Four... no, Five... Maybe Six Days of Updates, or How Making Time for Blogging in Iceland Can be Difficult. Part 2 or Something

Our next destination was the village of Vik, which lies very near the southernmost point in Iceland. The Ring Road takes you east along the south coast over flat plains which lie at the feet of the volcanoes to the north. The first of which is the, now famous, Eyjafjallajokul, which dramatically erupted last April and caused much disruption in Europe. These plains are strikingly quiet and barren. Few houses and fewer villages dot the side roads that turn off the highway. There are regular sandy washes where glaicial dams have burst and flooded the plains. These a characterized by wide swaths of black sand sporting little to no vegetation with one or more small streams meandering through to the sea.

Vik is a tiny town of around 300 near to the southernmost point of Iceland, approaching the village you leave the coast heading through a mountain pass that, in short order, makes you forget you were just driving by the shore. After a few miles, however, it drops you back down the hill and into the village. We made our way to the hostel, glad to be done driving for the day. This hostel was in an old house that looked somewhat dumpy from the outside, however inside its recently remodeled and very nice. The desk was staffed by an American girl, we asked her if there was anywhere to get dinner, she told us the only place open was the gas station which had a diner. As it was our only option we headed dow, finding a quiet little restaurant serving mostly hamburgers and fries. I feel like its good policy to try a burger in every foreign country and Iceland did not disappoint, the waitress brought us massive, messy burgers with fried eggs on top. They were fantastic.

Starting to see a theme here? The food here is unbelieveably
awesome. I have no doubt I've packed on quite few pounds during my stay. That's OK, I'll be broke when I get home, so I'll be living off a pittance which will likely help me shed some weight.

Anyways, in the morning we arose for a nice breakfast in the hostel then packed up and started our trek to Skaftafell national park, a decent drive to the east. The first stop on the way, however, was the beach at Vik. A long, wide, black beach runs for miles from the huge rocks on the western edge (the southernmost point of Iceland) to quite some ditance in the east. How far they stretched I'm not sure, though it was further than we could see. These beaches are quite breathtaking, though the morning was windy it wasn't terribly cold. The waves break quite heavily and the tide was coming in as we were there, so it made for a fun game of trying for a photo in front of a breaking waves then running from the surf as it rolled in. I was caught by a particularly large one and my boots were soaked. No problem, we would be in the car all day, so I kicked off my boots, stunk up the car and we were on our way to the park.

The drive from Vik to Skaftafell park took us until around lunchtime. We stopped at the visitors center which took us through the history and geology of the region. They offered lots of guided glacier walks, but looking around we chose to head off on our own, the trail was good and led us right to the massive fields of gravel, boulders and streams of water deposited by the glacier as it has retreated. The glacier itself lay ahead and was a wonderful blue color topped by a layer of fresh snow. Soon the trail more or less disappeared, and we were left to our own devices, the only guide being the bootprints of earlier hikers and a sign warning to stick to larger rocks and avoid certain areas of the glacier.

Being prepared only to do some light hiking we stuck to the edge of the glacier. Had we had more time and been better equipped we would have gone further. As it was it was getting late and we headed back for the car, but not before I drank from a stream of crystal clear glacial water (which is said to be completely safe to drink) and Lance contributed to glacial melting by peeing on the ice. Taking our time on our way back we stopped for a while to throw rocks at a frozen pond while Erin made fun of us for acting like children... what can I say, some things are just fun. Throwing rocks is one those things.

We made it back to an empty parking lot, apparently we were the last ones to leave the park, which was a bit eerie. We headed a couple of miles down the road to our hotel for the night, a very nice, if quiet, place called Fosshotel. Being no where near anything we asked at the desk if there was anything interesting to do for the evening. The receptionist suggested that we head to the glacial lagoon about 45 minutes up the road, if we left just then we would make it just in time for sunset. What awaited us there was truly one of the most incredible sights in a country filled with amazing scenery. As the glacier flows down towards the coast it meets a large lagoon, into which massive icebergs break off.

Many of the icebergs are large enough you can climb onto them, we hopped over onto a couple of the larger ones for some pictures pretty amazing photos. Lance then decided to run up a steep embankment, immediately upon getting to the top he shouted for us to get up there and join him. Climbing to the top we turned see the lagoon was far larger than you realize on the shore. The setting sun shone through the jagged blue ice making for perhaps the most incredible sight I've ever seen. Truly something everyone should witness and one I hope to see again.

Minds blown we drove back to the hotel for dinner and to get an early night in bed. The next morning we would be getting up fairly early for breakfast so we could get started on our longest day of driving heading to the Blue Lagoon, then back to Reykjavik.

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