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South & West Iceland

Reykjavik, Vik, Vatnajökull, Snaefellsnes peninsula

By Scott Richardson

When we arrived in Iceland I thought “was that red eye flight a good idea?” Iceland’s surge in tourists had started years before we arrived, and we walked off the plane with tons of other 25-40 somethings ready to load up instagram with pictures of black sand beaches and arms stretched wide in front of waterfalls. Inside the airport convenience store, I bought a SIM card (so I too could immediately post to instagram) and watched an American girl scream “What do you mean you don’t have strawberry cream cheese?” at a Dunkin’ employee who seemed like he lived this exact scene everyday.

I asked where I could find a water fountain and was met with a blank stare. I didn’t realize what a dumb question that was in a country where the water source is pristine glaciers.

Driving into Reykjavik, the land was flat and empty. To our right, nothing but grey skies straight to the horizon. On the left: Dominos Pizza, Subway and a Toyota dealership. Not quite the magical landscape I’d expected.

Reykjavík

We arrived in Reykjavik before 8am and promptly found ourselves scratching our heads trying to figure out if we parked the car legally. We had a short list of attractions to hit, but quickly found our way to Hallgrímskirkja which loomed large above the mostly two–three story buildings throughout downtown.

Hallgrímskirkja is the tallest church in Iceland and it’s exterior pillars were designed to mimic the basalt columns found through the Icelandic landscape.

Þingvellir National Park

The next morning we woke up early and got ready to ready to nerd on geography. Þingvellir National Park is the only place in the world where you can walk in the rift between two tectonic plates, and you can even snorkel between them in a glacier-fed lake at Silfra. The water stays just above freezing year-round and the beauty of the rocky chasms distracts you from our cold the exposed skin on your face feels underwater.

Back above the surface, we hiked along the tectonic rift through the Almannagjá gorge. It’s serenity was only broken by the rushing waters of Öxarárfoss, and the occasional interpretive sign noting the site of a beheading, body burning or drowning pool. The valley is full of history as served as the site of Iceland’s annual political convention for around 1,000 years.

Strokkur & Geysir

A bit further up the road from Þingvellir we saw some of the Golden Circle’s most popular sites. Geysir the namesake of the attraction is now dormant, but steps away, we watched Strokkur erupt every 5-10 minutes. We also marveled at the brightly colored pools Belsi and Fata.

Gullfoss

Late in the day, we visited the famed Gullfoss (the golden waterfall) which drops 105’ in two-stages.

Landmannalaugar

We started off our trek into Iceland’s highlands in the small town of Hella, loading up on groceries and packing just enough to survive for 2 days of living out of a backpack. The road to Landmannalaugar requires a 4x4 as its full of rocks and ends with a river crossing. I would venture to guess that the least comfortable way to get there is by bus, but that’s the way we chose.

It was raining when we arrived, but the skies soon started to alternate between grey and clear blue. No matter the weather, we were limited by our schedule to two days of hiking in this paradise, so we immediately set out to explore the landscape.

Landmannalaugar is filled with amazing landscapes. From the hill above the hiker’s hut, we looked into the endless expanse of Iceland’s interior dotted with lakes and rivers. Across the valley were rhyolite hills created by rapidly cooling magma, which seemed to constantly change color as the sun danced through the cloud cover. Further into the valley is the mossy Laugahraun lava field whose otherworldly landscape is complete with steaming fumaroles.

Seljalandsfoss & Skógafoss

If spotting waterfalls on the south coast of Iceland were a drinking game – the entire party would blackout well before reaching Vik. Every few miles (err…kilometers) we’d find ourselves marveling at the most majestic waterfall we’d ever seen, only to be doubly impressed by the next.

Seljalandsfoss and Skógafoss deserve the attention they get from tourists, they’re both incredibly beautiful and easy to access from the Ring Road. While most people we saw had no trouble following the rules, I also saw a girl jump a well-marked barricade to grab the perfect selfie along the Skógá river, tramping delicate moss to the detriment of all future visitors along the way.

Sólheimajökull

If you want to question climate change, I challenge you to travel to Sólheimajökull. The white and blue ice of the glacier is speckled with black ash from Eyjafjallajökull’s 2010 eruption which just makes the landscape that much more interesting. But the walk from the parking lot to the glacier is less spectacular. As the glacier shrinks, it leaves a muddy lake in its path – an eery site that’s said to expand by the length of an Olympic sized swimming pool each year.

Vik

Driving through Iceland is rough. The Ring Road is well paved and well marked. The problem is, it took us forever to get anywhere because we’d find ourselves stopping every five minutes to marvel at the landscape. Which is why we ended up in Vik – a two-and-a-half hour drive from Reykjavík – five days into our trip.

The pearl of Vik is Reynisfjara, a black sand beach with a wall of cubed basalt columns. We arrived to a full parking lot, but found that an open schedule gave us the time to walk further along the beach than many of the other tourists. We spent an hour watching powerful waves batter the rocky coast, and watched the foamy white surf roll into the black ash of the beach.

That night, the aurora forecast read 3 on the KP index and I set out to find a dark spot to look for it. My travel companion opted to stay back at the hotel and soak in the hot tub, but it wasn’t long before he was running behind me claiming a very old woman with a very distinct lack of clothing also wanted to soak, so he bolted. We walked along a nearby road, looking north for any signs of auroral activity. In my haste, I pointed my camera south to shoot the milky way, then looked to a hill to the east to provide a foreground for a faint edge of the milky way and captured a leak of green in the corner of the frame. At first I had set my white balance to some odd value and that light from the hotel must be polluting the scene, but my travel companion then shouted out, “Wait up, is that the aurora?” Yep, it was.

We spent a few hours running along the road, watching as the aurora became active, went dim, then became active again.

Dverghamrar & Foss á Siðu

Did I mention there are a lot of waterfalls in Iceland?

Vatnajökull National Park

About an hour west of Vik, we slowly crawled toward a giant white spot on the horizon. As we got closer, the scale of the Vatnajökull ice cap became clear. The ice cap is the largest in Iceland and the largest by volume in Europe. We experienced Vatnajökull National Park mostly within an afternoon of hiking along Skaftafellsjokull’s glacial tongue, learning about the changing nature of its landscape, its constant recession and peering into its bright blue crevasses and moulins.

Jökulsárlón

Our plan was to wake up an hour before sunrise and drive to the “diamond beach” at Jökulsárlón to photograph the sunrise with the ice along the black sand beach.

The night before, we rolled up to our communal guesthouse to check-in around 9:30pm. We sat down in the kitchen, ate PB&J sandwiches and talked with the other guests about how we’d watched the aurora the night before while we were in Vik. Our host pulled out her laptop and showed us that the aurora was forecasted to show within the hour. We drove back down to the glacier lagoon and watched a moderate show while the last bit of daylight left the sky.

As we prepared to go to sleep, we decided to keep the curtains in our room open. When we switched off the light, we could see a bright green glow in the sky and immediately jumped out of bed and threw our coats on. In my excitement, I barely noticed I was only wearing shorts as I spent hours in the cold shooting the glowing sky.

The next morning came too early and the light got magical as it sparkled through the dimples of beached ice. Later in the morning, we cruised around the blue ice of recently overturned icebergs and watched seals play in the lagoon.

Snæfellsnes Peninsula

Eight days into our trip, we were exhausted. A week of hiking and eating PB&J sandwiches had taken its toll…seriously, it sent me scrambling to the ER, but that’s another story.

The Snæfellsnes Peninsula, lovingly referred to as the Snuffleupagus Peninsula by me, offered us an amazing coastal drive. We toured small coastal towns, basalt cliffs, a crater and a lava tube cave all in the shadow of Snæfellsjökull, a volcano that towers over the landscape.