May 26, 2021: Day 9 of our drive around Iceland road-trip (excluding stay in Reyjavik). The weather this morning was cold and clear. We made a quick trip to the harbor area to take a couple of photos then we were off. We made our way along road 1 with several glaciers looming in the distance. We made couple of stops to hike to the top of small rocky hills for scenic photo ops of the Vatnajökull glaciers before eventually arriving at the Jökulsárlón glacial lagoon.
The tourists have started to descend on Iceland. Thiis was the 1st stop we’ve made in the last 9 days that actually had more than a handful of visitors. The boat tours through the ice fields were running but we did not partake. We explored the area, took pictures of the icebergs and continued with our journey.
Traffic was noticeably heavier here in the South of Iceland. Were we previously had the road to ourselves there were now several tour busses, camper vans and rental cars traveling the opposite direction. We made a stop at the Skaftafell National Park to check out the lay of the land for our next visit. This area is set up to handle a large number of campers. Excellent services available. We will spend time here next trip.
The scenery had morphed from glacial ice to low rolling hills and the weather turned cold and cloudy by the time we stopped for a hike to the Dverghamrar “Dwarf Rocks” basalt columns. We had a quick lunch of “cup a noodles” in the car and continued two miles down the road for our 3rd hike of the day, the Church Flor Kirkjugolf rock formations at the village of Kirkjubæjarklaustur.
The weather turned fog and light rain and the terrain transformed to lava fields and black sands by the time we finally reached the village of Vik, our stopping point for the evening. Tomorrow we will explore the black sand beaches and look for puffins. Then we head back to Reykjavik where this trip started.
