The next day, I woke up and met the other guests of the little guest house. There was a German couple who didn’t seem to want to interact, but another guest was friendlier. Jakob was visiting from Czech Republic, and he was also doing the ring, but by bus. We were going the same direction that morning, so I offered him a ride.
I booked a boat tour of the glacier lake Jökulsárlón in the afternoon. It was around 3 hours’ drive away, so there was time to see other things before the tour started. Jökulsárlón is the largest glacial lake in Iceland, the glacier (Vatnajökull, the biggest in Iceland) melts into the lake, and icebergs also break off and float on the lake. The boat tour doesn’t get to touching distance of the glacier, so I wanted to go somewhere where I can do that (touch a glacier). Close to the guest house there’s Solheimajokull, so we drove there as the first stop. We walked a little from the parking place, and saw groups who were doing glacier walks. I’ve seen the brochures for this activity, but to me this is a too cold (as well as too pricy) activity. We walked past the signs that said “Do not pass here without expert guide” and managed to touch some ice. Hooray, goal accomplished!
Jakob wanted to visit Dyrhólaey that day, which is a cliff which has views of Reynisfjara, and also has puffins. On the way there, another popular tourist attraction is the crashed remains of a DC-3 plane (well, technically a C-117D). I was not sure if this sight was worth a visit or not, and Jakob also thought the same, but in the end we thought, why not have a look. There’s a bus that goes from the carpark to the location of the wreck, but a one-way ticket cost 20 Euro, so we decided to walk the 3.5km from the car park to the plane. It’s not a hard walk, but it was over rocks, so it wasn’t as comfortable as a walk in some city, nor could we go fast. It was an interesting walk, though, through fog and a landscape that could be the moon.
The plane wreck itself was, as expected, a wrecked plane. There were a lot of tourists around, even people climbing it. I wondered if it should be respected for future tourists, but it wasn’t really any significant monument. We saw the bus going back to the carpark and decided the bus was worth it compared to the walk, so we took it, and continued our drive to Dyrhólaey.
Dyrhólaey is a peninsula from which you can see the Reynisfjara. It also has other interesting features like a big natural arch, a lighthouse, and some puffins. Sadly I still had to drive quite a distance to Jökulsárlón, so I didn’t stay here long. Jakob and I said our good-byes and safe travels, and I continued my drive. On the way I stopped at the Icewear outlet store to get the winter jacket I saw the day before, and then I drove past a lot of beautiful landscape (mostly too fast) trying to make it before the check-in time of the tour at 4:30 PM. The first part of the drive was wet and foggy, but to my left I could see glimpses of glacier in the distance (all part of the giant glacier Vatnajökull). Rounding the corner past the city of Hof, the weather improved and there were blue skies. There were also fascinating volcanic rock formations, but sadly I had no time to stop and take pictures of these.
I made it to Jökulsárlón with a few minutes to spare, it turns out the tour company was pretty relaxed, and the rush was not really super necessary. Jökulsárlón is the largest glacier lake, and there were a few tour companies, and a lot of tourists.
I was doing a rubber boat (“zodiac boat”) tour with around 10 or so other people. After suiting up in gear that would let us survive the cold water if we fell in, we walked to the water and did the tour. Luckily the weather was good at this point, not foggy like where I was in the morning. It was a fascinating tour looking at icebergs at a somewhat close distance (but not too close, because they can flip any time). We also moved as close as we could to the edge of the glacier, hoping to catch glimpse of ice falling off it, sadly we didn’t see any.
After the boat tour, I stayed at the coast of the lake to further enjoy the sight of the icebergs floating on the lake. After breaking off from the glacier, the icebergs flow slowly into the ocean, and sometimes the ice ends up back on the beach, giving the beach the name “Diamond Beach”. The winter jacket I bought earlier proved to be a wise choice, since it was really cold standing next to all the ice, obviously.
I left the area quite late, around 9:30 PM. My plan was to drive further east and find a guesthouse to sleep (for a discount). This night, it was a bit harder, because according to booking.com most of the guesthouses were fully booked. As I left Jökulsárlón, I saw a man standing at the side of the road with his thumb out, a hitchhiker. Since I was a hitchhiker myself once, I stopped the car and let him in. Harry was travelling from Australia, doing the ring but travelling using his thumb.
We rode together for half an hour, and I let him off as I turned off from the road to try a guesthouse. I couldn’t persuade the owner to give me the price I wanted, so I decided to go to 1 campground which is not so obvious on the map. I got back on the road, and found Harry standing next to the road a bit further down. By this point it was getting dark. He wanted to go to Höfn, which is beyond where I was going.
After a 40-minute drive, I was again turning off the main road. I said bye again to Harry, and drove some 6 km away from the main road towards the glacier. The camp site was really secluded. There were 3-4 other cars there, it was nice and quiet. By this time it was 11PM and I was quite tired. I decided the next day I would not be driving all over the place, and just hike to another glacier. I had dinner in the car, brushed my teeth in the outdoor sink in the cold night, and tried to sleep in the car. I was worried for Harry, waiting for a ride in the middle of the night, I wondered if I should pick him up and we could somehow share the space in the car, but at 2 AM he wrote that an Icelandic lady picked him up and gave him a ride to the hostel he wanted to go to, lucky for him.