Day of ice

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We woke to a frosty morning, very suitable as today we set off to visit glaciers & glacial lagoons in Vatnajökull National Park! Vatnajökull is the largest and most voluminous ice cap in Iceland, and by area one of the largest in Europe, dominating south east Iceland. All the glaciers we saw today were offshoots of Vatnajökul. We drove past Vestrahorn (where they filmed Vikings!) to reach our first stop at Jökulsárlón – the blue icebergs in at the base of Breiđamerkurjökull. We also walked down the incredibly short river to see the icebergs washed up on the black sand beach, shining in the sun. We then stopped just up the road to see Fjallsárlón, another glacier lagoon where icebergs calve from Fjallsjökull.So lucky we had a sunny day for this bit as the ice just looked stunning.

We carried on along route 1 past Hvannadalshnúkur – the highest peak in Iceland at 2110m – to visit two glaciers: Skaftafellsjökull & Svinafellsjökull. We missed the unsigned turning for this latter one & had to back track after visiting the former! We skipped the uphill walk to Svartifoss as we felt we’d seen fewer glaciers than waterfalls. Sadly we failed to see any artic foxes along by Breiđamerkursandur even though this is one of the few good areas for them. I suspect more so at bird breeding season though since they come here for the nesting skuas. We did finally see a reindeer with magnificent antlers though.

We then left Vatnajökull National Park and headed to Hörgsland Cottages, we actually got three separate bedrooms here – I got the kiddies room upstairs! We checked in the drove down the road to Kirkjubæjarklaustur to get more food & found a post box for Vicky’s postcard. Back at the cottage we had curry & naan and enjoyed a beautiful sunset (but no northern lights).

It was very, very windy overnight. The whole cabin shook and groaned but luckily didn’t blow away!

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Photos

Don't drink & drive!
It's actually water in the bottle. A mouse got in the car the first night & chewed up Chavaunne's water bottle!

Photographing the mountains
(Photo of me by Vicky)