On Thursday we drove about 7 hours over the course of the day, stopping throughout to take in some of the sights. Most notably, we saw some glaciers.

Here’s Garett at the Jökulsárlón Glacier lagoon.

Across from the lagoon is a black sand beach, called Diamond Beach, where little bits of glaciers wash ashore, sparkling like diamonds. This is where I wished that I had gone to one of Karey Walters’ FEAST sessions at school on how to take good pictures with your iphone. It was lovely, but I can’t really do it justice with my level of picture-taking.

We also did a hike to a waterfall in Skaftafell National Park. It was very beautiful; the water rushing through the the basalt pillars was especially lovely.  Something about the way that basalt is formed makes them break into nice, even rows. They look a bit like an organ’s pipes to me.

A note about Icelandic waterfalls: There are so many of them that we’ve become desensitized and sort of resentful. At first we were stopping every 10 minutes to see a waterfall, but after 3 or 4 days of constant waterfall-viewing, it became a bit of a time suck. So we started stopping cursorily out of obligation and now we skip most of them. There are too many.  If we went to all of them, we’d never make it back to Reykjavík. I overheard two other people complaining about this early in the trip and I felt superior, thinking it would never happen to me, but here I am. With that said, here’s another incredible waterfall we stumbled upon while hiking in Skaftafell. It’s not even advertised or mentioned (because there are so many of them), so we don’t know the name.

On our way to our airbnb, there were piles and piles of this thick moss all over the rocks we passed. It was extravagant and fluffy and a bit too alive. You felt like if you laid down in it, it would cover your whole body in an hour. It is insane how the landscapes differ so much throughout the island.

FRIDAY

Today we took a ferry to the Westman Islands. The trip overall was a bit disappointing because of the weather. It was raining, freezing, and foggy, so we couldn’t really see much of anything. Plus, Garett doesn’t really have a raincoat, so he got really wet, really quickly. Still, we went to two very excellent museums and taking a boat is always fun.

According to legend, the Westman Islands were first a refuge for Irish slaves or “Westmen” who hid here from Ingólfur Arnarson, the first settler of Iceland. I think he was hunting them down for killing his brother. That’s why they are called Westman, even though they aren’t really in the west.

Here’s our approach on the ferry. You can see all the fog. The cliffs are filled with birds’ nests.

The first museum we went to was their little aquarium. It is most famous for being the home of Tóti the Puffin. It’s a great story. Each year, when the pufflings leave the nest, they are supposed to fly out to sea. Some of them, however, get confused and fly towards the town instead, landing in peoples’ backyards or the streets. So, the children of the Westman Islands go around with boxes and collect the pufflings every night to bring to the aquarium. The aquarium keeps them overnight and then releases them into the wild. Tóti was deemed too weak to be released, so he stayed at the aquarium, to the delight of all visitors. Here he is with his friend Thor. I don’t know Thor’s story.

A few other pictures from the aquarium. One of the fish’s faces looks a little like Voldemort.

Our last stop was the volcano museum, Eldheimar, which tells the story of the 1973 Eldfell eruption on the island. They call themselves the “Pompeii of the North” which is a bit much, I think, because everyone but one person escaped safely.  Still it’s cool to see the pictures and they have a house that was covered by lava in the museum.

This definitely would have been a better experience with better weather, but that’s just the way traveling is. We are pretty tired at this point, so it was nice to have a lighter day.