Iceland days 4-7
Started today with a drive through and quick photo stop at some lava fields. This would turn out to be one of my favourite parts of the country. It's not as big and spectacular as some of the waterfalls but just driving through the landscape of these snow covered lava formations was just awesome to me. The scale of the fields and the colours really appealed.
A brief stop at a segment of a bridge that had been washed away in some glacier melt and turned into a rest stop and then we headed off for a nice easy hike to the Svartivoss waterfall.
This waterfall was pretty cool in that much of it was frozen. There was still water running but it was running through some frozen chutes into a big frozen cone and under the ice. Very cool and a very nice walk in the snowy landscape.
Next we drove up to the Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon. This place was awesome. Bit of the glacier break off and gather in the lagoon until it's their turn to wash out to sea. The glaciers are a variety of colours but there are some really brilliant pale blue ones which look pretty spectacular.
Apparently last year a group of 50 tourists were standing on the edge of the lagoon or one of the glacier fragments and it broke off and floated towards the middle of the lake. The boat operators had to rescue them. Dickheads. I'm sure it was amusing for the other tourists there.
Once the glacier fragments wash out some of them end up on a black sand beach either side of the inlet. They call it the Diamond Beach because the glacier fragments look like diamond or glass after they've been through the ocean and been melted down a little.
Our guide got some headlamps and put them under the glacier fragments to give some pretty cool photo ops.
We stayed at a pretty awesome hotel for the next two nights. Fosshotel Glacier Lagoon is a really nice new 4 star hotel with a very nice restaurant and pretty cool lobby bar. I spent far too much on dinner and drinks but it was delicious. I had langoustine (lobster) soup for entree but can't remember my mains.
That night I finally saw a noticeable showing of the northern lights! One of our group had noticed a few people outside staring at the sky so woke everyone up to go check out the lights. It was a little windy out but not too bad.
So the lights we actually saw with our eyes are nothing like the photo below. What I saw was a very pale grey in the sky that could have been mistaken for either light pollution over the horizon or very wispy clouds if you only glanced at it. But after staring at it for a while I could see it start to expand and contract which is the "dancing" they speak about when viewing the lights. It would have been awesome if I could have actually seen the lights in colour but seen them I have. I will have to come back again to see if I can get a better showing but I'm satisfied that I've seen them even if they weren't terribly exciting. It was better than the previous night though so I can't complain.
This photo was taken by Melissa in our group. I think she was the only one with a camera capable of taking a photo of the lights because my phone damn sure wasn't doing it. If anyone is going lights hunting this was taken with a GoPro. This would be the last time I'd see the lights this trip.
Today's main activity was a glacier hike and visit to an ice cave in the Skaftafell National Park. Started in the same spot we did the hike yesterday so we drove over, got knitted up and onto a bus with maybe 50 other people doing the same thing. Amusingly I was the only one who got to wear my own shoes. The glacier people made everyone else use the hire shoes because they weren't appropriate for the glacier and crampons. Strange because most of them seemed fine to me but whatever.
And of course - our guide happened to be an Australian chick. Complete opposite side of the world and I'm running into Australians everywhere. Hottie too!
So we strap on our crampons and walk up the glacier to the ice cave where we fuck about for a little while. They gave us some pretty useless pick axes which theoretically are supposed to be for smashing into ice but in reality were photo props. So I took advantage.
The ice cave was really quite small and nowhere near as impressive as the one on Svalbard but it was good fun nonetheless. This one had a lot more air bubbles trapped in the ice which looked pretty cool. It was like an aero bar.
After the hike we headed back to the iceberg lagoon and diamond beach to try to get a look in some different light. Slightly different but not enough to be exciting. However there were some pretty spectacular skies on the way there which made the drive totally worthwhile.
Afterwards we went to the totally boring Thorbergur Cultural Centre museum about some Icelandic author then had a pretty average meal at the attached Thorbergssetur Restaurant. The restaurant is supposed to be pretty good and known for serving good traditional Icelandic food but I would not recommend either to anyone unless you have a particular interest in the author. We had tomato soup, lamb and chocolate cake. The lamb was tasty but over cooked and the rest was average.
Stopped back at the lagoon on the way back to see if we could see any northern lights but there was nothing happening so we went back to the hotel and had a few drinks.
The next morning we started heading back to Reykjavic for our last day of the tour. Technically tomorrow is the last day but I hardly consider breakfast at the hotel to be a part of the tour.
We made a couple of brief stops on the way back to Reykjavic to break up the drive a little.
First was a small church which is one of only 6 of this particular type of church left in Iceland. The most unique thing about this place is that the graves in the church are all small burial mounds rather than holes dug into the earth. No doubt that's because the ground was frozen so it was too much bloody effort to dig a hole large enough to bury someone.
Then a quick stop at some basalt columns below a rest stop for a couple of nice photos and some ice for Melissa and Jonas to slide around on. Those 2 might as well be penguins!
And the last stop of the day was at the Hellisheiði Geothermal Power Plant. It wasn't a long stop as you really can't see very much but it was really fascinating. I don't remember half of what they said but it's such an efficient system that really utilises the resources of Iceland very well. Because of its efficiency power is extremely cheap in Iceland. The water from the plant is used to heat everyone's homes and even pumped under the main footpaths in town to stop them from icing up. Fascinating place and well worth reading up on if you're interested.
Back to the hotel and then out for a farewell dinner and drinks with the group. The place we went to was basically an American pub because they had a variety of food to please everyone. Lost half the group after dinner as we branched off to a couple of bars. At one of the bars we tried the Fermented Black Shark which is supposed to be one of Iceland's traditional foods. I'd heard it was an extremely strong taste and big ammonia smell but it wasn't bad at all. The smell was almost non-existent and it was almost a smoky taste. I quite enjoyed it. People are soft.
Finished up about 1.30am then headed off to the hotel to get some sleep.
Breakfast the next morning then everyone went their separate ways. A nice group of people but I don't think I've formed any lasting friendships.
Overall the tour was good but I'm still disappointed I didn't drive myself. I think I could have done it without any issues but we did have pretty great weather most of the time. I think there was only really one day that had really icy roads and a bit of wind which is what I was mostly afraid of though I saw plenty of shitty tourist drivers out there doing their thing. That said it could very well have been disastrous so in the end it was probably worth spending the money on the tour.
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