Saturday 15th July
Our day was made up of a long drive from Vik to Stokksness, a distance of 280 km, and then we backtracked to Skaftafell, a distance of 243 km, where we had an overnight at Hotel Skaftafell. It was a lot of driving for Mark but the reason for this was so that we could take in some of the major sites in this region. We did touch on a quite a few of them but you could literally spend a week in this area and not complete all there is to see and do. As so often has happened though on this big adventure of ours, except in the USA, we had only just scratched the surface of the area and wished we had more time here to explore further.
The main sites we took in throughout the day are listed below but the whole journey was one of jaw dropping amazement at the dramatic beauty of this volcanic landscape. There are plenty of scenery photos below but they don’t do the area justice; you’ll need to try and get here to see it for yourselves.
Our hotel room ended up being quite nice and it had an in-room kettle and shutters, as well as curtains, so that was a big plus but it wasn’t cheap, though, as our dorm-style room was $420 AU for the one night. We went upstairs to the bar for Mark to have a happy hour drink and found out, whilst we were there, that parts of Batman Begins were filmed here and Liam Nelson had actually stayed in our hotel! Apparently quite a few Hollywood films have been filmed in the area, as well as plenty of Game of Thrones scenes. We have one more day and night in Iceland, with a visit to Blue Lagoon tomorrow, and we then head to the UK for a few weeks.
Major sites for the day:
Kirkjubæjarklaustur: landscape in this area dominated by moss covered lava fields formed after the 18th century eruption of Laki volcanoe. Apparently, in 1969, the Apollo 11 crew practiced for their imminent moonwalk her for its similarity to the surface of the moon.
Diamond Beach: a black sand beach located next to Jökulsárlón glacier lagoon that is fed from the melt of two glaciers; Kvíárjökull and Breiðamerkurjökull, and these are just 2 of 30 glaciers making up the Vatnajökull ice cap: the largest largest in Iceland. Chunks of ice break of the glacier and wash into the lagoon and then out to sea but get washed back onto the beach and look like diamonds against the black sand; hence the name.
Pakkhús Restaurant lunch at Höfn harbour. Expensive but a nice spot.
Stokksness: dominated by the huge (450 m) Vestrahorn Mountain towering above the Atlantic Ocean and a black sand beach.
