The itinerary promised, and the itinerary delivered.
If you picture Iceland as a clock, the capital Reykjavik is at about 8 o’clock. Hella, where we stayed last night is about 7 o’clock. Our destination for today is at about 5 o’clocak, and is the delightfully unpronounceable Kirkjubaejarklaustur – which even the locals apparently just call Klauster to keep it real.
First stop on the road today was the Seljalandfoss waterfall. This is apparently the most visited waterfall in the country, and given that you can see it for miles and it’s nearly 1/2 a km off the main ring road, it’s not hard to see why.
Our personalised tour guide suggested an even better waterfall was the much less visited Gljufrabui, being about 800m further off the ring road. They were right. I’ve seen quite a few waterfalls, and its a geological feature that I am rather partial to, but Gljufrabui is now my favourite ever fall. You have to walk though a small canyon, carefully hopping from stone to stone to a small grotto which is, maybe, 10m by 8m. From above a multitude of cascades fan down into the base, where they envelope the space in mist and then pour out as the stream through the entry. It’s truly spectacular, and when the tour guide says they suggest wearing a waterproof jacket, they mean it!
Having sated our needs for waterfalls at the first stop – and also having had a kick of the footy, we headed off down the ring road to find some lunch. A small café provided soup, hamburgers and hot dogs, giving us fortitude for what was to come.
As we researched this trip, one image I often saw was of a plane wreck on a black sand desert, which I was led to believe was in the area we traversed today. At one point we saw a bunch of cars parked on the side of the road and people walking off into the distance across a dead flat volcanic scree field near the base of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano (pronounced eh-ya-fyat-la-yo-kut-l, if you want to give it a go, and this is the one that erupted in 2010 and disrupted just about every flight in Europe for 6 weeks).
After a little hesitation, we did a U-turn and went back. I confidently predicted it was “10 minutes to walk there, a few mins to take some photos, and 10 mins back”. Well, it was ultimately an 8km round trip which took nearly two hours, but who’s counting? Other than everyone? Luckily, the thing was actually worth seeing when Aidan and I finally got there, and for good measure we got buzzed by a light plane doing a few runs at no more than about 30 feet, which was kind of fun too.
We trudged back to the car in light drizzle, which thankfully didn’t turn into anything more serious, as there was precisely zero shelter.
From there, we headed another few minutes to the famous black volcanic beach at Reynisfjara. It was packed, but every single person other than us huddled in a mass near the basalt stacks and headland – leaving the other 3km of black pebbly beach to us. Very kind of them, and I suspect we might have ended up with the better view.
Apparently, at that point in Iceland if you head due south, the next landfall you make is Antarctica, which is a pretty cool thought.
A quiet drive for another hour or so took us past Vik (at 6 o’clock on the Iceland clock) and brought us to Klaustur. Just in time for the Euro ’16 final between Portugal and France. Iceland had made the quarter finals, and there was a jovial crowd packing the hotel bar, mostly supporting France. Aidan sat in with them for most of it, and I gather was the only one happy when Portugal won it with a goal right at the end of extra time.
Dinner was also kind of cool. I had reindeer tartar – which I expected to be a bit strong, but was in fact light and tasty and excellent – and langoustine soup, which was rich and delicious. Happy days.
Tomorrow is all about glaciers apparently. We pass by Europe’s largest glacier (‘jokull’ in the local lingo), and have a boat tour booked on a glacial lagoon at 1pm. That’s pretty much the itinerary – before we wind up at what is promised to be a picturesque fishing village at Djupivogur (at about 9 o’clock, for those still following the story!).
Everything in one place 