[Travel] Iceland Day 4 – Southeast / East Iceland

Day 4: Southeast / East Iceland

• Skaftafell / Vatnajokull National Park
• Jokusarlon Glacier Lagoon 
• Hofn
• Seydisfjordur

Originally, we really wanted to join a tour to see natural ice caves, but we found out that these are only offered from November to March. And then we thought of doing the glacier walk, but at the end, we just decided to have an “easy” day. Or so we thought.

Since our only agenda for the day was to visit the Jokulsarlon Glacier Lagoon, we thought of visiting the nearby Skaftafell / Vatnajokull National park, to see the famous “black waterfall”, Svartifoss. It was raining the whole time, and we thought, what a great day for a hike! The duration of hike one way, was probably 30-40 minutes, and on our way up, we could see the people coming down all soaked. Man, we should’ve really invested in getting waterproof pants, even if they looked ugly. Good thing we had our waterproof jackets (more about this story in a few). The view going to Svartifoss was absolutely breathtaking. I already forgot how many waterfalls we saw, and how streams we crossed as well. But it was something that we have not done yet before surely, especially the hiking in the rain part.

Svartifoss is like tucked inside the mountains, it was like a secret magical place.

 

Soooo, on our way down, G and I were still talking and kept saying that its a good thing we had waterproof jackets. But as we were talking, I was actually already thinking if the jackets really shielded us from that rain, because I was feeling a bit cold, but thought that perhaps it was just really cold, I mean, we were on top of a mountain and it was windy and raining. When we finally got back to the diner at the foot of the mountain, we removed our jackets, and surprise, surprise! We were apparently soaked. Even our thermals absorbed the rain water. Haha! G at this point was already really thinking about getting the raincoat he saw from 66 North.

After our very interesting and wet and wild adventure, we proceeded to see the floating icebergs of Jokulsarlon Glacier Lagoon. I remember shouting as soon as we saw them from the car. I just really never imagined I would see icebergs you know, I wanted to scream “Jack!” haha corny. This for me was one of the main highlights of the trip. Could not express how happy I was (still am) for seeing this.

 

We drove to the other side of the beach to see the “Diamond Beach”. This is where the little chunks of ice get washed off to the shore. It was like a winter and ice wonderland. It was crazy and amazing.

We knew today was going to involve a lot of driving. So we went on to Hofn for our stopover and early dinner. The view of the East Fjords is crazy. It was hills and cliffs, which made the drive a bit scary, especially in the rain. We still think that maybe Waze made a crazy and stupid decision of doing a short cut. We were led to a rough road on what seemed to be on a cliff side. The rain and the wind made the drive extra tough because we couldn’t see where we were going. We were only relying on sticks with reflectors that served as road guides, and in the middle of the drive, we felt that the gaps between these guides became longer and longer. We were still laughing at first, and G was still joking a lot, after a while no one was talking anymore, because we were so nervous. After what felt like a hundered years, we finally saw other cars again, I never felt happy to see civilization again!

Oh, the adventure didn’t end there. We stopped for a while in Egilstaddir to stretch. Apparently, our Seydisfjordur airbnb was still like 30 to 40 minutes away. The road on the way there was also apparently very tricky. For the second time, we found ourselves driving in the dark, while it was raining, low visibility and very windy condition, and apparently, we were driving on a mountainous road again. The next day, we’d be able to appreciate the view, but not that night definitely.

Finally we arrived in Seydisfjordur but we couldn’t locate our airbnb. Waze kept on pointing us at an old hospital turned into a hostel, after a while it got really creepy. We stopped by a bar downtown to ask, since it was a tiny town, they actually even knew who the owner was. **Just last week we saw “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”, and it was funny because the bar where we stopped to ask, was the same bar they showed before the vulcano erupted in the movie.