Wednesday turned into a much quieter day than planned. We began in the drizzle with visiting Diamond Beach. This beach is where the the icebergs from the biggest glacier in Iceland melt into the sea. Apparently the gray weather means they look much bluer, the bluest one had just flipped over that morning.
We then walked through to the lagoon and took a cruise on Jökulsárlón glacier lagoon.
The afternoon plan was for half the group to do some walks in Skaftafell National Park whilst the other half went glacier hiking but as it poured with rain us walkers hung out in the cafeteria for 3.5 hours instead. Then it was less than 2 hours to our hotel in Vik because again we didn't stop at any of the scenic spots as it was too misty to see much. This was our second night staying in a hotel that was built on a farm, they'd both expanded greatly over the years.
Thursday morning began with a drizzly visit to Reynisfjara Beach, where hiking boots were the only appropriate footwear. It was pure dark grey gravel. Apparently many movies have filmed there, including Star Wars and Game of Thrones. The waves are so strong they have a special warning system as you enter the beach but still several people drown there each year.
We then headed to Seljalandsfoss Waterfall, where we discovered how close to Reykjavik we now were, as there were so many more tourists than we'd seen in days.
Then it was to my favourite waterfall of the trip so far, Gullfoss Waterfall. It was very powerful, and had lots of elements to it. I'm very glad that it wasn't turned into a hydro electric station as an English company proposed to the farmer who owned the land in 1903. His 15 year old daughter fought against it and the English gave up on the idea and it eventually became a national park.
My least favourite sight of the trip so far was next, Geysir. There were so, so many tourists there (there were 3 cruise ships at the port tonight) and it turns out only one active geyser, that wasn't as high as I expected. But I did get to see the original Geysir that all others around the world are named after, I never knew it was an Icelandic word.
Make sure you watch to the end!
As we headed to Thingvellir National Park it started to rain again but we were still able to see the tectonic faults created by the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates shifting apart. This was also the sight of the original parliament of Iceland.
Back in Reykjavik we headed out for a final dinner as half our group leave tomorrow whilst there rest of us still have two more days to go.
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