Day 5 started out early because we had a 10 a.m. tour scheduled for a glacier hike and we had a 1 1/2 hour drive to get there. After a very nice breakfast at the hotel, we hit the road. The road along the southern coast of Iceland is part of the ring road that circles the island, otherwise known as Hwy 1. We arrived at the glacier about 15 minutes early. The picture below is the view of the glacier from the road — the glacier is just behind the mountain sitting in the foreground (on the right side of the picture).
Shortly after we arrived, our tour guides came driving through the parking lot and told us to follow them. We booked our tour with Icelandic Mountain Guides and we had some great tour guides — very knowledgeable and fun. First up, they sized us for crampons and then gave us each a pick axe and crampons to carry to the glacier.
This is the approach to the glacier, walking on layers of sand and ash.
When we reached the glacier, we all put our crampons on and started the hike up on the ice. One interesting thing to note — the ice is pretty dirty at this time of year. Glaciers are layers of ice and ash from thousands of years of volcanic eruptions. The glaciers are all slowly melting (which leaves more layers of ash behind) and the winter snows have melted off, so if you want to see them when they are beautiful and white with lots of blue ice, you need to take your tour in the winter. I was really disappointed by that — I was really hoping to see some beautiful blue ice caves like you see on all the tour websites.
Hey Look — a little bit of blue ice!
You do have to be careful while hiking out on the glacier — you could easily fall into one of the big fissures. I’d be afraid to hike around on the glaciers without a guide who knows the difference between solid ice and places that you might fall in. We hiked around on the glacier for about an hour and the guides were talking the whole time. They told us lots of very interesting facts about volcanoes and glaciers. On the way back down the glacier, they let us stop and have a drink of the glacier water — it was cold and delicious!
Here’s another tour checking out the edge of the glacier — this gives you a good idea about the size of the glacier. We really enjoyed our tour and would highly recommend Icelandic Mountain Guides. One thing I might do differently (aside from trying to hike in the winter) would be to book a tour on Skaftafellsjokull instead of on Solheimajokull. I’m not really sure why — I think I must have read something after our tour that made me think that Skaftafellsjokull might be a more interesting glacier.
We finished the glacier hike around noon and backtracked along the ring road a bit to see some waterfalls that we didn’t have time to see earlier in the morning. The first waterfall was Seljalandsfoss, which is a beautiful 40 meter high waterfall. There is a footpath that allows you to walk up behind the waterfall. Bring your rain coat!
From here, we headed back East, toward Vik and stopped and took some pictures along the way. We stopped briefly at a little roadside museum that was all about the Eyjafjallajökull volcano. That’s the volcano that erupted in 2010 and shut down European airspace for 6 days. All the farmhouses in this area of the coastline were evacuated.
The scenery is stunning along this part of the coastline. The beaches are black volcanic sand/ash. Between the beaches and the mountains, there is farmland, and of course, the ring road.
We saw some collapsed turf houses built into caves that are near the road.
Just a few miles from the turf houses is the Skogafoss waterfall. The weather was perfect while we were here and we hiked up to the top.
When we came back down, we saw a rainbow! Rainbows are pretty common at waterfalls, but they require sun and many of our waterfall visits were accompanied by cloudy skies.
There is a little folk museum near the waterfall, but sadly we didn’t have time to visit. We grabbed a quick lunch at the gift shop and while we were there, we asked for directions to find a U.S. Navy plane that had crashed on the beach somewhere near here. A very helpful clerk pulled up google maps and showed us an aerial shot of the plane. “Just drive down the road about a mile and turn off just after the farm field. Then, be careful driving out on the beach — it’s not uncommon to have to rescue tourists who’ve driven out onto the sand and become stranded — especially with all the rain we’ve had lately.” Warning noted.
We followed instructions, turning off the road just after the farm field. We drove a little way toward the ocean on the beach, but boy, is the endless stretch of beach ever deceiving. It’s hard to tell if you’re one mile or three miles from the water. And which direction to walk after we reach the water — to the right or to the left? We got out of the car and wandered around for about thirty minutes and couldn’t find the plane. By now, it was around 5 p.m. so we decided to give up and continue on the way to Vik.
The previous day, when we had lunch at Bjarkalundur, I mentioned to the waiter how disappointed I was that we hadn’t seen puffins at Latrabjarg cliffs. He mentioned that we might have another opportunity to see them if we went to the Dyrholaey Nature Reserve near Vik. We followed the signs and parked in the parking lot which is very near the top of the cliffs.
There were quite a few people standing around, to include several nature photographers with huge camera lenses. We spoke with one of them as he was leaving and he said he’d only seen one puffin. So, at least there was hope. If nothing else, the scenery was stunning.
After about 45 minutes (which included wandering away, giving up and planning to leave) look what flew in and landed on the cliffs!
WooHoo! A puffin! We could go home happy now. Pretty soon, a few more puffins started flying in from the sea, but they never landed close to us on the cliffs. I took a ton of pictures of them flying in, but none of them are in focus. My camera was zoomed in as much as I could get it, but I wasn’t fast enough to track the flying puffins and avoid focusing on the water in the background. Blurry is good enough for the memory though!
About the time we decided to leave, a puffin landed on a cliff above us and several people ran up there to get some close up shots. I decided he’d be gone by the time I got up there. But he stayed out on his ledge, seeming to enjoy all the attention, so I finally gave in and joined the group.
What beautiful little birds!
You lookin’ at me?
One last look down that gorgeous black sand beach. Tomorrow, we’ll go to the other end of this beach and look back at these cliffs.
I was having so much fun, I could have stayed on those cliffs all night! But, the rest of the family does like to eat and sleep, so we made the short drive through Vik and checked in to our hotel Hotel Katla Hofdabrekka (about 3 miles out of town on the east side). We stayed here for two nights and our rooms were in a new building and were very clean. Another highly recommended hotel. The restaurant was only serving a buffet, so we went back into Vik and had dinner at Strondin Bistro and Bar. We had a very nice dinner — the food in Iceland just continued to be wonderful.
After dinner, by now after 10 p.m., we stopped by the church on the top of the hill and took a few pictures. Then it was off to bed — tired and happy that we finally saw puffins!
(In case you’re wondering — an Icelandic doctor. ;-) )
