Day 6: Vik to Jokulsarlon

Sadly we had to leave Vik campsite and journey on.  We all agreed it was the best campsite so far.  Vik got even better when I found a hand knit outlet storeright next to the supermarket.  I have bagged myself a glorious blue cardigan as my souvenir.  After stocking up at the shops I took a few more pics of Vik 

I had to stop on the way to our next location to take a photo of this absolutely insane terrain.  I felt like I was on another planet.  It is pillows of lava covered in moss as far as the eye can see.

We stopped at Fjadrargljufur canyon, which is a beautiful place.  It was carved out by the river two million years ago.   Its hard to get a photo of it,but the canyon snakes along for about 2km with a great path along the top.  

The other tourists are diminishing as we head east from Reykjavik.  

To get a sense of where we are, this is our trustyroute planner (we are back on speaking terms now).  Currently at point 19 and we will end back at Reykjavik, but we haven’t decided on the exact route just yet. 

We stopped at the Kirkjugoff “church floor” which is a set of basalt columns that are exposed and flattened on top.

The roads continue to be very straightforward.  This is the view from the main ring road around the whole island (route 1).

Eve is being amazing with the playlist and takingmost of the photos that I am posting.   Leo is in awe of the whole place.  I have persuaded him to write a Top Five Guest Blog:

My top five things in Iceland so far are:

The bridge between continents

The camper van

Walking behind the waterfall

Icebergs on the beach

Hot dogs 

We then drove to the Skaftafell visitor centre which is within the Vatnajökull National Park.  We did a short 1h hike to the edge of the Skaftafellsjokull glacier.  It was amazing (but I feel like I am saying this about a lot of things we have seen!). This was on the approach to the glacier.

Some of the glacier was really blue and Eve found a heart shaped bit in one picture

Finally today we have arrived at Jokulsarlon which is where the icebergs calve off from the glacier and fall into the lake and river.  Then they floatdown the river to the sea and get washed up on the black basalt beach, giving it the name Diamond Beach.  Look at these two diamonds:

Some icebergs are massive

And others are just tiny chips

Completely beautiful and really surreal, especially watching the icebergs casually floating down the river.

This is one of the few places in Iceland where you can park your camper van overnight so we are going to do wild camping and go to sleep and wake up with a sea shore view!  This is the currentview out of the back of the van, but we have a few pesky tourists in the way at the moment.