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Published: November 6th 2012
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The next day we were up around 5 to ensure that we had time to see all the sites on the journey from Reykjavik to Höfn, travelling from South West to South East Iceland. On the way we passed a number of gorgeous waterfalls at Seljalandsfoss and Skogafoss, the former is popular as you can walk behind it, due to the time of the visit we had it all to ourselves. Sandwiched in between these fall was the infamous Eyjafjallajökull volcano which was the cause of the ash cloud over most of Europe in 2010.
After nearly 5 hours of driving we arrived at the Vatnajokull glacier for our glacier walk. Due to lack of time we couldn’t do the longer 4 hour walk and had to settle for the 2 ½ hour walk. As a result this didn’t leave long to be on the ice itself and it was a bit of a let down, especially compared to my glacier walk in Norway. My advice would be to go for the longer walk if you can.
After the walk we then headed off to Day 4 – Jokulsarlon which was
an Ice Lagoon, this was one of the highlights in Iceland and was used in the Bond movie Die another Day. The Icebergs remain the Lagoon as they can’t escape to the sea and you can go on a Zodiac tour up to the Glacier itself or a boat tour which stays amongst the icebergs. We opted for the former which was the most fun but it meant that we had to don huge safety suits which made us look like the Michelin man. Our guide explained why some of the icebergs were blue and white – if the ice hasn’t been exposed to the air it will be blue (normally as its under water) however after around 12 hours in contact with the air it turns from blue to white.
At the end of the boat tour we handed in our survival suits and got back in the car to head to our hostel in Höfn when there was a commotion behind our car. As we looked in became clear that a guy was having a heart attack, his friends went to his aide and performed CPR but the poor guy didn’t make it!
We arrived back
at the hostel around 13 hours after leaving Reykjavik and then had to face the challenge of finding somewhere to eat, after 2 failed attempts we found a restaurant that could make us a veggie meal! It was easy to get cheap lobster but veggieburger was as rare as rocking horse poo:-)
Boring Bits
http://www.mountainguides.is/DayTours/GlacierTours/ Hofn Hostel:
http://www.hostel.is/Hostels/Hofn
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