We continue our adventure in Iceland on the South Coast. This section ended up taking us two days to complete as there was so much to see! That meant multiple stops along a small section of highway. We had a selection of sites on our list of must sees, and the rest would be stops along the way that seemed of interest to us.
If you missed out on Day 1, you can read about the Golden Circle here!
Day 2
With a good night sleep behind us and our staple breakfast of oatmeal, we said goodbye to the campsite in Hella and headed east on the main highway in Iceland. Our first stop was at two waterfalls just 500 m away from each other.
As we approached, we knew these were the falls that you can actually walk behind. Since this meant the possibility (certainty) of getting wet, we geared up with rain pants and rain jackets and headed towards the falls. My dad had given us a couple of sou’westers to bring with us so we tucked those into our pockets as well.
Just for this one waterfall, we both put on the hats and took a couple of pictures for my dad 🙂 He was happy to see that we used them at least once on the trip.
From behind the falls, you could walk to the waters edge for more photo ops. This was really neat as I have never been behind waterfalls before.
Now that we were sufficiently wet, we headed to the second set of falls a mere 500 m from this one. There was campground at the base of these falls, which would have been a neat place to stay, but we realized that it would have been super busy. Dan would have also been out all night taking pictures and not gotten a good night sleep.
The second waterfall was inside a small cavern that was accessed by walking on stones in the river. Since I was busy trying to let myself dry a little (I would have been too cranky to continue if I was wet), Dan went in to check it out.
A short drive brought us to Skogafoss, our third waterfall for the day, which is MASSIVE. It has been featured in many movies and it is a popular tourist bus stop so it was packed with people. Before we headed out to explore, Dan had the great idea to only wear shorts and shirts under our rain gear. That way we would minimize the heat and sweat from hiking around. We then headed out and climbed the 530 steps to the top. The views were amazing!
We noticed that there was a trail headed inland along the side of the river that fed the waterfall. This was one of our “let’s just check it out” moments. We headed along the trail and were greeted with another waterfall. We stopped a person who was walking back and inquired about the trail and she told us “there are MANY more waterfalls”. Well, that was what we wanted to hear. We walked for a good distance and we were greeted by waterfall after waterfall. Eventually Dan climbed one last hill and saw that it was a very long distance to the next falls, so we decided to turn around and head back to the van.
Once back at the actual falls, we headed down the 530 steps to the bottom. With full rain gear still on, Dan went as close as he could get to the falls to get a picture. As you see in the picture, the falls are like a giant compared to him.
Onward we went just a short distance down the road to check out a glacier. It is amazing how one can travel from a rushing water to a frozen glacier. Here there was an option to get a walking tour on top of the glacier. However, we were not going to spend any extra money doing special tours.
Shortly after our glacier stop, we passed the entrance to the old plane crash site. At first I didn’t want to bother with this site, but in the end we decided to double back and check it out. Not the last time we would do that on this trip. To get to the actual plane crash site, it was an 8 km round trip hike on a flat black volcanic rock road. It was about 4:30 pm and we haven’t eaten supper yet which meant another long night with a late stop at a campground. Oh well. When will we ever have the chance to be here again, right?
So off we hiked as fast as we could, wind and sideways rain in our faces and all. It was actually really weird as we could see the people walking ahead of us, and then looking back, our vehicle in the parking lot. Have we actually moved?
After 45 minutes of hiking, we crested the hill and finally had the plane crash in our sights. Such a strange place really. Why not clean up the bits of the crash? Why leave it here on the beach? Even in the cockpit the wires on some of the control panels were still intact. We circled the plane a few times, just taking in what we were seeing and to pose for a few pictures like tourists would.
Once we finally got back to our vehicle, we were greeted by a local dog. He followed us around until we got in our van, looking so sad like he was wanting food. We did not feed him as we noticed that his collar also had the words “Do Not Feed”. Guess the owner knows he begs for food from tourists. We had a snack to tide us over until we stopped for the night as there was one more place we had our list of stops for the day.
Heading down towards the town of Vik there is a black sand beach with structures formed from cooling lava. When I was in Ireland many years ago, I was lucky to see structures like this, however for Dan this would be a first.
Upon arrival the wind was fierce! Hopefully this meant huge waves as well. Yup, even signs warning tourists about the waves in the area called sneaker waves. Basically one wave crashes and there is a bigger wave sneaking up behind that which would catch you off guard. As always, respect the ocean!
This place was amazing! The cliffs are huge basalt columns that take on a pentagon shape meaning each column has 5 sides. I did get a little math geek feeling walking around knowing that in my classes this coming year I would be showing pictures of this natural geometry.
These columns ranged in size from the size of your palm to about 2 feet wide. On sections of the cliff, many people would stand on the columns for a picture. That was a given for me, but I also felt the need to work on my tan, we are at a beach right? Probably not the best weather to do this, but it was fun to try. I found that I had to pick up the sand and take a closer look as I have not been on many black sand beaches. It was just like asphalt.
We finally headed to our campsite in Vik. Not the best spot for the night as we had to park our camper in the gravel parking lot. It was a place to sleep and fuel up our bodies. For supper we had Happy Yak meals, which were delish! I will be adding these to my future backcountry trips.
There was a huge amount of wind and rain which made for a very rough nights sleep. I think we both woke up numerous times because of the van shaking and the sound of the wind, so we were pretty tired the next day.
Day 3
As I figured from the night before, we were tired. But we had to keep going on our journey. Our first stop for the day was a road side attraction that just looked interesting called Laufskalavarda, where the story says that passerby’s should place a rock to help bring good luck and good passage. We both took a rock and placed it on one of the piles. We want good luck for sure.
As we continued, we were mesmerized by the formations we saw. The road sides were covered in lava covered moss. Unfortunately, in a big van and very small shoulders we couldn’t see a place to pull over. We had to drive, and drive and drive on by. It actually felt like we would not get a chance to explore this cool landscape on foot. But as luck would have it (guess those stones were working), we finally came to a parking area which featured a lookout and small trail among the lava rocks. Yeah!
A short distance away, there is another waterfall symbol on our map. Yup, we went searching for it. This brought us to Kirkjubaejarklaustur where we found a small parking area, picnic place, and trails that lead to the top of the falls. Guess we were taking a short hike this morning. One thing we kept finding in Iceland were some of the best trail signs ever.
This hike took us up many steps to a lovely little pond at the top which was feeding the waterfall. Here the sign said that nuns used to bathe in these waters many years ago. We took some pictures and I had to feel the water (I had placed my hand in almost every waterfall and pond on this trip).
We were now entering one of my favorite areas in Iceland, Vatnajokull National Park (aka GLACIERS!). We would now be driving just south of this glacier with many stops to view its reaches along the roads.
We reached Iceberg Lagoon where we were able to walk down to the waters edge and see all the little bergs floating in the lagoon. Some were just close enough to touch and other tourist had even pulled some of the ice chunks on shore to get a closer look.
Next we stopped just down the road in Glacier Lagoon. Well, these chunks of ice were WAY bigger, hence the name “glacier”. They were also so blue that it was hard to know if our cameras would pick up that color we were seeing in person. We then headed across the road to Diamond Beach. I had totally thought this name would be from the actual sand on the beach, boy was I surprised to see that it was actually bits of the ice all over the beach. It was making the beach look like it was littered with diamonds, ICE diamonds!
At this point in our trip it was time to find another place to shower “aka find a hot pot/spring”. I had been searching online for some natural springs to see and found one called Glacier World that featured 5 outdoor tubs with views of a glacier. This sounded just wonderful and we ventured off the main road (still passing lots of sheep) and found the spot.
After paying the entrance fee which included the use of a towel (bonus since we didn’t have to get ours wet), we showered and entered the tubs. The first tub was deep but out of the shelter of the rock face which meant lots of cold wind on our faces. We decided to stay in one of the two shallow tubs, plus they provided the better views of the glacier.
With the hot pots being our final stop for the day, we continued along the main highway looking for our next camping spot. But before we found it, we had to drive through a tunnel! Little did we know that we would actually drive through many more tunnels on the north coast with some interesting driving skills needed.
After some searching down a sketchy road (clearly the wrong road), we found our campsite for the third night in Stafafell, a very very very small “town”, location, something?? It seems like there was a hostel, a couple houses and this campground. It didn’t matter to us as it was not busy and we had some great views of the surrounding mountains.
Supper tonight was a Happy Yak meal for me, a sandwich for Dan, and an AlpineAire dessert. It was another long day and we were both glad to be stopped for the day to get some well deserved rest.
Loving the blog……great adventures for sure.