Iceberg Lake

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Today was another amazing sight - the iceberg lagoon made by chunks of ice melting off of the Breidamerkurjokull glacier. It is called Jokulsarlon, though we went to a smaller, less tourist populated one called Breidalon first. The lagoon is famous for staring in James Bond, Die Another Day - where they bloked off the river that runs out into the sea, and froze over the lagoon. However they did lose 6 Aston Martin DB9s into the lagoon when trying to make the scenes!

The lagoon itself is awesome. Loads of huge icebergs floating around, different shapes, sizes, colours. Only 10% of the iceberg can be seen above the water. There are lines on some of them, where the bottom has melted and the iceberg has lifted further out of the water - the line is from where the previous position of the water. Further out of the lagoon the river runs into the sea and you can see the icebergs that have escaped being battered by the waves and eventually being washed up onto the black lava beach. Again quite cool. The ice melts slower than usual as the lagoon is made up of fresh and salt water - apparently that makes the ice quite good for drinks!

We took an amphibious vehicle ride around the lagoon to get closer to the icebergs and learn more about them.

We then headed back to the hotel where we stayed the night before as we were staying there again. On the way back we popped into a local geothermally heated swimming pool - again good views from it, and nice warm jacuzzis! We then got back to the hotel and wandered out the back along a short track that lead us the another glacier tongue.

We popped back to the national park to watch the video of the volcanic eruption of the sub-glacier volcano in the icecap - it was huge - 3000 billion cubic tonnes of water flowed off the icecap and ruined the roads and bridges in its path to the sea. The footage was quite amazing.

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Photos

Breidarlon
The smaller iceberg lagoon - yes I'm stood in shorts and flip flops with icebergs behind me...I got some funny looks for my choice of attire in iceland!

Jokulsarlon lagoon
I took 50 photos of the lagoon and icebergs...! I have tried not to include all of them here you'll be glad to see!

Icebergs....
You can see the lines from previous water marks quite clearly on this one

and more Icebergs
last one, I promise!

mini iceberg
Al and a mini iceberg on the lava beach

mini iceberg2
Amy and a mini iceberg on the lava beach!

glacier tongue
out the back of our hotel

Comments

[Laura G]

Great Pictures
Your pictures are quite beautiful! I am planning a trip to Iceland in March- any suggestions on the best places to visit??

[AmyandAl]

Places to visit in Iceland
Ah, Iceland, you'll love it. We really did. I got the lonely planet book and that was useful in planning where to go. There aren't a huge variety of places to stay in most of the towns (except Reykjavik) but most have at least a hotel. Skaftafell national park is definately worth it, and the iceberg lakes surrounding it as they are so pretty and very different. The hotel just outside the national park is excellent and I would highly recommend it. A good few days in Reykjavik would be good to settle in, see the sights and get used to the place. The Golden triangle, though over-populated with tourists, is also worth doing despite it's popularity. Then depending on what you are in to and how long you have, a trip around the coast is also well worth doing. If you look on the discover the world website under the iceland summer tours, fly-drive section, you can look at the itineries that they provide for holidays and they were pretty good at covering most of the major things that you would want to see. The centre is extremely baron, and only accessible by 4WD, so not highly recommended unless you have the time and the inclination. We didn't get up to the north, though wish we could have. There are trips from Akureyi to an island in the arctic circle as well, we wanted to go on this but it just didn't happen. If you have any other questions, please let me know and I'll try and answer as best I can! Be warned, it is expensive, but definately worth it! Amy