Iceland is a country that consists of amazing natural wonders, interspersed with swaths of utterly desolate stretches of volcanic wasteland. My tour of the south coast wended its way through this and, conveniently, that's also how the tour felt: long swathes of tour bus boredom, dotted with some really and truly awesome experiences.
Thankfully the bus had wifi, so I just worked on blog posts and photos in the interim stretches :)
So I'd originally planned on spending my last day in Iceland on the west coast with the same company that took me through the Golden Circle (Iceland Horizons, awesome company with great small group tours, book their tours if you can), but they hadn't had any other bookings for that day so had already decided to not run the tour when I went to book it. I went and asked my hostel's front desk what they recommended doing, and the concierge on duty recommended a couple tours on the south coast. One short one that just saw the waterfalls and the black sand beaches at Vik (a TINY town on the south coast. Like 250 people tiny), one that did that and went hiking on the glacier (Kalta Glacier I believe?), and one that went out to the glacier lagoon further east.
I decided for the latter, then realized it was listed as a two day trip. The concierge said to not worry, it was only a two-day trip in the winter and early spring, when they only had 4 hours of daylight a day to actually see things. This time of year, it was just one very long day. They pick up at 7am, drop off at 10-11pm. My desire for more scenery outweighed by desire to sleep past 6am, so I signed up. It ended up being with a company called Gray Line buses, which--while the wifi is nice--is a so-so tour company. The tours are much bigger, have an extra collection step (small buses pick you up from your hotels, then drop you at a terminal with larger buses, adding about an hour on to the departure and drop-off times) and have a bit more of a canned feeling to them. I don't remember anything about my driver or guide, and I'm quite certain they wouldn't have recognized me even a half hour after the tour ended.
That said, I still had an amazing time. The sights were as amazing as advertised (if the crazed grins in my Instagram selfies didn't give it away), and I just used the time on the bus to catch up on blogging.
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We also passed a HUGE geothermal plant that I hadn't been
able to grab a photo of the day before. |
The start of the tour actually went through the same town as the Golden Circle tour to start, but stopped at a different place for breakfast. I grabbed a Pylsur (an Icelandic hotdog with raw and fried onions), as they're apparently one of the must-eat foods of Iceland, and a mango-flavored, drinkable version of Skyr (which I'm now beginning to think of as Icelandic Soylent Green), then back on the bus for a mini-stop at (*That Icelandic Volcano No One Can Spell*). We grabbed some photos of the deceptively serene-looking mountain and glacier, then hopped back on the bus to our first real stop, Skogafoss.
Which is a truly EPIC waterfall.
It's not as big as Gullfoss was, but it's SO much prettier. Gullfoss is massive and impressive, but feels
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| See Instagram for a photo of me totally soaked by the falls. |
separated from you, since you're basically on a viewing platform the entire time you're watching it. With Skogafoss though, you can walk right up to the base of the falls and feel the mist blasting you in the face and blowing you back (I got a little overeager and did exactly that). Add on a rainbow that shines on sunny days, and you've got a really awesome experience on your hands. I felt like if I played the right Legend of Zelda song, the waterfall would part and reveal the entrance to the Zora domain.*
(*Yes it's a nerdy thought, but it was legit one of my first thoughts when I saw it.)
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| One of the many glacier feet we passed. |
Back on the bus, we drove for a bit, then stopped for lunch at a cafe. The food was meh (I got soggy grilled char and potatoes), but the view of the glacier's two feet in the area was excellent. The scale of the glaciers this far north is frankly staggering. You look at them and your brain just doesn't know how to comprehend that much ice. The guide said that if you spread that one glacier across all of Iceland, it'd cover the island in a layer of ice 50 feet deep. The feet (the rivers of ice you think of when you think of glaciers) were awesome as well, but were also stark reminders of global warming. Side by side, the guide said that they split around a crag in the mountain and used to meet in one super-foot afterwards, but have retreated and haven't touched for over a decade.
After a few more hours of driving, sight number two for the day was the Jokulsarlon Glacier Lagoon, which gave
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Hard to capture the lagoon, but I've got some panaoramas
cookin' that should help. |
Glacier Bay in Alaska a run for its money. The winds weren't in our favor, so most of the mini-icebergs were too far inland to really see, but the area was stunning nonetheless. A gorgeous glacier in the background, crystal clear blue glacier water forming a giant lagoon, and hunks of glacier floating about are pretty hard to beat. There were also allegedly some seals around, but all I saw was some incredibly grumpy water fowl who made a bunch of disgruntled squawking noises and disappeared under the water when I walked up (they resurfaced a few minutes later 30 meters away, making even MORE disgruntled squawking noises).
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| Black sand dunes at Vik. |
Back on the bus for a two hour drive back west, and we ate dinner at Vik, the tiny town I mentioned earlier. The food was actually the best of the tour-food I had; I got a bowl of haddock and potato stew and some rye bread. I eat fast on my own, so I scarfed it down and headed to check out Vik's big claim to fame: it's black sand beaches. Much like Hawaii's, all the volcanic basalt eventually wears down into sand on the coast, and makes for a really impressive sight. I've seen lots of beaches with dingy gray sand, but seeing one with sand that's BLACK is something else. The beach is also apparently very dangerous; the waves get really bad under the slightest wind. Our tour guide told us to stay at least 50 feet away, which seemed like overkill, but given how active they were on a calm day, I can see where the warning would apply. I wandered a bit, grabbed some photos of the craggy coastline, then hopped back on the bus to our last sight.
Seljalandsfoss, which was easily my favorite stop of the day and possibly my favorite thing in the country.
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| Seljalandsfoss |
Like Skogafoss, it's a waterfall about 200 ft high, and like Skogafoss you can walk right up to its base and get hit in the face by the spray. Unlike Skogafoss, however, you can actually walk BEHIND the waterfall and watch the sunset through it. Which is exactly what I did. I LOVED this and got way closer than the other people in my tour and, as a result, got utterly drenched. After taking all my photos and just enjoying the experience for a bit I walked back and got laughed at by no less than three people on my tour who asked if I had fun. I did, so I just laughed back :)
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| Sunset from behind the falls. |
Back on the bus, it was about another two hours before I was back at my hostel, putting me in bed around 11pm. I had to be up at 3am for my flight to Scotland, so I was grateful for planning ahead and packing already, as it meant I could just pass out and go straight to sleep.
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| Just a nice sunset. Please excuse and extra lens flare and bokeh; the falls got my lens (and me!) damp. |
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