Iceland Part 3- Vik to Hofn (Glacier Hike and Glacier Lagoon Boat Ride!)

We woke up early at our hostel in Vik and drove back down the road a bit to meet our glacier hiking group! Funny story- the night before Sarah and I had an argument about where the meeting place was. I had thought it was 2 hours up the road, but Sarah thought it was back down at the glacier we saw earlier in the day. Our voucher didn't say where to meet so Sarah looked it up online and it said where Sarah had thought was the spot. Turns out we were wrong, but that group let us go on their hike (same company, same price, same start time...it all worked out!).

We hiked for about 45 minutes to get to the glacier and it was very foggy and scenic! The original start point was only a 15 minute walk, but that part of the glacier had become unstable (water builds up under glaciers), so we had to hike further in to a safer spot.

When we got to the glacier we strapped on our crampons (shoe grips) and picked up our ice picks and got ready to go! Sarah asked our guide once what the ice picks were for, and he said for balance...and for taking cheesy photos! haha. Trust me, this glacier hike is for all skill levels and they even allow kids to do it!

Of course it started raining at this moment- but that wouldn't stop us! We climbed down this huge, steep hill of volcanic ash before getting on the glacier. For some reason I led the group as our guide had to drop back to help people down. I was pretty nervous because I wasn't comfortable with the crampons yet.

The guide took us all over the glacier and taught us all about how they form and develop their shape. This particular glacier is covered in volcanic ash, hence why everything looks like a black and white picture! We were actually just a few kilometres from Eyjafjallajokull, which is the volcano that erupted in 2010 and caused all those issues with air traffic. There was one area that the guides called Mordor because of how dark and rough everything looks.

A moulin (hole made by water)

A Mud Hut? I can't recall what he called these

The glacier was really awesome and it is crazy how fast it changes. Our guide said that every week there are new crevasses and hills and that the volcano ash makes it even more crazy because it blocks the sun from melting the ice- leading to all those black hills- they were once UNDER the ice and the ash blew into a hole...then the sun melted the glacier around that hole and only the ash covered hump remained.

Honestly, this was one of the BEST experiences of my life! We has booked our tour with Icelandic Mountain Guides (this tour) and they were great, especially with our mix up with the meeting spot! A glacier hike is definitely a must do in Iceland.

After that experience, we drove off to Jokulsarlon, a lake full of icebergs that was a couple hours up the road. Along the way, we passed through Eldhraun, which is a huge field of lava covered in moss. We learned on our glacier hike that the volcanic ash is basically crap for growing things until the moss and lichen grows on it, which gives it nitrogen and turns it into great soil! So it is important to leave the moss alone.

We also stopped for a second at Nupsstadur, which is a turf farm from the early 20th century. Our guide said you could go up and walk around, but the gate was closed when we went by so I just took some shots from the bottom of the driveway.

After Nupsstadur, we passed through Skeidararsandur which is a huge black sand desert. It is HUGE and you drive through it for a very long time (the same with Eldhraun!). Somewhere on all this black sand is a plane that crashed in the 1970s (see photos here), but we didn't know where it was and I wasn't about to go offroading on a giant black beach to find it.

We had planned to stop at Skaftafell National Park, but we were running super late (the glacier hike went long- not complaining!), and when we got near Skaftafell it was piss pouring, so we decided to skip it.

Finally, not far from Jokulsarlon the skies cleared up and there was a beautiful view of rainbows and glaciers, so we decided to hop out of the car for a few minutes to enjoy the sunshine :). It was super windy, though! They actually warn you about the wind when you rent a car because your insurance doesn't cover the door getting blown off.

Finally, we arrived at the Glacier Lagoon (as it is locally known) just in time to catch our tour boat! We had booked to go on a small boat around the lake (our tour was the Zodiac Tour). There was a large boat option, but we paid extra to go in the smaller boat that lets you get right up to some of the icebergs (but not toooo close- they can flip over at any minute!). It was so beautiful and we actually saw a bit of the glacier break off while we were there- it was SO loud. I was hoping to see an iceberg flip too, but no luck there. Fun fact- this lake actually has seals in it too! We saw some, but no good photo ops.

Me in my sexy boat suit- our boat is behind me

The glacier

After that, we headed out again to our accommodation for the night- a cute little farm called Holmur about halfway between Jokulsarlon and the town of Hofn. We decided to head into Hofn to find dinner and ended up eating at the N1 gas station (the N1s had nice little fast food places in them and we loved the hot dogs there). Hey- Iceland was expensive and we had to save money where we could!

Holmur Farm (glacier behind it!)

Anyway, this day was SO much fun and I think I will end it here because I have already posted about a million photos :). More tomorrow!

Iceland Part 2- Reykjavik to Vik (The Golden Circle and Waterfalls)

I am back with more Icelandic goodness!! Be prepared, because these next few days of the trip were possibly the best days of my life so I need to break them out into their own posts

On Monday morning we got picked up by our car rental agency (Iceland 4x4, amazing deal and great service...totally recommend them). We had rented a 4x4 vehicle, because we felt much more comfortable with that option, not knowing some of the roads we might take. Some roads in Iceland 100% require a 4 wheel drive vehicle, but most of the touristy ones (like the Ring Road), are perfectly fine for all vehicles. We did use the 4wd once though! That story will come later! Our car was a Suzuki Grand Ventura and we loved the built in GPS (but we recommend having both a paper map and the GPS as the GPS gave random names to all the roads and sometimes couldn't find things).

Suzy the Suzuki

Someone asked me if we went on a guided tour, and the answer is No! We mapped out beforehand all the stops we wanted to see along the road and pre-booked accommodations roughly 2-3 hours apart along the Ring Road so we had plenty of time to stop and see the various sites over 7 days. I think we only ended up missing a couple so I think we did pretty good! 90% of the stops are right by the road and there are TONS of signs so it is quite easy to do a tour yourself. I will mention that 7 days did not give us enough time to see all parts of Iceland, but it was a good amount of time for the sights along the Ring Road.

Our first stop was the "Golden Circle". When people only have a couple days in Iceland, this is a nice little route to take to see some geysers and waterfalls. Our first stop was Thingvellir National Park. It was raining, but we did hike up to see the tectonic plates of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. It was also a very scenic area to drive through! I will say this- all of the sights we saw in Iceland were free and easy to walk around in. So while Iceland itself was expensive, you sure do save a lot of money on sightseeing.

Funny story- we were leaving the park and I really needed to pee so we pulled over and I went behind some bushes. When I looked up- there were two sheep staring at me! Sheep roam all over the country (and are collected in the fall), but I certainly wasn't expecting to see one there. It kind of ended up being one of my favourite photos of the trip.

After Thingvellir, we drove to Gullfoss Waterfall and to Geysir (a geyser!). It was still raining a bit, but both sites were nice to walk around in. Sarah and I had both brought waterproof shoes and rainpants and they sure did come in handy!

The waterfalls in Iceland are great because you can get really close! In the photo below you can see the ridge that we hiked too (be prepared to get wet!)

Geysir is in an area with a few gesyers, where you can walk around. Geysir itself is very unpredictable in its eruptions, but the nearby geyser Stokkur goes off every few minutes, so it is never a wasted stop!

Gullfoss

Stokkur

After these stops we were basically done the Golden Circle, so we headed on down to the Ring Road to begin our trip around Iceland! Our next two stops were two beautiful waterfalls- Seljalandsfoss and Skogafoss.

I think Seljalandsfoss was my favourite waterfall in Iceland. It was so pretty (and high!), and you could actually walk behind it, which was pretty awesome.

Me at Seljalandsfoss

The view from behind the falls, people on the left for scale!

Skogafoss was also awesome, and actually introduced us to our first rainbow of Iceland! I swear, that place is the land of rainbows due to the constant changes from rain to sun all day. This waterfall you could hike to the top of by way of some stairs on the right side of the falls, which Sarah and I did and enjoyed the beautiful views up there! But man were our legs tired.

Skogafoss

After the falls, we were driving down the road when we saw a GLACIER pop up on our left! We were so excited to see our first glacier that we turned off the road and took a 5km gravel road to get closer to it. It did not disappoint! Little did we realize at the time that this was actually the glacier we would be hiking on the next day.

Funny story here- we saw a man strip down to his underwear and jump into the glacier lagoon on the left in the photo above. We were so shocked and then the next day we actually found out it was our glacier guide! He was doing an ice bucket challenge!

Our last stop of the day was Dyrholaey, which is a small town known for puffin viewing. We were a little past puffin season so we drove down not being sure what we would find. Alas, we saw no puffins, but the ocean was beautiful!

HOWEVER- just as we were about to pack it in, we saw A PUFFIN! One little lonely guy hadn't gotten the message that is was time to move on. He was pretty far away, but I had a good zoom on my camera so we were both able to spy on him with that. We were so happy to have seen one!

After that, we headed out to our hostel in the small town of Vik. What is funny about Iceland is that many of the "small towns" are only 300-1000 or so people, but the buildings and houses are actually situated close together so they always seem bigger. In Ontario, our small towns tend to be farming areas so it never feels like you are "in town"! Our hostel was super cute and somehow we ended up with a private room, which was nice.

Can you believe that was just one day in Iceland? The next day was even more exciting with a glacier hike and a boat ride through icebergs, and I will be sharing that tomorrow (so. many. photos.).

Iceland Part 1- Weekend in Reykjavik

Remember me? That girl that went on vacation to Iceland and then fell off the face of the Earth? Sorry about that :). I got home late Monday, then I was sick with jet lag on Tuesday, and I had to visit my new nephew on Wednesday! Now it is Thursday night and I am trying to upload over 1000 photos to my computer so I can share some with you (prepare for photo overload- though I plan on uploading all to Flickr so people can look!)

I want to preface this post by saying that Iceland was the most amazing trip of my life. So many amazing sights to behold and I am so glad I went (it was kind of a whim with a friend, which we only started planning in May). I also created a guide for my friend Sarah and I to follow as we drove around Iceland and now that I am back I plan on adjusting it and adding in lots of tips. Once that is done I will be uploading it to share with everyone! Because honestly, I expect you all to book tickets as soon as you read my blog posts.

Day 1: My friend Sarah and I headed off to the airport on Friday after work. In Toronto the direct flight to Reykjavik, Iceland leaves at 9pm and arrives in Iceland at 6:20am...and it is only a 5 hour flight. The flight was great- I loved Icelandair and the plane even had "northern lights" instead of dimmed lights on the plane. Really cool! We all had a blanket and a pillow and by some miracle I actually slept most of the flight.

We landed and took the first bus out to the Blue Lagoon, a geothermal spa. We got there right as it opened, and it was pretty quiet (though even midday it was pretty non-crowded in our opinion). We splurged on rented robes and spent about an hour in the warm to hot waters (depended on where you went in there). There were free mud masks and also a bar if you want to enjoy a drink! They gave you bracelets that you charged everything to so you didn't need to carry cash.

After our swim we were so tired (remember that flight?) so we retired to the "relaxation room" for a sweet 1 hour nap! We left the Lagoon around 1pm and travelled into Reykjavik, where we planned on spending the weekend. We stayed at Hlemmur Hostel, which was pretty nice and a decent price (Reykjavik is REDONK expensive).

Saturday in Reykjavik was "Culture Night" so there were small events all over the city. They also had a marathon that day so the city was crawling with people. We couldn't even get in to eat anywhere for dinner and we ended up getting cotton candy and sandwiches on the street. It was a little cool and rainy that weekend, but still very pleasant to walk around town.

There is a large church in Reykjavik called Hallgrimskirkja which offers a great view. Usually you have to pay to go up, but because of Culture night we got up with just a donation of $5 Cdn!

Sunday morning we got up and decided to go to the Phallologcial Museum, which was across from our hostel (FYI- the only place in Iceland that doesn't take credit card, but they did take Canadian dollars!). Anyway, it was a really cool stop and I recommend it! We didn't go to any other museums or galleries in the town because of cost, but we both agreed this one was worth a visit. Haha! One of a kind!

Sunday afternoon was mostly walking around town! We did stop at Baejarins Betzu Pylsur for lunch, which is the number 1 restaurant on all lists! And it is....a hot dog stand. Icelanders love hot dogs and they make a mean wiener. I fell in love with cronions (crunchy onion bits- stuffed my suitcase with them), and potato salad on hotdogs. They also have a lot of weird sauces- no idea what they were.

For dinner that night, we actually went to a Mexican restaurant called Tapas! The reason for this is we really wanted to try lots of interesting "Icelandic" dishes and their Icelandic tapas menu allowed us to have small portions of a lot of things. I will remind you that Reykjavik is crazy expensive, and this elaborate meal was not cheap, but it was a gift from my bosses so we indulged a bit. Everything was super delicious!! We had:

- smoked puffin

- sea trout

- lobster tails

- blue ling

- icelandic lamb

- minke whale*

- foie gras

- beef

- duck breast

- salmon

- bacon wrapped scallops

- skyr cake (like cheese cake)

- chocolate cake**

*We found out later that whaling is a very controversial issue in Iceland and locals actually don't eat whale, it is just served for tourists. Knowing this, I wouldn't order whale again

** Best cake of my entire life. Just so you know

Puffin on the left

By the end of the meal we were stuffed to the brim and headed back to our hostel for a good night's sleep because at 8am Monday morning we were heading out for 7 days around the Ring Road (road 1 in Iceland which goes around the country)! I will be back next week with another couple posts about our adventures around the country of Iceland because I have a lot to say and a LOT of photos to share.

PS- I want to add that Rekjavik is a nice city to visit, but going out into the country was the most amazing part of the trip. It is a beautiful country and a shame that most people don't take the time to see some of it!