My fifth day in Iceland was my favorite day. We packed up our stuff and headed east along the south coast toward the town of Vik. Vik is a tiny fishing village on the southernmost tip of Iceland, but there is much to see and do on the way there.
Shortly after we got out of Reykjavik, we stopped in a town called Hveragerði to fill up the car and get some bread and cheese to snack on. While there, we decided to see if the town had anything to offer. It did.
It turns out it’s a little geothermal village with a long hiking path through steam vents and rivers. We managed to spend around two hours exploring the area and still had more to see when we decided it was time to turn back and keep on.
We drove through mountains and small towns, stopping to take pictures when we found something of interest, like roaring rivers.
Or Icelandic horses, which are bred to be short, sturdy, and sure-footed. And cute, obviously.
Eventually we saw a waterfall a ways down the road and decided to go take some pictures of it, too. We got closer and closer, its size and beauty becoming more apparent. We turned down the road toward it and realized it was the waterfall Seljalandsfoss, and it was breathtaking.
Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve had this fascination with waterfalls and have always wanted to find one that I could walk behind. I’m not sure why this was so appealing to me, but it turns out it’s as amazing as I had dreamed. I spent probably 20 minutes behind the waterfall, just gazing at it and feeling its spray.
I didn’t want to leave, but other people were starting to show up and I knew we had a ways to go still. So we kept going, counting around 30 more waterfalls (mostly small ones) on our way. But then we saw Skogafoss from the road, another stunning waterfall, so we stopped in.
There were stairs that led to the top of the waterfall, so we eagerlystarted climbing. Our appreciation for how big Skogafoss was heightened pretty quickly as we had to stop and breathe for awhile about 3 times on the way up. And we’re in pretty good shape. Eventually, we reached the top and looked down. It was beautiful.
But did we stop there? Nope, we decided we needed to climb further to get views of as much of Iceland as we could.
My feet were exhausted, but seeing miles and miles of black sand beaches in the distance kept me going.
I finally had my fill and started the journey back to the bottom. We headed straight to our new home after this to meet our new host. He gave us some suggestions of places to check out nearby, so we headed out again to Dyrhólaey, a nature reserve up on some tall cliffs, formerly a volcanic island, to view waves and bird life. It was unreal up there. The ocean was so violent with the strongest waves I have ever imagined crashing into the cliffs, shaking them and sounding like thunder.
We could have stood there all day, but we saw a lighthouse on the top of a distant cliff and decided to try and find it.
We hopped in the car until we found a road that said “Impassable”. It didn’t look impassable though, so we turned our little car up the steep hill and drove to the top. It was the lighthouse.
And I felt like I was on top of the world. I pretty much was.
Eventually, we headed back down to explore the ground a bit. We found a road that took us straight down to the beautiful black sand beaches of Vik.
We walked along watching the tumultuous waves crash ashore, leaving white foam behind on black sand.
The sun was setting, so we headed home for the evening.
If you go to Iceland, drive the south coast.