General Thoughts:

Today’s drive was planned out as the longest of the trip. Taking advantage of using Vík as a base because it’s in the center of the South Coast which is home to tons of waterfalls, glaciers, and the often temperamental Atlantic Ocean.

The South Coast features a coastal plain composed mainly of alluvial runoff from the central highlands, which varies in width from a couple of kilometers to 25 kilometers. This is a good chunk of the usable land in the southern half of the island. The highlands rise up, rather abruptly, 300m – 1200m. This means that any water draining from the center of the island becomes a waterfall before it can reach the ocean. Consequently, they are everywhere. Some massive, some small. There’s one place we passed where there were four in sight. All small and no way to stop and admire them because, well, there were so many other, more spectacular ones, no one bothered to try to monetize them.

Because I couldn’t predict the weather or the crowds, I plotted more stops than we could do, so we’d have options. The stops listed below are the ones we actually hit, except for two. One was one of those pull-offs with room for half a dozen cars overlooking a braided stream with a bunch of rapids. I can’t locate the parking area on the map, but there are a couple of pictures below in the gallery.

The other unlisted stop was to recharge. It’s a saga, and we’ll get into it below. The extra delay that caused really pushed the schedule later than we wanted. It’s sometimes hard to track time in the summer when sunset is around 2230. It’s twilight from about 1800 on because the sun is low in the northwest sky and that’s behind the central highlands from the south coast.

I wasn’t completely recovered from the super long previous day, so I was again exhausted by the time we made it back to Vík. It was 2130, and NOTHING is open after 2100 in this small town (it can’t have more than a thousand people total). Nothing. I was hungry and pissed. Not even the convenience store attached to the gas station.

Itinerary: (468 km, 6:11 hr.)

• Skógafoss
• Sólheimajökull
• Fjaðrárgljúfur Viewpoint
• Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon and Diamond Beach
• Back to the Hotel (Vík)

Route:

First Leg: Vík to Skógafoss Waterfall (32 km, 0:36 hr.)

The first order of the day was to charge the car. I had noted that the one gas station in town, across the street from the hotel, had a charger. So, when we got up, we took the car over and plugged it, then walked back to the hotel for breakfast. Half an hour later, we were fed and caffeinated, and the car was charged up; it was time to get on the road.

We started a little later than I had planed, it was closer to 0930 by the time we reached Skógafoss and there were already a bunch of people there. No buses yet, thank god. There is a campground right at the foot of the falls. Pretty cool, if you fancy sleeping on the ground in 40 deg weather with a 300 Kr / use bath house. But you can’t beat the view.

I had a shot I wanted to take here, this is one of those classic Iceland photo stops. In landscape photographer’s parlance, you stand where the tripods holes are and take your best shot. Which is to say, everyone shots from here, can you do something with it or at least come close to what the pros walk away with?

No, I couldn’t. Not because I had the wrong or bad equipment, or I couldn’t compose the shot I wanted. It’s because some fat chick in a wedding dress spent more than half an hour cavorting in front of the falls getting her picture taken as if she rented out the falls for her personal use. It was highly irritating.

In other places, people were self-aware and polite. They would frame up and take a couple of shots, then step back and let the next person have a clear shot, and so on.

As you can see from Jess’s photo, I waded out into the outflow stream to try and frame up a decent shot, but this is the one place where having the waterproof hiking boots, you know, the ones back in the car, would have come in handy. These streams are very wide and very shallow. Maybe 30m wide of rocky bed with 3-4m of the width actually carrying water. So I hopped out to a good spot and managed an OK shot.

But I was pissy now, and out of patience, time to move on.

Second Leg: Skógafoss to Sólheimajökull (12.6 km, 0:23 hr.)

Right close by Skógafoss is Sólheimajökull. It’s not visible from the ring road as it’s a couple of kilometers up a winding access road from Route 1. Sólheimajökull is an outlet glacier of the larger Mýrdalsjökull ice cap and is an easy hike from the parking area making this one of the places where you can take a guided hike on the glacier.

I’ve never seen the attraction of hiking on a moving block of ice full of deep cracks and (possibly your) watery grave. I’m okay with admiring it from an observation point at the end of the trail and calling it good.

This observation point, like most of them, where you won’t fall to your death, is bound by a chain strung along some low poles. You can easily walk around them and proceed the remaining 500m or so to the actual glacier. This highlights the difference between how authorities in Europe perceive personal responsibility and the way it’s viewed in the US. At the observation point, there’s a sign that says, “If you go past here, you may die. We recommend hiking the glacier only with a licensed guide. Or, you may die. And, we will laugh at you.” Or something similar in officialese. In the US, there would be a huge chain link fence screwing up the view with a locked gate, and only the hiking guides have a key. And if someone caught you out there w/o a guide, you’d be in trouble.

In Iceland, you’re free to give it a try. However, if you need rescue, i.e., you got into trouble without the good grace of it being fatal, they will bill you the cost of the SAR operation to get you out. And they won’t be gentle about it.

Anyway, it nice, we looked it over, hiked around a bit along the melt lagoon, and hiked back the car. The day was getting on and there was more to see and do.

Third Leg: Sólheimajökull to Fjaðrárgljúfur Viewpoint (10 km, 1:25 hr.)

The next stop was Fjaðrárgljúfur (which means Feather Canyon). I should point out here that plan of the day was to drive West to Skógafoss and then work our way East along the coast to Diamond Beach before heading back to Vik. Anyway, this isn’t really a waterfall stop per se. There is a waterfall back in the canyon, but it’s not in any way impressive. The draw here is a steep sided canyon that goes back into the hills about 2 km.

To get a good view you have to hike up along the edge of the canyon, it’s about 100m up, but the better part of 2 km to the main viewing area. That’s not a trivial hike for the sedentary IT guy especially when they recently regraded the hiking path with loose gravel made from lava (something they have a lot of since it’s kind of a renewable resource in Iceland). It wasn’t quite as bad as hiking on loose sand, but it was close, especially on the slopes.

And, once you get your winded ass to the top, it’s hot. Sure, it’s still maybe 45 degrees, but it’s the bright summer sun and, well, the hike. Layers is where it’s at in Iceland. The weather can change on a dime and stuff like this is common. The folks in winter coats that seemed like such a good idea in the parking lot, were miserable by the time they got up the first hill. Those things are tedious to carry.

I will say that it is impressive. I am including a picture from Wikipedia here as it’s way better than the shots I took (in the gallery below). This guy had a much wider wide-angle lens than I brought and was able to do the vista justice even if he overdid it in post.

Fourth Leg: Fjaðrárgljúfur Viewpoint to Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon and Diamond Beach (130 km, 1:37 hr.)

This was a long hop. More than the distance suggested because we had to charge the car, which is an adventure. I don’t see the spot on the map, but around halfway between Vík and Diamond Beach, I did the math and we weren’t making it back to the hotel if there was no charger at Diamond Beach. Looking at Google Maps, it looked unlikely. So, we needed to do that on the way.

We found a small coffee shop in the middle of nowhere that had a charger in the parking lot. Why? IDK, these companies are sprinkling them around the island wherever they can. The problem with that is the site where the charger is located has no affiliation with the company and has no clue how to help you if you need help.

It’s been a struggle to get these things to work, and this was no exception. They start by wanting you to download an app. By the end of the trip, Jess had four apps on her phone from the various charging networks. Well, just downloading the app was an adventure. We’re in the middle of nowhere on an island in the middle of nowhere. While the phone says 5G, we all know that’s just decoration. That just means the 5G radio in the phone can hear a 5G base station. It doesn’t mean the signal is strong enough to pass data. So Jess got the link and then walked over to the coffee shop, got on their WiFi (it didn’t reach the charger area), and downloaded the app. Then back to the charger to initiate the process, “communication error”. Back to the shop’s WiFi, and back. Several times. Talk to the people in the shop, but they could not help. I sat in the car, trying to remain calm, because wasting hours of my vacation with dodgy internet was not my idea of fun.

After two hours of watching this, I came to the conclusion that something was wrong with the network. We were using the International Plan for Mint (T-Mobile), and it worked “OK” most of the time, but then we weren’t relying on it too heavily since most places had WiFi available. I suggested she go back to the coffee shop and download an eSIM for Iceland, which costs around $10. This would allow her to get on a local network, as the locals were having no issues with their phones.

That was the magic sauce, now the app and the charger talked. They chatted with the car and electrons flowed. Finally. I had heard that gas pumps, which operate similarly sometimes will only work with a debit card. Which got me to thinking, they read an American card and say, “you’re not from around here, we don’t think you’re legit.” Especially coming off an American ISP. Coming through a local ISP they might think, “Ah, we have an American visiting our great country, let’s hook him up with juice or he will never leave.”

Whew, two and a half hours of frustration, but we finally resumed the trip.

At Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon and Diamond Beach

Easily the best stop of the day. And it was the first stop that was truly packed. The parking lot was pretty full, though it was 1730, and people were starting to head out; I managed to get a nice spot up front. Our trials and tribulations were vindicated here. There were very limited facilities. A restroom and two food trucks were there. No chargers, just a large gravel lot (for which you still had to pay the privilege of parking).

Since the coffee shop where we were stuck for hours didn’t have any real food, we were starving. One of the food trucks was still in business, so we joined the line and got two ridiculously expensive hamburgers. And were happy to get them as we were nearly the last people they served before closing up. Five minutes later, we would have been able to get anything, and we would have had no prospect of getting anything short of returning to Vik.

Jökulsárlón Glacier is an outlet glacier of the huge Mýrdalsjökull ice cap. As with virtually all glaciers in this warming world, it’s melting back. Now, it no longer reaches the sea, but has left behind a lagoon which has a narrow connection to the ocean. The ice calves off the glacier and then drifts around a large lagoon until time and the tide work it down to a size small enough to pass through the narrow neck and out into the open ocean. Once there, the ice gets pounded by the surf and thrown back up onto the wide black sand beach. That’s where the iconic photos come from. It’s quite striking.

Suitably fortified, it was time to explore. We started by walking along the Lagoon. We had to go pretty far along to get sufficiently far from the unsupervised screaming children that we could really enjoy the sights. The ice we expected, but the lagoon had a ton of wildlife, which we didn’t. There were seagulls, of course, ducks, harbor seals, presumably fish, or else the seals wouldn’t have been in there.

From there, you can walk along the narrow channel, under the highway bridge, to the beach on the other side. This is actually the first time we’ve gotten to a beach in Iceland. All of them are black sand thanks to the volcanic rocks, so that part was cool. Additionally, the ocean was relatively shallow here, and the beach was wide. Hence, it wasn’t as dangerous as some (most) Icelandic beaches where rogue waves and wicked rip tides regularly surprise the unwary (and drown no small number of foolish tourists).

The warning signs are for real, like the glacier; there’s no one there to tell you not to be stupid.

I took many photos here, most of which aren’t great. It was the end of a long day, and there were enough people around to be distracting. This is the sort of place I want to visit at 5 am, where I can set up a couple of nice shots and take my time.

Fifth Leg: Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon and Diamond Beach to Vík (192 km, 2:16 hr.)

Then, it was time to trek back to Vík. I was tired, it was a long day and I was still not fully aligned with Icelandic time (EDT+4), that 200 km was a long drive. If you look at the map above, you’ll notice large patches of grey on our route. This is desolation. Flat, featureless, and yes, grey terrain. It’s all fine volcanic silt that’s been washed out of the highlands. It formed geologically recent enough that nothing yet grows on it. It looks like fine gravel, but it’s dangerous to walk on as there are places where it’s not as solid as it appears. The silt equivalent of quicksand. And, it’s 500m deep in places. Bottom line, km after km of dead flat, boring terrain in the twilight with rarely another car in sight. Well, being Iceland, at least it’s not raining (or snowing).

I mentioned this on the leg out, but there is NOTHING in this whole section of Iceland. All that silt means there’s no harbors for fishing, there’s not enough soil for grazing much less agriculture. So there are no villages, gas stations, anything along this stretch. That also means, no food either. By the time we pulled into Vík. I was very tired and very hungry. While the bed called to me, I wanted food and there was none to be had. There wasn’t even a convenience store open.

Note to self, never be in a strange place without at least emergency rations.