Author: BrennaAbroad96

It broke my heart a little bit leaving our little heaven at Þakgil, but we enjoyed every minute of the drive back to the Ring Road, stopping to explore areas that caught our interest.

Our little Jimny climbed up and down that mountain like a beast, and I almost wished the drive was longer.

We stopped to get views of Vik as well as the lighthouse at Dyrholaey to catch the views out over the black sand beaches.

And then it was waterfall time. We stopped at Skogafoss first, joining the small crowds there.

And then we climbed the billion stairs up to the top, which really doesn’t give you a great view of Skogafoss or anything.

But walking along the river at the top does. Lots of little waterfalls and canyons along the way.

You also get a view out over the plains. I decided to repeat a picture that we took on our first trip here.

Once we were tired of walking, we headed back down and drove to find neighboring Kvernufoss. I had coordinates for finding Kvernufoss, but they somehow took us to someone’s house. I was determined, however, and had Anthony park the car, so we could go walk around to find it. He teased me about how hard I was trying to find this waterfall, after the hundreds we had already seen.

We found a little path with a ladder over a fence which seemed like a good option.

We walked through a field and decided we would go as far as this hill up ahead so we could see around it. Once we got there, we found a river. Another good sign. So we kept walking.

And there she was. We followed the tiny path all the way to the waterfall, and it may have become my new favorite. We had it all to ourselves, and it was tall, you could walk behind it, and it hammered the rock underneath it. I decided it was “our” waterfall, and my new happy place. If only I could just come back there anytime I wanted.

We grabbed a bite to eat, and then off we went to Seljavalaug, the warm swimming pool in the beautiful valley. We enjoyed the walk over there, but got there to discover the pool had just been emptied. It would have been a beautiful day for a swim too.

We continued on to our campground for the evening, Hamragarðar, which is right next to Seljalandsfoss. This was another shock for us, since our last visit to Iceland, we had beautiful Seljalandsfoss all to ourselves, and it was my favorite place in the world at the time. It was still absolutely magnificent, but the parking lot was overfilled with tour buses and cars this time. Either way, I still enjoyed it.

What I enjoyed more, though, was little Gljúfrabúi, which was directly in front of our camping spot. This waterfall falls behind a cliff, but has a hidden entrance to the side. You have to walk through a stream to get to it, but once you’re in there, you just get soaked by the waterfall staring all the way up it and the mossy walls around it. It was gorgeous. Unfortunately, our GoPro decided it didn’t feel like taking good pictures in there.

We had reunited with my brother and his fiance at this point, so we all hung out, cooked some dinner in the kitchen area, climbed up the cliff to look down into Gljúfrabúi, and caught up on each other’s travels. All in all, a pretty successful day.

Skaftafell was beautiful in the morning light, but we decided to make it to Fjaðrárgljúfur canyon before making ourselves breakfast.

A relatively short drive later, we bounced down another rough gravel road to the parking lot.

You can walk two minutes down into the canyon from there, so we did that first. We waded out into the river a bit, trying not to get water in our shoes, to get better views down the way.

We then walked along the rim for awhile checking out the various angles and rock formations.

We made it back to the parking lot and grabbed a picnic table looking out into the canyon to heat up some oatmeal and coffee. Soon enough, crowds of people were arriving. We packed up our stuff and moved on.

We drove through the craziest little landscape on the way to Vik. Mossy lava rocks everywhere.

During this drive, we saw a tiny little arctic fox! Cutest damn thing I’ve ever seen, but as soon as we realized what we were seeing, we were speeding by it, and it was running back away from the road.  Icelandic arctic foxes are typically found in the Westfjords, which we didn’t have time for, so I certainly wasn’t expecting to see any on this trip. Pleasant little surprise.

We stopped by Hjörleifshöfði, which is basically an island that juts up out of the black sand plains near Vik. It also has a small Viking burial ground on top of it. The plan was to hike to the top to take in all the gorgeous views, but it was very windy, and I was pretty sure it would not be safe to stand on top of a little mountain with nothing to block the wind. Or to leave our car parked on black sand in an area that’s known for sandblasting cars.

So we drove along the south side and snapped a picture of the cave instead, and then continued on.

We stopped in tiny little Vik for awhile.

We had some delicious mushroom soup and margherita pizza at a cute little restaurant up on the hill.

Afterward, we drove over to Reynisfjara black sand beach. This was the first real shock of our trip. The last time we had been there, we literally had the entire beach to ourselves. This time, tour buses and cars packed the parking lot to where people had to park along the road. Tourists were everywhere, climbing up the basalt columns for pictures.  On the plus side, there were dozens of puffins flying around up there, diving off toward the ocean.

We had some time to kill, so we went on to Dyrholaey, which was Anthony’s favorite place last time we were here. We had sat on the black cliffs for awhile, watching and feeling the strong waves crashing against them. This time, there still weren’t that many other people there, but the waves were much calmer and it had lost its magic a bit.

After going back into Vik for a little shopping, we decided to go ahead and go to our campground, Þakgil, which was around a 45 minute-1 hour drive along a rough gravel road over and down a mountain.

The drive was insanely gorgeous. We left cloudy and black Vik for vibrant green mountains with the sun peaking out more and more.

It was also a bit perilous in parts as we were crossing little narrow land bridges with steep drop-offs and lots of wind. 100% worth it though.

The views got better and better, and then we arrived down in this lovely valley where the campground was located.

We selected our spot next to the little bubbling brook and then decided to go explore. We had to cross a couple rivers to get over to this little mountain we wanted to climb up, but it didn’t take us too much time.

And the base of that little mountain became my happy place. A crystal clear, freezing cold little spring ran down through it. Little flowers and berries and soft moss were everywhere. Just so peaceful.

We climbed up a ways to see as much of the valley as we could. (See if you can spy our tiny Jimny in the pictures below.)

And then after relaxing awhile, we decided to try and find our way back. Instead of crossing where we had the first time, Anthony decided we should follow this path because surely it would bring us to a better crossing point. So we spent a good 30 minutes just following along this path, hoping there would eventually be a shallow point to cross, but nope. So we turned around and went all the way back to where we had crossed before.

The campground had a little kitchen set up in a cave, so we wandered over there to cook our dinner.

And then the rest of the night was spent just enjoying our stunning campground, sipping some red wine.

We left our little campground in the East Fjords before anyone else was even getting up.

This meant we had the roads all to ourselves as we drove along the coast, passing through Stodvarfjordur and Breiddalsvik.

It was definitely the best weather we’ve had all trip. It was warm and sunny and absolutely beautiful. The water sparkled in the sunlight, and when we eventually reached a point where we were driving with fjords on our left and glaciers on our right, I didn’t think it could get any better.

We stopped in Hofn for a quick lunch and some groceries and gas, and then were off driving, catching up with all the tourists that make it as far as the south coast and no further. And the horses.

We saw a massive black sand beach along the side of the road, so we stopped there, trying to run up the black pebbles to get the views of the black sand meeting the ocean with the mountains in the background.

After that good fun, we continued on past countless mountains and waterfalls.

And then at last, we made it to Jokulsarlon. We went to Jokulsarlon the last time we were in Iceland, and we honestly didn’t get the hype that time. But it was cloudy and dull the day we had been there before. This time it was brilliantly sunny, and suddenly, we understood why everyone is so obsessed with it.

We could see little seal heads popping up out of the water here and there, bathing in the freezing cold glacier lagoon.

Once we had our fill, we crossed the road to the Diamond Beach, where chunks of ice land on the black sand. While it’s certainly pretty, we didn’t feel the need to spend too much time here.

We passed several outlet glaciers and eventually turned off a rough road to get down close to it. We had hiked the glacier last time, which was at the end of winter, and we could tell it had retreated quite a bit at this point. It was still quite pretty to see.

Our ending spot for the day was Skaftafell National Park. We got there early enough to set up camp and then do a hike through the park. I had some directions for a good loop hike to do, but apparently my directions were shit. We walked all the way up to Svartifoss just fine.

But then we continued on past it up another hill before realizing we had gone the wrong way. The day was still young, so we decided to go ahead and turn around and continue the hike we had planned to do. I hadn’t realized how long nor how difficult nor how damn hot it was going to be, though. I almost quit when we reached a point where I was barely able to lift my feet anymore and was just constantly kicking loose rocks, and then we see a sign saying the viewpoint was still 1.7 km uphill.

But, as Anthony tends to do, he strongly suggested we continue on. So I whined the whole way, but I did continue on. All. The. Way. And there we were, glacier behind us and glacier right in front of us, with views out over the plains as far we could see.

We sat down to drink some water, eat a cliff bar, and cool down.

And then we looped back down. Knowing how far we had gone and how high we were, I was expecting a pretty constant downhill walk. But no. Instead, it stayed level for quite awhile, and then turned into practically a downhill sprint.

There was one point where the path drastically narrowed and there was a very steep, dramatic drop-off right next to it. A split second after I said “Wow, this looks dangerous,” I tripped on a loose rock and fell. Luckily I felt straight down onto my ass instead of to the side at all, and Anthony and I were laughing about it 2 seconds later.

At last, we made it down, and walked back to our little campsite.  We enjoyed our views of the mountain in front of us as we relaxed for the evening before heading up to bed. The northern lights made another very weak performance during the night.