Glacier Adventure
This morning we were up and at them early as we booked a 9:30 glacier walk tour. Breakfast was included in our hotel stay, and after downing a ham and cheese sandwich we were on our way. We got to our meet location early, so just for giggles I pulled up the geocaching app, and sure enough there was a geocache to be found. The outside of the building was lined with giant books as if they were on a bookshelf and the geocache was up under one of the books.
Our tour started promptly at 9:30 with our guide fitting us with proper shoes and safety gear. We all (8 of us on the tour) piled into an off-road van and headed toward the glacier. The tour guide was very difficult to hear and understand, even though he was speaking through a microphone. His English was good, but yet still not quite comprehendable. The van ride to base camp was extremely bumpy on the off-road that we had to take. We then had to get into motorized rafts to cross a small lake to get to the base of the glacier. Here we were fitted with crampons to help walk on the ice.
We walked up the glacier and the guide stopped every now and again to tell us about the glacier . . .although it was difficult to understand him and he would make a statement and then awkward silence would follow as if he was thinking of something else to say or waiting for questions.
One of the coolest things we did on the glacier was drink water from a stream running down it. Essentially you had to straddle the stream and do a push-up on the ice pick that was placed over the stream. It was very refreshing. The scenery was nice, and it was awesome that we walked on a glacier, but I think we all rated the experience as a 6 or 7 on a 10 point scale.
After the glacier tour we headed right to Jokulsarlon glacier lagoon. This was the spot I have been waiting for. It was so impressive to see. I just loved it. Across the street we went to the Diamond Beach where chunks of ice from the lagoon was downstream to the sea and beach. I don’t know why, but I wasn’t expecting as many people at the beach as there were. The sun had come up and it warmed up quite nicely.
We got on the road and make an unplanned stop at Fjallsarlon glacier. I once again took off to find a geocache and missed the photo ops with the “family”, but did obtain some pretty awesome shots myself. Some sheep even posed for me. I was so happy the sun was out and the sky was blue. It makes it that much more stunning. As I was walking back from the cache, I didn’t see our group so I headed back to the car, but they weren’t there. I headed back to where I first left them and realized they had moved closer to the glacier lake, but they were all done and walking back up. Tom took the opportunity to make me feel guilty for abandoning the family and that he took a picture with his arm around his “missing” wife.
We got back on the road to our next overnight stop in Vik. Neither Kristin or I could remember this particular AirBnB that we booked, but it’s quite quaint. Has just enough room for us. We went and grabbed another excellent dinner before we headed off to Dyrholaey to see the arched rock and hopefully spot some Puffins. Unfortunately, when we got there we found they actually closed at 7:00, and it was now well after 8:00. This is the first time we have run into a natural landscape area with closing hours. We headed on down the road to the Solheimsandur Plane wreck site. This is a US military version of a DC3 that landed around 1970 when the fuel ran out and never moved. It was an over 2 mile hike one way to the plane, but we did it. There was a geocache inside the plane that I didn’t find right away, that once again, Kristin walked right up to and pulled right out. It was an awfully long walk for a cache and I don’t know if I would recommend necessarily doing it again.
We got back to the AirBnB after 10:30. I decided to make a tenth of mile hike up the hill to the church to grab just one more cache and came back down to write the blog for the evening. Hard to believe we only have one more full-day!
