Hey everyone!
Here’s another part of our journey around Iceland this time it’s all about the eastern part, in which I included Jökullsarlón. I hope you are not bored with so many pics, but now I’m finally getting to the most beautiful place (at least for me) of Iceland.
Jökulsarlón is still a part of Skaftafell National Park and is actually a glacial lake. Oh yeah, I’ve seen so many glacial lakes, but none of them were so exceptional. This lake is unique because of the huge floes of ice, that have fallen from the Breidamerkurjökull glacier, which is right above the lake. And because this glacial lake is turning into a short river, that flows right into the sea, there are chunks of ice lying on the beach as well.
I really wanted to see both sunset and sunrise here, and I didn’t care at all, that if we want to stay here, we will probably freeze to death, hahaha:) It was incredibly cold outside, and when we’re pitching the tent right on the beach and lying down into our sleeping bags (literally in every piece of clothes we had), the thermometer said 2 degrees.
Sunset was not as red as we experienced at the Seljalandsfoss waterfall, however, even this blue one was worth it. Although we woke up with mild frostbite the morning, I enthusiastically ran out of the tent and immediately started shooting one picture after another. The mountains across the lake were enlightened with the morning sun and the sky could not be more photogenic. I felt like I was at the Arctic Circle, even though it was more than 300 km away from us. My fingers were freezing as I was taking the pictures, but I didn’t care and continued to hysterically run along the beach and shoot pictures of every piece of glacier that seemed interesting to me. Which was every piece. If I had to choose a place that I liked in Iceland the most, it was definitely Jökulsarlón. I saw a lot of things in my life – volcanoes, glaciers, lakes, waterfalls, mountains, deserts, forests, rocks, oceans, caves, but something like Jökulsarlón, never.
I would spend hours here, if Vojta wouldn’t pull me back to the car. We started to head further along the coast to the north. Vojta actually found a place on Instagram, that we didn’t have in our itinerary, but stopped by anyways because it looked really great on the pictures.
We were passing another glaciers and mountains on our left side, which we could see right from the highway. No one wanted to stop for pictures anymore, so half of the next photos were taken from the car window, hahaha:) By coincidence we saw a baby reindeer, but he was really far away, so before I managed to change my lens, he was gone.
We got into a place called Stokksnes. It’s kind of a highland peninsula, where there was a little café at the end of the road. Perfect spot for a café, right?! We had to pay an entrance fee at the café, which was the first time to pay. The property was probably private. When we first saw the beauty, we didn’t regret a penny and started walking closer to the mountains. It was a 10-km roundtrip on flat land, so we were back in the car in 3 hours (despite my photographic fits). The way back went through black-sand beach, which was perfect for taking some pictures.
When we got back to the car, we continued further along the coast, ale but stopped every 10 kilometers just to take pictures. For example we saw this cool red chair on our way. Probably some kind of art.
The nature suddenly changed and it didn’t look like there were some glaciers anymore, even though we were only about 50 km away from Jökulsarlón! Instead of that, we were admiring unbelievably blue ocean and sand beaches. If I saw one of the pictures before being here, I definitely wouldn’t guess that it’s Iceland! The coast reminded me more of California than Arctic Circle, haha 🙂
And now, who has seen the movie “The Secret Life of Water Mitty”? This place will probably come into the mind for those, who have, because Walter Mitty cruised this road on longboard in the movie. Although we were missing the longboard for the true experience, we enjoyed driving it down as well. When we descended a few meters, we got to the town called Seydisfjördur, which was one of the easternmost places we’ve been to. We were starting to stink again, so we visited a local campground and took a shower and recharged all the phones and cameras.
The next day was probably the most boring day of the whole roadtrip. We spent 8 hours in the car since we had to cross this part of Iceland to get to the Mývatn Lake on the very north. I have only like 3 documentary pictures from that day, haha 🙂
We got to the Mývatn lake at the evening, where we right underneath the Krafla volcano slept. Before we fell asleep, we all thought of what to do in the case of volcano eruption, haha:)
But more about Mývatn lake and other northern places in the next post!
Cheers!
E.