Iceland Day 2
And maybe more than day 2, since I'm so late in posting this. I haven't even finished going through my pictures from the trip. Honestly, I have no idea where the last 3+ weeks of August went.
So, we slept at Vik, and were supposed to meet the outfitters at the parking lot at the glacier by 9:40. Since we went to bed by about 10 PM, neither of us thought to set an alarm, feeling sure that the light and noise would wake us early. Wrong. We woke at about 9 AM and had a 30 minute drive to get to the meeting place. We delayed our trip to get coffee at a nearby coffee shop, and made it to the site about 10 minutes late.
We did the glacier hike with Troll Expeditions on Sólheimajökull, a glacier that is just west of Vik. They outfitted us with helmets, crampons, harnesses, and an ice ax, and we hiked (without the crampons) to the foot of the glacier. We donned our crampons, which involved lacing just so, including making sure there were no loose laces. That actually took some time, even though they had given us all crampons already adjusted to the length of our feet.
Then, off we went! It was actually a lot of fun and a fair amount of effort. Some of the hike we were following a trail, and the rest we were just on the surface of the glacier. The surface was rough, but right under it was solid ice, so you had to really plant your foot to get the crampon to grab. There were crevasses and places that you could see the water flowing off the glacier. Part of the surface was black, which looked odd—as the glacier melts, the ash from old volcanic eruptions is exposed. It didn't look like we were going very far, but it was several miles by the end (including the hike from the parking lot). I don't remember the exact distance, but Paula and I had over 16,000 steps by the end of the day (which included another hike later).
By the way, the ice ax was totally a prop. Our guide said it wouldn't work to stop us if we started to slide. About all it was good for was as a short walking stick. But I thought I looked like a badass anyway.
Our next stop was Dyrhólaey, a peninsula just west of Vik. There were puffins all over the place, and I took many many pictures. The puffins were nesting on the cliff, and one of the paths ran within 10 feet of some of the burrows.
We headed back to Vik for lunch at The Soup Company. I had heard of it, but didn't know much other than it was recommended and usually busy. Since we didn't get there until after 2, it wasn't busy. We each got a soup sampler, with three different soups. We could have gotten a second bowl of our favorite, but we were too full to get more. We had Red Hot Lava soup (a beef soup), Icelandic lamb soup, and broccoli cheddar, and the red hot lava was my favorite...or was it the lamb. They were both yummy. Oh, and the bread was amazing!
While we were eating, we starting thinking about ice caves, and Paula booked us an ice cave hike for the next morning (Saturday), again with Troll Expeditions.
After lunch we went to Víkurfjara, the black sand beach. Looking to the west, there are sea mounts and cliffs, but we didn't go there. This beach is actually one of the most dangerous beaches in Iceland, known for sneaker waves. I saw hundreds of birds in the water, and when I looked at my photos later, I found that they were all puffins!
We stopped at Skool Beans for coffee before heading out to our next destination. I brought my own cup with me, the one I had bought there last year, and Paula bought her own travel cup there, with a Viking cat on it.
We headed east to Fjaðrárgljúfur, the lovely canyon I had visited last year. It's about an hour from Vik, about a mile off the Ring Road. Somehow, I remembered the lovely canyon and how much I enjoyed hiking beside it, and totally forgot that you had to climb for a probably half a kilometer to get to the lovely, mostly level hike. My legs were feeling the pain, but I did it. (I was glad to find out later that Paula said it was a hard climb for her too, but she might have just been trying to make me feel better.)
Regardless, the canyon was as beautiful as I remembered.
We headed back to Vik for the night. We'd bought sandwiches for dinner, so we just ate and collapsed. This time, we set an alarm. Our meetup for the ice cave hike was at 7 AM!
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