Iceland Road Trip - Part Two
The next day I really needed to take it easy [after eventful car crash/stuck in mud] so I did what any person would do. Go see icebergs! But first I had to go see some awesome waterfalls and play with my new variable ND filter [essentially lets less light in so I can take long exposures in the daylight].
This first waterfall is named Seljalandsfoss [foss being Icelandic for waterfall...you see it a lot in a country with 10,000 waterfalls]. You can actually walk behind the waterfall, but I was getting my gear soaked enough and didn’t need a camera failure a couple days into the trip…
photos by ian grant photography
This was my favorite waterfall, and the one I was most looking forward to seeing. Its name is Skógafoss and is actually near the volcano that blew up recently. There was tons of ash in the area which then covered me and everything I owned. Thankfully this place was unbelievable and made the two hours of coughing and sneezing worthwhile. I was actually perched up on a swan dive on either side ledge for the bottom photo. It was muddy, slippery, and home to angry mating birds too.
This is the coastline of the town Vik. I stayed in the hostel there for a few days and it was pretty cozy. They happen to live underneath the Katla volcano, which is bad news for them the next time it goes off [any day now]. A lot of the volcanoes are under glaciers, so an eruption means flood death for anyone who can’t get out fast enough. There’s an evacuation route in place for everyone in town to be able to get out within 3 hours of an eruption. This is 2 hours and 50 minutes too slow.
This iceberg land is one of Iceland’s prized treasures called Jökulsárlón. Most of the names I’m throwing out are really easy ones, I’m trying not to do the long strange character drawn out ones. Anyway, on the way to Jökulsárlón my car decided it was going to stall while getting gas, so I had to drive all the way up from Vik without stopping as if I broke down on the way the likelihood of me camping in my car in that spot for a few days was pretty good. I only had Ritz crackers and Ramen which wasn’t really going to get me that far in that lava land desert [see photos from part one]. I came back on the same route the next day, so you’ll see those amazing glacier photos in the next part.
The icebergs come from the glacier Vatnajökull [kull being glacier] which is the largest glacier in Iceland and takes up 8% of the country. It’s also considered the largest icecap in Europe and home to many a volcano waiting to explode, naturally. It’s really a sight to be seen. Here are some of my favorite photos- I seriously had to cut out a lot.
