On the fourth day of our road trip on Iceland we discovered the southern part of the country, that I will call »the black beaches of Iceland«. This was one of the longest days on our trips in terms of the stops we made and the locations that we visited, but thanks to long days and white nights, we were able to see all we planned. Let'go one by one 😊.
The town of Vik lies along the black Vik beach and with it’s red roofed church offers one of the most popular images of southern Iceland. The town is pretty small and there is not much to see and do, but the surroundings are marvellous. From Vik you can discover the black beaches, the glacial valleys and other beautiful landscapes.
In this small town you will find a nice store of Icewear, a local cloths shop that offer traditional Icelandic wool cloths but also other type of cloths. In my opinion a great quality of sportswear (just a little bit pricy for my budget, so I didn’t make a big shopping but brought home just few things).
Vik has a large, black beach. I took a walk late in the previous evening and there was a light steam all over the pebbled beach that created a melancholic atmosphere.
The next morning it was time to drive to Dyrhólaey, a small peninsula few kilometers from Vik. The name can be translated as “hill-island with the door-hole” and in fact the peninsula has a black arch of lava which stands in the sea in front of the peninsula. On our the way to this natural lava bridge, we also came across to the Dyrhólaey Lighthouse.
The stone arch was the main purpose of our stop, but we had another pleasant surprise. The cliffs of the peninsula were full of puffins. I’ve mentioned in one of my previous posts that the Westman island are the location where you can meet large colonies of puffins, but on Dyrhólaey we were able to see them from very close.
Near to Vik you will find a beautiful black volcanic beach Reynisfjara that is known as one of the most dangerous locations in Iceland. The southern coast of Iceland, and this beach, lies along the open sea of the North-Atlantic Ocean that brings powerful waves up to the coast. The tallest waves measured there rise to 40 m and are also the tallest waves in the world. Sneaker waves (as they are called) are huge coastal waves that can suddenly appear. They appear in between smaller waves and since they appear so quickly is difficult to notice them. This happens because the ocean floor deepens rapidly away from the shore, plus the ocean currents are very strong. Unfortunately, the beach has already taken some traveler's lives.
My wife was very scared so she really stayed quite behind, I walked on the beach, since it was a quiet day and the waves were not that big, but yes, we saw some of the big and quick ones, so I can imagine how it can be with strong winds and currents. Of course, I couldn't leave the beach without taking a few pictures of these beautiful basalt columns.
We jumped back in our car and continue our drive towards the southeast. The road was passing through the Eldhraun Lava Fields, which are one of the largest lava fields in the world – spread over an area of 565 km2. The filed was created in 18th century, during one of the greatest recorded eruptions and consists of one of the greatest lava tube systems in the country. The landscape is unique and Back in the 70's, the Apollo 11 crew practiced for their imminent moonwalk on this fields, since the landscape resembles to the moon surface. During our visit the moss was dry and kind of grayish coloured. I’ve seen the images when the moss is deep green and it looks really amazing. We were not much impressed by this landscape, but it was interesting to se the vast area of moss.
Next stop was at Fjaðrárgljúfur Canyon. I read that this name is difficult to be pronounced also for Icelanders 😊 but for me, majority of the names in Iceland were quite difficult to be pronounced or to be read. It is not that they are only difficult in pronunciation, but they are also quite long. So, while driving and looking on the map, my wife and I, we had quite of trouble to locate the right place and we were laughing a lot when we were trying to do our best to remember and pronounce some of the names. But back to the Fjaðrárgljúfur canyon. Iceland has many canyons, but this one located in South Iceland has a unique serpent-like shape.
I got the recommendation to visit it by locals and it was a really nice stop. But this canyon was not well known to visitors until few years ago. Some are saying that all started when Justin Biber filmed a part of his music video in the canyon. From that time the number of visitors increase significantly, and it even reached problematic numbers that destroyed the natural balance of the canyon. The authorities were forced to close it down (doing it for few months every year) giving to nature the time to recover. We’ve noticed that the walking paths in the canyon were strictly defined and there were many signboards reminding the visitors to walk only on the paths. There were also several observation platforms and I’ve noticed that before the visitors were able to walk around on different spots (walking paths were visible) but today they are limited. But still, you have more than enough space to walk around any admire the scenery all done in the respect of the nature.
We were slowly driving to the last stop of the day but were attracted by a signboard for the Svínafellsjökull glacier. I’m glad that we made the stop since only a short hike from the parking slot we were able to reach the glacier and the lake. It was a memorable scenery and I made some of incredible photos there. Svínafellsjökull is an outlet glacier of Vatnajökull, the largest ice cap in Europe. It is one of the country’s most popular places for glacier hiking due to its incredible formations and excellent views. I was attracted by the colours: the deep blue ice, splendid white snow and some veins of black ash. I understand why the glacier, like many other destinations in the country, was noticed by the producers of Game of Thrones.
The whole southern part of Iceland was giving us some of the best landscape images that I’ve ever seen. I must say that the south-eastern part of Iceland, where we barely meet any tourist or locals was really unique and memorable.
I’m not sure if I mentioned that already, but I was so impressed and fascinated by the quantities of the surface waters that I faced in Iceland. The waterfalls and the rivers were so mighty and powerful. It has even a greater impact on me, since we were facing dry and hot summer in Central Europe, while Iceland was so green, full of water and chilly. There was also one more thing that really impressed me. It is the deep blue colour of some of the rivers in the southern part. I guess the colours is a combination of reflection between the dark black soil and stones and the clear blue sky, well just my guessing, but I think you can agree with me that the intense dark blue is really unique.
Even it was still daylight, it was already late in the afternoon and we were very tired from a long and intensive day, but we collected all our strengths and made a last stop for the day at the Fjallsárlón Glacial lagoon. The outlet glacier and the lagoon originate from Vatnajökull glacier, and here you can see how the icebergs breaks aways from the ice cap and slowly float and melt in the water. We haven’t spent much time in the lagoon and we haven’t taken part to any activity since the next day we have a lagoon tour booked at the “biggest sister”, the Jökulsárlón glacial lagoon.
Now it was really time for a quick dinner, snack, and then an energizing sleep. A nice and cozy guesthouse was waiting for us. PS- the images of our guesthouse were taken few minutes before midnight. Only when I lied down in bed I realised how tired I was, but it was worth every atom of my energy.
If you would like to read more about our trip to Iceland check my previous posts:
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