Day 4 – Glacial Lagoon – Life Travel Fantasy

We woke up in the morning to see this view from our cabin. Mountain + river + a lot of sheep 🙂

The sheep looked so cute. We saw a lot of sheep ever since we landed in Iceland. I guess they are more in number than the people in the country. They looked heavier than normal with loads of wool. We didn’t try to go near them or disturb them and enjoyed their presence from a distance 🙂 They made holes in the black sand and put their legs in, as they don’t have wool for their legs to keep them warm I guess!

We were geared up for our glacial lagoon visit today. Our first stop was at Eldhraun Lava Field, the biggest lava flow in the world, that got created during the Laki eruption in the late 1700s. The enormous site which is 565 square kilometers (218 sq mi) is where the Apollo 11 crew came to train for their impending moonwalk.

The Eldhraun lava field and the craters are covered with moss and the landscape looked alien and unearthly.

A closer look at the moss showed us a variety of colors.

There were instructions at several places not to step on the moss and stick to the walking trail, as the moss areas are particularly sensitive and damage caused by footprints and tyre marks can take a very long time to heal. It is equally dangerous for tourists to step on the moss, as it hides the surface irregularities below and anyone who steps on it, has a good chance of ending up falling into a huge pit or cave below it 😛

Our next stop was at the beautiful Fjaðrárgljúfur canyon. Its origin dates back to the cold periods of the Ice Age, about two million years ago. The water level was very low as of now and one can easily walk beside the stream.

We came across a small waterfall near the canyon and it looked very pretty. I couldn’t find a name for it, so I just named it Alekhyáfoss in the meanwhile 😛

On the way, we found an area by the road which looked like a huge desert with black sand dunes.

We just stopped by to enjoy the view. Everyday Iceland surprised us with the various landscapes, making it tough to believe that we were in the same country every day.

We moved on to Skaftafell national park, formed over thousands of years by different influences of fire and water from waterfalls, rivers. Volcanic eruptions under the ice-caps give rise to jökulhlaups (glacial floods) which swell the Skeiðará river massively. The last large jökulhlaup occurred in 1996.

There were several hiking paths in the national park that take us to various glaciers and waterfalls. We chose a smaller hiking path to a waterfall.

Finally and finally, we got to see some TREES in Iceland. One interesting fact about Iceland is that it has very very few trees and we ended up seeing treeless landscapes so far. With so much lava, many parts of Iceland do not have the depth of soil required to support the growth of trees. Due to lack of many trees, the country experiences heavy winds.

There were many camp sites near this national park. We took a small lunch break there and moved on to Fjallsárlón glacial lagoon. We were awe-struck by the first glance of the lagoon and we just ran quickly to take a closer look of it. It was so tough to control our excitement.

It felt amazing to watch a lot of icebergs floating on water. There was a heart shaped formation behind the icebergs on the mountain which looked cool 🙂

I just didn’t feel like going away from this place. I could happily sit there for hours, just admiring the beauty of nature.

In the interest of time, we had to leave this to go to the next Glacial lagoon Jökulsárlón, which is a bigger one.

I got reminded of the Titanic movie ending, when I read these rules: “You only survive few minutes in the Glacial lagoon“!

I have no more words left to describe this place, I just kept on clicking a lot of pictures. We could spot a lot of birds here and icebergs have a bluish tinge, which looked special and added beauty to the place.

We spotted a lot of seals too swimming around the icebergs. The one with its black head above the water in the photo below is a seal.

There were some boat tours inside this lagoon, which take tourists close to the icebergs and give them a bit of centuries old ice to taste too 😛

All these icebergs move under the bridge, slowly into the beach beside and then into the Atlantic Ocean.

We walked across the bridge to reach the Diamond beach on the other side. The icebergs on the beach shine like diamonds on the black sand beach and hence its name.

We expected to see only a few icebergs on the beach, but we were amazed to see a lot of icebergs there. It was simply a photographer’s paradise. I felt a little bad that I missed getting my SLR, but tried taking photos with my OnePlus6.