It seems I'm starting every entry by describing the weather now. The sun was out today but the wind was stronger than
all the previous days. It was very cold at Jökulsárlón, but quite warm in Skaftafell. We ended the day at our
accomodations near a town called Kirkjubćjarklaustur. How do they come up with these names?
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Another common sight in Iceland - mountain cliffs with rocks and stones strewn below. |
| Not many petrol stations open on Sundays, but we found this one, so we fueled up. |
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At one point, the glacier came all the way down to sea level. |
| And that's when we knew we were at Jökulsárlón. All the ice from the glacier falls into this lagoon where it is trapped in freezing temperatures and float about as icebergs. |
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We took the lagoon tour and got packed into this amphibious vehicle along with a few dozen American and Europeans tourists, all of whom were taller than us. The wind was bitter, the boat was shakey and everyone was trying to take pictures over everyone else's heads. In hindsight, we could have found a better use for our Icelandic kronurs. |
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| We were told that the ice was sometimes black because of the lava ashes trapped in them, and sometimes white because of the air bubbles trapped on the surface. When the ice breaks, exposing the deeper parts of the iceberg, it often appears blue. The explanation given was that all the colours of sunlight are absorbed by the ice except for blue light, which is reflected. That's the technical way of saying it looks blue because it's blue in colour. |
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Glad to be off back on land and off that sardine can. |
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| A little further down the road from Jökulsárlón was another part of the glacier. |
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In 1996, a jokulhaup or glacial flash flood destroyed the bridge here. These things happen when a volcanic eruption opens up a new channel of lava under the ground, melting huge amounts ice. |
| Some parts of the glacier stay quite far off the flat ground. We thought the flood would have had something to do with this. |
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My wife found this field of lupins in front of somebody's house. |
| When we got to Skaftafell, we went straight to the Mountain Guides camp to comfirmed our booking for tomorrow's activities. In front of the camp was this Volvo 4WD truck. |
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While we were at Skaftafell, we took a short hike up to see Svartifoss waterfall. Halfway up, See Ming found a side trail to this scenic spot that overlooks another waterfall. |
| Svartifoss from a distance. |
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The obligatory backwards shot. |
| The basalt stones hanging down from the top of the fall. |
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Back at the bottom of the river, the water is shallow and quite calm. |
| Back to Day 10 <<< | >>> Day 12: Svínafellsjökull |
