South Coast Tour

What would become a theme of my weekend in Iceland was a distinct lack of sleep. The hostel I was staying at had a wonderful bar on the top floor, and the first night I was there, said bar had a live band that played late into the night. My new friend and I did still manage to roll out of bed in time to snag some breakfast and meet up with our tour. Though we were being watched over as we waited for the bus.

The tour guide was phenomenal, very knowledgeable and passionate about his country. I did take notes, but the bus ride wasn't conducive to writing and my handwriting is atrocious. But here we go:

It is a beautiful, but somewhat unforgiving country. It was May when I was there, and still relatively cool. Iceland is a volcanic island, much like some of the Hawaiian islands, but it is the most active in the world with 30-40 active (but dormant) volcanoes. Our driver told us about Hekla, which could not be seen from the bus. This one once covered half of Iceland in ash, and ash from other eruptions has gone as far as Norway. This one erupts relatively frequently, but not as big as some of the others. Though it did once erupt through its glacier, and the resulting flooding wiped out the ring road.

Somewhere off in the distance of this photo taken through a bus window while going along a highway at high speed is Eyjafjallajökull, whose eruptions in the last few years have disrupted air travel.

Somewhere off in the distance of this photo also taken through a bus window while going along a highway at high speed is the Pompeii of the north - a fishing village on the island Vestmannaeyjar, which erupted in 1973. Five months later, when the eruption finally ended, 400 homes on the island had been buried in ash.

We stopped for a coffee break a while outside of the city, and there were some people out stretching the legs of their Icelandic Horses. The Icelandic people have a strong connection to their horses, these days there are 100,000 horses in Iceland for 330,000 people, because as our driver said, "We're crazy." Though while horses are respected and loved, they are also eaten. Our driver told us that the best way to eat horse is to salt and smoke the meat and then cook it for 1.5 to 2 hours and served with butter, and that most restaurants with horse on the menu don't prepare it the "right" way because it takes too long.

Our first stop was this lovely waterfall. All of the water in Iceland is from glaciers or cold water springs. Because there's a volcano under every glacier, the glacier water is often "dirty" or black, or sometimes white, milky and murky. It isn't particularly drinkable. Water from cold water springs is.

When I was at school, in art class I drew a mountain with a waterfall coming out the center, very much like the one below. My art teacher told me it wasn't good, because the water should come from the lowest point. I wish I was still in touch with them so that I could enthusiastically present this picture in tiny (or at least, younger) me's defense. In this case, ground water seeps into the soil until hit hits hard rock, so there are quite a few waterfalls that spring out of cliff faces.

Due to all of the volcanic ash, Icelandic soil is actually incredibly fertile.

That's a farm in the distance.

That's still a farm, slightly less in the distance.

Built in 1948, the shelter below was for the milk truck to drop off milk - because the roads were not always passable, the milk delivery wasn't guaranteed to arrive at the same time every week. This way, the milk could be dropped off and the farmer could pick it up at their leisure. Old houses were built somewhat similar to this, using turf and rock framed with timber or whale bone, then slate, then a foot of turf for insulation.

I will need some forgiveness for the quality of the pictures on this trip - I had just gotten a new phone with a much better camera, but I was still learning how to work it. This is taken near Skógafoss, a giant, beautiful waterfall.

The main event! Skógafoss is 60m (roughly 200 feet) high. The stairs off to the right are the start of a ten-hour hike through the mountains. The platform at the top of the hill was built to discourage people from climbing out to the edge to get a better look at the falls. Gravity is cruel.

I have forgotten the story behind this picture, I believe it has to do with the landslide visible above on the hill.

The view back to the ocean. Once upon a time, the falls fell into the ocean.

The falls are not fed from a glacier, so the water is quite clean and drinkable. I did have a bit, it was very cold and lovely.

The name of the falls was taken from a forest that used to surround it. Iceland used to be covered in forest, but in the 13th century the climate changed and the island went from having 6-7 months of summer with temperatures of 20-25C (68-77F) and only 3-4 months of winter (the months of winter and summer these days is pretty much flipped). Within about 500 years, the forest was gone, taken for firewood and to build stronger, warmer houses. The forest couldn't keep up with demand. The glacier coverage went from 4% of the island to 12.5% of the island (the height recorded in the 1950s). These days, glaciers cover around 10% of the island.

This lovely little church is in the town of Vík í Mýrdal, where we stopped for lunch. I had an excellent fish stew.

I ate quickly so I had time to go to the start of black sand beach, Reynisfjara.

There's a selkie legend from these parts. Selkie are creatures that live as seals most of the time, but come up to the shore once a year on midsummer, shed their skin, and party as humans. A local fisherman heard the sounds of a party in a cave along this beach, and we he looked inside he saw a group of beautiful, naked people partying inside. He stole one of the skins from the pile near the entrance, and locked it in a chest at home. A selkie without their skin cannot go back to the sea and will remain human as long as they are separated.

The next day when the fisherman returned, there was a naked, crying woman running around the beach desperately searching for something. Being a fine, upstanding young man, he consoled the young woman, gave her some clothes, and took her home. He kept the key to the chest with him at all times. The woman eventually agreed to marry him, though while she got along with him, she never really bonded with the rest of the village and refused to go to church. The marriage was, conceivably, a happy one, and the couple had seven children. One fateful Sunday, the husband took their children to church, but had forgotten the key at home. When they returned, the selkie and the skin were gone. Before she disappeared, she was said to have sung this lament: "Woe is me, I have seven children in the sea, and seven on land." For the rest of his life, the fisherman was said to have had unholy luck in bringing in catches, and a seal would swim up whenever the children were at the beach, tossing them pretty shells and fish. But they never saw their mother again.

This statue has a twin in the English city of Hull. It is called Voyages, and is a celebration of 1,000 years of friendship and trading between the two cities, and also serves as a memorial to those who have lost their lives in the Atlantic.

Our next stop was farther down Reynisfjara, with these lovely arches in the distance.

But the main attraction here was these basalt columns.

I like rocks, so here are a bunch of pictures of them.

 More volcanoes in the background here, for which I don't have names.

Below is a single vertebrae from a whale. Chairs in the background for scale.

Our next stop was a glacier, I believe this is Sólheimajökull.

The black bits on the ice are bits of ash and dirt that have been picked up as the glacier creeps down the valley.

The ice is incredibly sharp, if you fall while walking on it, it will tear up your clothing and whatever bits of you are available. Our tour didn't actually go out on to the ice, we just saw it from a distance.

The ice floating in the lagoon is approximately 200 years old.

This area used to be under ice.

The color didn't show up, but it was lovely.

Our guide pulled some ice out of the lagoon for us. I absolutely ate some, it was fabulous.

We had one last stop, at a series of waterfalls. These pictures were taken along the way. Arctic foxes are the only land animals native to Iceland, they were stranded when the ice retreated during the last ice age 10,000 years ago. The foxes scavenge bird, eggs, and fish when they can, and will store what they find in pantries they've dug into the turf. ...I do not have any pictures of arctic foxes.

The ditch here is for drainage, not for irrigation. The wetlands can't be crossed during the summer. I have this note, but no further information.

It's very pretty here.

Though there is a lot of danger lurking under those glaciers.

Another view of the first waterfall, which we passed again on the way to our final destination for the tour.

And here we are on the start of our trek along a series of waterfalls. I absolutely love waterfalls.

This waterfall is hidden down a secret rock passageway and ticks all of my nerdy, fantasy world loving boxes. I can definitely see why there are legends of elves in this country.

It was so beautiful!

We continued walking along, past this somewhat alien looking landscape.

We were headed for the bog falls there are the end.

But there were a few more little ones along the way.

A lone glove out on the turf. I don't know the story here, but I want to.

Further ticking off boxes on my list of waterfall things I love, you can walk behind this one!

Amusingly, the next day I saw a meme about beautiful places and inspirational quotes that was taken from this spot.

It was a wonderful day. I topped off the day with dinner at the Laundromat Cafe (https://www.thelaundromatcafe.com/en/home), a fun and funky little place. I had great meal, and a lovely hot chocolate.