Southern Iceland Glaciers, Waterfalls and Beaches Tour

Today we went on another wonderful tour, covering the area south and east of Reykjavik.  The tour lasted for 10 hours and went a long distance but the bus ride was worth it.  It started with a drive through more of the intriguing Iceland landscape.  Of course we saw farmland, horses and sheep.

Bales of hay - getting ready to feed the livestock in winter

 The day started a bit cloudy but the weather gods were looking over us and soon the skies started to clear just in time to see a couple of glaciers high up on the mountains.  The most important one was on the infamous Eyjafjallajokull volcano which erupted in 2010 and disrupted air traffic all over Europe (except Iceland!).  More photos of that later.

Our first stop was at the Skogafoss waterfall.  It was quite impressive.  I made the long walk up the stairs to the viewing platform at the top of the falls while Linda enjoyed them from below.

Next up was the Solheimajokull Glacier.  We were able to walk close to the current terminus of the glacier.  Our guide told us how much it has receded recently.  The place where we stood to take these photos was the terminus of the glacier in 2012.

Interestingly, Icelanders are less concerned with warming temperatures than they are with changes to the Gulf-stream that may result from climate change.  The Gulf-stream keeps Iceland fairly temperate and a shift could quickly cause an Ice Age there.  Going back to Bordeaux, the French could face a similar fate if the Gulf-stream shifts and temperatures there get lower.  Bye-bye vineyards.

After a lunch stop in the village of Vik, we walked down to a black sand beach but not THE black sand beach that we would visit next.  This one was interesting but the weather had once again changed and it was windy and very cold.

It was cold but Linda is still smiling!

THE black sand beach is Reynisfjara and it was so interesting.  In addition to the black sand it featured a couple of caves and puffins nesting on the cliffs.  The caves were formed by water erosion (the waves there can be quite big and our guide warned us to be careful because big waves have come up seemingly out of nowhere and swept people away).  The erosion caused these incredible volcanic basalt formations to be revealed.

Look carefully - the 2 white dots are puffins

Our last stop was to be the Seljalandsfoss waterfall.  But we were slightly ahead of schedule and the weather had once again cleared so we made a stop to get a good look at Eyjafjallajokull.

Then it was on to Seljalandsfoss.  The waterfall was, of course, beautiful but the highlight here was being able to walk behind the falls.  And with the sun shining brilliantly we got rainbows too.  Yes, we got wet but it was well worth it.

Wet but worth it

Afterwards we tried to decide which of the tours we liked better - yesterday's Golden Circle or today's Southern Iceland.  We decided that they were both great but if forced to recommend one over the other we'd go with the Southern Iceland tour.