Leaving Akureyri, we went east, passing Lake Myvatn for the second time in two days, but this time with the sun shining. The landscape around this area is a thick layer of crumbling cooled lava covered in rich plant life. Lake Myvatn can be seen in the background.
After that we headed to an Iceland Instagram sensation - Studlagil. This place only became visible in 2007, after a dam was built upstream. It only became a tourist destination in 2017, when it appeared in a brochure for an Icelandic airline. This place is featured extensively in A Murder at the End of the World, Season 1, Episode 4, which was released about six weeks after we came back from our trip. The actors walk in exactly the same spot we walked in, on the left side.
We even took a selfie exactly where they stood on the show. I look like a lunatic with the wind blowing my hair. All part of the adventure!
These basalt columns are formed when magma cools rapidly as it forces its way up through millions of tons of glacial ice to reach the surface. This causes the liquid basalt to crystallize into hexagonal columns.
The columns look so flat-sided and regular as to appear man-made, but they're natural.
Since Iceland is full of both volcanoes and glaciers, columns like this appear in many places.
In fact, basalt columns are the inspiration for the design of the famous Hallgrimur Church in Reykjavik. The vertical columns in the facade of the building are also hexagonal.
The next day, we hiked a mile and a half up to the tall, slender waterfall Hengifoss. On the way up, we passed a beautiful, smaller waterfall fed by Hengifoss. Basalt columns formed here too. It almost looks like someone placed planters on top of each column.
The official trail up to Hengifoss ends about a quarter mile short of where the falls actually touch down. At this point, the falls look like this. Notice the young woman posing while a drone films her from just above and behind her head. The drone is visible as a white spot in the highest resolution version of this photo.
To get there, we had to scramble on rocks to cross the stream, then clamber up more gritty, wet rocks. You see easily the layers of different types of rock formed over millions of years, alternating black, red, and yellow.
It was really exciting to watch the water fall hundreds of feet, crash into the rocks, and splash in the green pool at the bottom. We could feel the cool spray and brisk wind created by the falling water on our faces.
Hiking back down on the other side of the stream, we got a view of another tall, thin waterfall named Litlanesfoss.
The next day, we headed out to a nearby eastern fjord called Mjoifjordur, which means narrow fjord. There are no tourist attractions there, and the road is gravel the entire way, so very few people go out there. I wanted to go see a series of waterfalls there, but I ended up really enjoying the whole drive. Here's a waterfall I saw from the road and went to take photos of.
All of the rocks there are completely carpeted in a six-inch thick layer of spongy green, yellow, and orange mosses. This is a wonderland that can never be a tourist attraction, as too many tourists would destroy it just by walking on the thick moss.
The views as we came over the head of the valley and looked out over the fjord were gorgeous.
For those last two nights, we stayed in Eglisstadir, the biggest town in east Iceland, with a population of under 3000. The next day we headed down the eastern coast and started heading west along the southern coast. Here is a series of nameless waterfalls on private land that we passed as we drove south on a chilly, rainy morning.
I had been hoping to get close to the face of a glacier on this drive, so I looked on the map and said let's turn north here, where a road headed toward the glacier. To get to this glacier lagoon, we were again driving on gravel roads, and then on a sort of rocky riverbed, for several miles. It got a little hazardous, as water had created some drop-offs Jennifer had to navigate around.
We decided to walk around the edge of the lagoon toward the front of the glacier, which was further away than it first seemed. Looking back toward the terminal moraine (the large mound of gravel left at the front of a glacier's advance). There's Jennifer on the right.
As we hiked around the lagoon, we had to climb higher up. The lagoon was surrounded by cliffs looking down on the water.
The icebergs in the lagoon are pieces of the glacier that broke off and rolled onto their sides. We walked for close to an hour and still weren't all that close to the face of the glacier.
The black stripes in the blueish white ice are caused by ash from different volcanic eruptions over the last several hundred or maybe several thousand, years. So, the layers are snow and ice, then ash, then more ice, and so on.
That's it for this edition of Vick and Jennifer's Icelandic Travels. Still more to come though!
Vick and Jennifer! I had stored these pics to study at leisure later. Finally got to them. Amazing! And the videos were astonishing too. What a trip! I was in Reykjavik, Akureyri and (a good story) at the Festival of Thor in the Westman Islands off the coast back in 1979. Things were pretty basic back then. Sorry I couldn't join you all last week but hope to see you in DC soon.....
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