Continuing on with our first day (the green part of the map in the previous post). On our first road trip (in February), we stopped at the glacial lagoon - Jökulsárlón. This time, we went across the road to where the lagoon empties into the ocean - wow! I thought the black sand beach in Vík was breathtaking - even more so with chunks of glacier on the dark sand! We got to suck on pieces of glacier - super pure, super old ice. We were climbing on the pieces of glacier, and some of them were rocking in the waves. The pictures definitely do not do this beautiful beach justice, but I tried!
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| Floating on pieces of glaciers is how polar bears sometimes come to Iceland - and also how birds go down the river |
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| Hiding under a piece of glacier |
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| The waves hitting a piece of ice |
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| Jökulsárlón beach |
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| Jökulsárlón beach |
Our next stop was to visit with some horses on the side of the road :). We had brought along a bag of carrots, but they were very wary of eating them! Some would eat them out of our hand, and some would just knock them to the ground and then continue to sniff the treats there. They were separated into two different pastures, and one was bound and determined to get to the other side! After we left the horses, we passed many more - as well as reindeer!
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| Horses |
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| Attempting to feed him carrots! |
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| Trying to get to the other side... |
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| Iceland horse |
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| Reindeer :) |
Driving through the East Fjords was a very pretty and twisty turny drive. We drove through Breiðdalsvík, Stöðvarfjörður, and Fáskróðsfjörður, then through a 6km tunnel through a mountain to reach Reyðarfjörður. Each of the villages were tiny fishing villages. Parts of the main road were gravel, which didn't make for the greatest drive, but the beautiful boats and abandoned buildings made up for it! None of the communities had things open - the touristy things seemed to only open on Tuesdays and Fridays, and the community places such as pools were already closed, so we continued driving. We finally stopped in Egilsstaðir for the night, and fell asleep in the car. Egilsstaðir is a newer town in Iceland, only 50 years old. The population of 1500 lives in houses that are far from the typical Icelandic fashion of coloured concrete. In Egilsstaðir the houses are mostly wood or covered in siding. In a suburb, you could forget you were even in Iceland (except for maybe the giant mountains in the background).
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| An old lighthouse by the coast |
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| An old boat! |
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| The coastline |
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| Old hay bales |
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| ...really old. |
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| Another old building |
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| Wall art |
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| Driving through the tunnel to Reyðarfjörður |
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| Sunset driving to Egilsstaðir |
