Vatnajökull National Park, Iceland

As we were awake early this morning, we decided to leave our accommodation just after 6.30 am.

We headed on a north easterly direction towards the area where a huge volcano eruption passed through in 1996. The power of nature was there for all to see, many of the roads were destroyed as well as many houses.  A huge steel girder from a bridge was totally wrenched away and twisted and you can see this by the roadside. At one stage the water which was being melted by the volcano was running at a rate of 25 square metres per second, that is really some mighty power.

Afterwards, we visited Skaftafell, which is situated in the Vatnajökull National Park, which covers 14% of Iceland’s landmass.  We hiked some 5.2 kms return trip to get to the Svartifoss waterfall, surrounded by incredible scenery – the huge Vatnajökull icecap, meadows with wildflowers and smaller waterfalls.   Lawrence this is similar to going up the mountain side of the 1000 steps, hard yakka. The waterfall was sensational. Spent some time up the top admiring the views as well as taking many photos.

Just before lunch we visited another amazing site, the Jökulsárlón lagoon, which is next to the Breidamerkurjokull glacier.  This lagoon was formed as the glacier began to recede in the 1940s.

The scenery is again incredibly beautiful, as icebergs come apart from the main glacier and then drift to the sea.  There is also a beach with black sand, where we saw seals which were sunbaking at that spot.

We reached our destination at Hofn in the early part of the afternoon.

Another great day in Iceland.