Iceland – Day 4

What a day this was!!!  We headed out to territory unknown today – the southeast coast.

Our first stop was at Gljúfrabúi and Seljalandsfoss – beautiful waterfalls within the same area.  Gljúfrabúi is unique because it doesn’t fall over the side as most do, it drops into an opening that is mostly obscured from passers by.  We didn’t go in to take pictures because it was guaranteed that we would walk out wet and we certainly didn’t want that to happen first stop of the day!  From what we could see, it truly was a beautiful fall!

We followed the path down to Seljalandsfoss, which is also a beautiful and unique fall.  A person can walk completely behind the falls!  Again, we opted not to for fear of being miserable and wet for the rest of the day as well as fear of camera equipment getting wet.

Stop #2 was at Skógafoss waterfall.  This is an amazing waterfall as it’s one of the widest falls in Iceland.  The water pounding over the edge created beautiful double rainbows in the mist.

And of course, Blake & Sondra at the falls…

Adding to the beauty of the waterfall was the picturesque setting:  to the left a farm was nestled between the stream and a massive mountin, to the right was open green space, and opposite the fall was a nice view of the ocean.  It was a mostly clear day and we could see the outline of some of the outer islands.

Stop #3 was at Reynisfjara, a beach covered in black sand made from years of lava and volcanic ash settling.  There are also basalt columns next to a strange semi-cave.  It wasn’t a cave, but more of a large cove next to the water.  An added bonus was watching paragliders sail overhead after launching from the mountain and then softly landing on the beach.

And of course this beach had the dreaded “Sneaker Waves” that we’d seen / read about the day before.  These are waves that we were warned would “steal your children” if you weren’t careful.   Basically you  might get 3, 5, 15 normal waves, and then all of a sudden a crazy huge wave would sneak in, grab you, and pull you to sea if you were not paying attention (i.e. being ready to run).

Here’s the warning sign for it:

Stop #4 was THE big stop – we hiked Sólheimajökull glacier!!!!  After getting fitted with an ice axe, a helmet, sturdy hiking boots, a harness (NOT attractive…just so you know), and crampons we set off toward the glacier.  The first part of the walk was through what can be described as lava gravel.  It was black but it had the appearance of large, smooth gravelstones.  It was a bit of a challenge to walk through at times, much like walking in sand at the beach.  After passing through all of that nonsense, it was time to start navigating the ice!

Our guide – Vjeran – was amazing!  He loved his job, loved sharing his “office” with us, and did a great job of taking care of everyone.

While we thought this would be a fun “day hike”, it turned out it was no joke.   From hiking between a ½ mile and a mile to get to the glacier, to actually getting on the glacier, it was a strenuous hike, that had us sweating.  Tim had to take off his jacket, and thus was hiking on a GLACIER in a t-shirt.

To get up on the glacier, you had to zig-zag up a series of old crevasses ever going up and up.  Of course this was on  ice, so the first few minutes you were getting used to trusting your crampons, that they really would bite in the ice, and really would keep you from either face planting, or sliding down the steep steep side of a glacier.   The 10-tooth trusty crampons did their job, we hiked to the top / plateau area of the glacier, where our guide told us we had over 700 meters of blue ice beneath us.

He showed us cool things like a baby moulin.  (A moulin is a ever growing hole that “mills” it’s way down into the ice, and then eventually out.)  Here is the baby moulin:

Of course a little farther into the glacier, he showed us a “grown-up” moulin, that our previous baby one would someday become…

We also got to see a newly forming crevasse, which had started as a crack 2 weeks ago, and had already progressed to a small crevasse as seen below:

One other fun thing…   he cut a water bleed, for us to drink from after the long climb to get up to the top of the glacier.  Using 2 of our hand axes for handles, you had to “push-up” down to drink from it (unless you were smart enough to have a bottle to fill)…    Here is Sondra doing her push-up / drinking:

I know, I know…   from the volcanic ash around here, it looks like it would be nasty… but the layer we were drinking from, and thus the water was over 200 years old, and was about as pure as you can get.   Delicious and cold!

We then finally began coming down off the ice / glacier.  Going down is actually harder than going up.  (well, not exertion wise, but in “bite-wise” of getting a good bite with your crampons)   Definitely never racking, as you had to make sure you had good solid bites, and didn’t let inertia start you into a run, which would be bad, very bad.

All 4 of us made it down, with na’er a fall.   (We all had a few slips, when a crampon wasn’t biting well, but no one fell!)

The only bad part of the day is just another story to tell.  The bus was cramped when we got on and then additional passengers boarded at later stops.  The biggest stop was picking up 4 people who had been on a 6-day hiking trek and had duffle bags that rival hockey gear bags.  Where would you put those bags?  In the trunk of the bus maybe (by trunk we mean the storage space at the back end of smaller busses)?  Well, the hatch wouldn’t open so we ended up with two seats at the back filled with gear, Blake in the middle hoping to find room for his 6’2″ frame, and Sondra squeezed in the corner of the back seat trying to avoid the seat belt latch from jabbing her in the backside.  Adding to that is the fact that the bus had NO shock absorbers.  The roads are bumpy, speed bumps through towns, and Blake had maybe 2″ clearance between his head and the overhead.  Needless to say this was far from a comfortable ride.  While we anticipated being a little stiff from our glacier walk, some can also be attributed to the crappy bus ride we endured for about 5 hours total.

Tomorrow is our semi-lazy day.  Nothing scheduled early and everything is within Reykjavik so we won’t be running around all day.