Week 55- Part 1 An Obsession with Ice

Tuesday 31st July, we woke without an alarm and waited for a gap in the rain to leave the tent. We had breakfast and packed up and then at another break in the rain we said farewell to Paul and hit the road to start hitchhiking. Immediately a local with limited English brought us to the carpark to walk down to the wreckage of a US DC plane from 1973 that crashed due to the selection of the wrong fuel tank.

There were no fatalities. The walk down took about 45min along a flat sandy plane. Iceland doesn’t do anything by half measures, it is either flat or huge mountains. There wasn’t much left of the plane apart from the fuselage though it was interesting to see the square windows. We walked back to the entrance with the nice change of having the wind on our right. At the entrance we met Austin and Taylor (siblings from Long Beach, California). Taylor is studying law in NYC and Austin studies geography. We piled into their little car and headed for Dymholaey Penninsula where we saw puffins! It was incredibly windy, making it difficult to walk but it gave us a whole new appreciation for those badass birds! They looked extremely cute when stationary but in the wind their wings were going 90. It was incredible to watch.

We walked a little way before going back to the car and driving to Vik beach to see black sand, more puffins, Giants Causeway stones on acid, and a massive sea arch. We stocked up on food, including a ‘dark’ chocolate bar, and ate ham rolls by a church with the Americans. Our next stop was Fjaðrárgljúfur canyon. Well over 100m deep, there were metal platforms to stand on and look out. The meeting of three smaller waterfalls was quite pretty. The canyon itself was immense. A wonderful little walk.

We stopped at a few other waterfalls along the way, including one with a 'don’t poo here sign'. On the road again, we soon reached Skaftafell National Park where we would camp for the night. We ate pasta and beans immediately, dried clothes (including Sam’s trousers which he had spilled his bottle on) and reorganised food. I had a shower while Sam read and then I went for a drive with Austin.

When I returned, amazingly, Paul was there! We talked a little before I went to charge my camera and research where to stay the following evening. To finish up the evening Sam and I decided to have a small piece of our ‘dark’ chocolate each. This turned out to be a complete disaster. When we tasted the bar, we discovered it was in fact liquorice flavour, with small pieces of liquorice to boot.

Wednesday 1st August, we woke up to a beautiful sunny day. We ate breakfast with Paul and were able to give him some oats and honey. We packed our bags, moved the tent into the sun to dry and then went on a hike with the Americans. It wasn’t very well signed so we did our planned route in reverse. We saw two waterfalls including one with a large overhang and basalt columns. From here we continued up with the sun beating down until we had an overlooking view of Europe’s biggest glacier.

After taking time to appreciate the beauty we returned to camp, learning all about Austin’s job at In-N-Out. At the view point we spotted a road to the foot of a glacier not far away, so we decided to investigate. The road was way too rough and bumpy for their car, but Taylor carried on anyway. It was worth it. Car intact, we walked up a dirt path on a land slide and got a fantastic view of it. Not willing to risk getting closer we turned back.

The road seemed worse going out but soon we returned to the A1 and drove on to the turf church at Hof. It was a bit of a brief stop. There were some very old people buried there including a 109-year-old woman.

We stopped at one glacial lagoon before carrying on to Diamond beach. The name coming from the mounds of glacial ice sitting on the black sand. We enjoyed peanut butter wraps once more before having a short walk along the beach.

At this point we parted ways with Austin and Taylor as we enjoyed the thrill of running across a single lane bridge with a bus coming towards us. We were due to kayak at 09:30 the next morning so we needed a place to camp nearby. There were no campsites, so we looked for somewhere sheltered in the wilderness. We found a spot after an hour and pitched the tent using rocks as pegs so as not to damage the landscape.

We then tried to plan out our next few days on the map before reading a few chapters of ‘Murder in Mesopotamia’ by Agatha Christie aloud together. We had the freeze-dried rice meals I picked up in the famous hut before going for an evening stroll along Jökulsárlón, the famous glacial lagoon. We gathered some ice to rinse the pots, read a couple more chapters before getting an early night.

Thursday 2nd August, we set an alarm for 06:45 to give us time to get to the kayaking for 09:00. The usual breakfast and pack up kicked off the day, though we did have to roll the tent differently to deal with the condensation. We got to the kayaking early so we sat and watched the lagoon, only for 4 seals to appear and entertain us. At the kayaking we put on our dry gear and were due to be in a group of 7 with 5 Italians but they didn’t show up, so we had our own personal guide. In a double kayak we paddled into the lagoon.

We couldn’t go too near anything big because the saltwater melts the ice faster below the surface making them top heavy, so they sometimes roll over. This then reveals the natural beautiful blue colour of glacial ice. We were on the water for about 90 min paddling through lumps of ice. It’s hard to describe the enormity of it all or how surreal it was. Thoroughly impressed, if a little cold, we returned to shore, got some advice about the east fiordlands, and went to hitch to the Hali hotel. A German/Norwegian photographer on his 5th visit took us the 15km down the road. We ate lunch in the hotel reception and played some cards. After a couple of hours of waiting we were collected for our guided glacier tour.

We were fitted for crampons and loaded into one of the super jeeps. The guide was a softly spoken local whose wife’s family basically run everything in the area. This time we had a Belgian family and two Germans for company. I quickly established they were all traveling the other way round the island and so would be no use to us for hitchhiking. We drove for about 30min cross country before walking another half hour to the foot of the glacier. Here we put on our crampons to go with our helmets, harnesses and ice axes. We learnt about ash forming trolls, using glaciers to find out about past climate, water build up, the formation of glacier ice and its true colour and also how fast it is eroding. We learnt about climbing up and down and walking across slopes and explored a crevasse.

We both drank some glacial water and basked in the afternoon sun. During the tour, the guide (whose English-speaking accent sounded incredibly Welsh) used his ice axe to create steps and also draw diagrams. The whole experience was amazing, and the guide really made it. On the way back we talked about the Irish-Icelandic connections and the Westman islands (where Irish prisoners from the West of Europe had escaped to). We stopped to pick wild thyme, blueberries and crowberries.

Once back at the hotel we hitched with a French couple to the turn off for Hofn. She was an air traffic controller and loved her job. Her husband basically had no English. At the junction we waited for almost two hours for a lift as it was 19:00 when we started hitching. We were just about to give up when a weird Danish cow farmer picked us up, drove us to a place of no real note 30 min away, parked for 5min, had a cigarette and left.

We walked for about 20min looking for somewhere to camp when Sigruni in her mini cooper came to our rescue. Incredibly she was driving all the way to Egilsstaðir and took us to the campsite there, arriving around midnight having taken the mountain road. She has been driving around Iceland since June and is a native but moved to Sweden aged 8. She is now spending her life traveling as she wants a fresh start. I made some couscous soup before we hit the hay.