Southern Iceland

Our first destination in southern Iceland was the town of Vik. Jim and I were eager to see it as we had recently watched an Icelandic Netflix series that was set in Vik. We had a chance to walk out on the beach at Vik and get some pictures of the basalt columns just off the coastline.

The church in Vik

Next on the agenda was the much-awaited Puffin viewing stop at Dyrholaey.  There were hundreds of Puffins on the top and side of the cliff with many soaring in the wind above. We were surprised how close we could get to them - they were probably 10 feet from us and weren't a bit concerned about all the tourists watching them.

The cliffs at Dyrholaey

We finished up our day with visits to two more impressive waterfalls. At the first one, Skogafoss, we climbed up the steps next to it to get a birds' eye view of the falls. 

The view from the top of Skogafoss

The second waterfall, Seljalandsfoss, has a path that allowed us to walk behind the waterfall which was fun to do!

 

We ended the day by checking into the Landhotel near the Golden Circle.

Eastern Iceland

We boarded the Gate 1 bus in the morning knowing we had a long drive to get to the hotel we'd be staying the night in near the town of Hofn. However, Gate 1 always does a good job of scheduling interesting stops along the way. The first stop we made was at Petra's Stone Collection. The collection is housed within a garden/house that are filled with stones that were collected by an Icelander, Petra Sveindottir, beginning in 1946. She traveled all over Iceland personally collecting all of the stones displayed in the museum. As we walked through the exhibit, we were amazed at the variety of stones that were all found within Iceland.

After Petra's Stone Collection, we continued driving south with a stop in a small town for a group lunch. Then we were on our way to see the green cliffs at Blabjorg and another waterfall, Fossadalur.

Blabjorg

We've lost count of the beautiful waterfalls we have seen in Iceland!

At the end of the day, we arrived at the Fosshotel in Hofn where we stayed for two nights.  The next day was all about glaciers. We arrived at the Jokulsarlon Glacier Lagoon eager for a boat ride amongst the floating icebergs. The blue color of the icebergs was spectacular!

We were lucky that the weather was overcast/rainy because we were told the blue color of the icebergs is more vibrant when skies are gray.

After the glacier lagoon boat ride, we crossed the road to Diamond Beach where chunks of ice that break off from the icebergs in the lagoon wash out to the beach. The ice chunks on the black beach give the appearance of diamonds.

 scattered on the beach.

It was a great day at the lagoon and Diamond Beach and it was made even better when we saw a reindeer off the side of the road as we drove back to the hotel. 

After a second night at the Hofn hotel, we started the next day with a stop at the Svinafellsjokul glacier. This glacier is an outlet glacier of Vatnajokull which is the largest ice cap in Europe. We were able to walk out to a spot where we could get some really good pictures of the glacier. It was interesting to learn from our tour guide that she used to visit this glacier with her family when she was a child. She said the glacier has receded hundreds of feet from where she remembers it being.