarctica meaning the full fury of the Atlantic Ocean is able to attack the land. This makes the shore here quite dangerous, many visitors have drowned here being swept out to sea by a sneaker wave so if you visit, which I encourage, do not turn your back on the Atlantic!

The weather got a bit better as we visited our last two stops, the waterfalls Skógafoss and Seljalandsfoss. However the pace of the the trip is starting to catch-up with us and we are looking forward to getting back to “Smoke Cove” and relaxing a bit before going out to dinner.

A clearer day at Jökulsárlón glacial lagoon.

Fjallsárlón Glacier Lagoon

A clearer day at Fjallsárlón Glacier Lagoon.

Magnús Thoroddsen, our expert driver and guide and patient traveling companion on this journey.

One of the many glaciers we saw.

Walking on a moss covered lava flow. Very soft and bouncy which suprised us. Also very dangerous if you are not careful.

Eyjafjallajökull Volcano, the souce of many travel delays in 2010.

Basalt rock formations at Black Sand Beach in Vik.

Rock formations at the Black Sand Beach at Vík.

Helping Atlas.

Skógafoss waterfall.

Seljalandsfoss waterfall.

Behind Seljalandsfoss waterfall.

Today was all about ice, lots of it available here. Go figure. We started the day with a boat tour of Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon. The ice here is 1000 years old (only) which is a fact that surprised me. In fact the glaciers in Iceland are only about 2000 years old, did not exist when the first settlers arrived. I thought they were much, much older. After the tour we spent some time on the nearby blacksand beach which is covered with ice. A million pieces of art exist here, my camera got a workout. After the beach we spent some time at the more isolated Fjallsárlón Glacier Lagoon which is smaller than Jökulsárlón and does not have an outlet to the sea. Fewer people come here, there is a boat tour here as well using a Zodiac boat. More intimate and allowing you to get much closer to the main glacier than the Jökulsárlón some may enjoy it more. The facilities at Fjallsárlón Glacier Lagoon have been recently upgraded and are now superior to facilities at Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon so the traffic here is going to pick up soon.

Gonna miss this place.