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Published: July 11th 2018
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We started our day with some take out coffee from the hotel restaurant and a hike up behind Klausterhof Guest House to view the beautiful waterful coming down the mountainside behind it. Then a short 11 km drive brought us to
Fjaoargljufur Canyon. It’s a moderately easy hike up the canyon to see some dramatic views and unusual land formations.
Leaving the canyon we had to drive back past our guest house and another 48km to
Vatnajukull National Park to view glaciers and iceberg lakes. The landscape was as usual, various types of lava fields surrounded by mountains, waterfalls, and now glaciers too. We stopped several times along the road to take photos of waterfalls and the various glaciers all around us. We passed by the remains of an old bridge from when a volacano erupted and melted a large portion of
Hvannadalshnukur glacier and the flash flood from that washed out the road and bridge. Apparently this has happened three times over the past few centuries.
We stopped at the huge parking lot and visitor centre almost at the foot of
Skaftafell Glacier. Although there were guided glacier walking tours available, we chose to head out on our own. A short
hike brought us to the small lake at the foot of the glacier with several small icebergs floating around. The glacier was very black at this end, covered in volcanic debris and dirt, but lots of white snow and ice was also visible with hints of blue here and there. We decided to hike around the lake right up to the glacier. Specialized equipment and safety gear is needed to climb on the ice but we went ahead and climbed on the edge with no gear at all but t it was very slippery, cracking apart with pieces falling so we stayed only a few minutes and hiked back to the visitor centre for some refreshing Viking beer.
We drove on about 47 km to
Fjallsarlon glacial lagoon. The lagoon is the small lake at the base of the glacier from melting ice and is filled with various sizes of icebergs, breaking off of the glacier. Its really an incredible sight with white, black, clear and blue ice in all shapes and sizes.
A few minutes more driving we came to our last stop for the day,
Jokulsarlon iceberg lake. This one is huge with hundreds of icebergs
and the lagoon drains into Iceland‘s shortest river of maybe only 1/2 km long and the icebergs flow down it into the ocean. We didn’t stay too long as the weather had turned very cold with incredibly strong winds.
We left Jokulsarlon cold and tired and drove 82 km to Hotel Jokull, just before the town of Hofn. We had a nice room although with a shared bath, and went to the hotel restaurant for dinner. Chris had lobster pasta, Adrienne had lobster pizza and I had lamb.
Looking forward to a good sleep and free breakfast in the morning!
Scroll down to see a few more photos.
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