Should've Done the Polar Bear Plunge

And so the beginning of the end, with the tail end of this trip beginning. With day three on the road, I had finally gotten used to driving manual and was only stalling a few times per day instead of almost every time. Thank goodness because I was freaking out the previous days. Once you get further away from Reykjavik, the roads narrow and become tighter with the changing landscape. When they need long bridges, they become one lane with the occasional widening for cars to pull over and let people driving the other way to pull over. The first time driving over one of these bridges was a stream of expletives seeing headlights shining through the fog up ahead. As I had just started to gain self-confidence, this was a test to see if I could make it to the pullover and make it to the other side of the bridge without a hitch.

With our road trip reaching a climax, so too did the rain for peak wetness. Since the van wasn't the most comfortable mattress, we weren't sleeping in too late and were able to get decent starts for the days without having to set a series of alarms. Svartifoss takes the cake for the most iconic waterfall if I had to take a guess, and today was the day to get up close and personal. On a clear day, you can set out for a 7-mile hike for a view of Skaftafellsjökull Glacier, but we were barely able to see 100 feet in front of us, let alone down from a mountain for a viewpoint. The night before, I had taken a picture of the trail map so we had some basis to judge our paths on and figure out how far we really wanted to go.

The first waterfall in Skaftafell National Park

Hiking into the clouds

After maybe a half hour of walking, cutting across a closed off path, and trying not to slip to our doom into a canyon to our side, we finally made it to Svartifoss. With all the rain, we kept trying to guess which waterfall was THE one since we could hear them before we could see them. We got an earlier start than most and the mediocre weather meant that we had an exclusive viewing of the waterfall with the exclusion of two hardcore photographers taking long exposure shots from the viewing platform. We played hopscotch across some rocks sticking out of the water and walked in front of the viewing platform to get a better view of the fall -- this probably contributed to why we got absolutely soaked since we were well within the reach of the mist. There were several other people on the viewing platform watching and chuckling as we balanced our way to take pictures on our phones and the GoPro borrowed from my friend. Our photography felt dull in comparison to the two men who had a heavy-duty tripod and telephoto lens. If only I hadn't stopped using my DSLR in fear of it getting overly wet.

Approaching Svartifoss

Svartifoss v.1

Svartifoss v.2

Sick of waterfalls yet?

The rest of our hike was relatively unexciting since we decided not to head for the glacier overlook. There was too much fog so we would have been gazing into a dense white blanket and we hiked any higher, we would've been consumed by the clouds. So, a wise decision was made to head back to the lodge, grab some lunch, and hope that the washer and drying were free to clean our masses of damp and dirty clothing. The lodge has a laundry card you can fill outside of the gift shop, so I put some money on that card via credit card and felt like a real person again with soon-to-be clean clothes.


Donning a pair of clean, warm pants, we jumped back in the camper van and headed off for the hour drive to Jökulsárlón. It was here that we heard stories of the infamous polar bear plunge taking place, with the more adventurous folk participating in the nude. Never before had I thought of a nude polar bear plunge surrounded by icebergs before but it sounded like quite the item to add on a bucket list. When we got there, the rain had passed and we had the best weather since we set out on the road aka there was no rain. Like we never left Boston, they have duck boats that sail through the lagoon and get close the glacier (definitely not like Boston) but we, unfortunately, had just missed one and didn't feel like waiting around for another hour for the next one. There is a cute little cafe serving various types of coffee, tea, and hot chocolate and some souvenirs while offering views of the lagoon, so we hopped on in and grabbed some hot chocolate and managed to get some quality people watching through the window.

Jökulsárlón

My favorite iceberg

The view from the little cafe

Boasting dozens of pictures of seals, penis-shaped icebergs and normal icebergs along similar to the mass of visitors we were surrounded by, the rocky beach on the other side of the Ring Road awaited. All the icebergs from the lagoon eventually drift out to the sea and get pushed to the beach by the current, eventually melting into small, glass-like shapes, unlike anything I had ever seen before. This would have been a better place to The Plunge, but there were still a decent number of cameras lurking and I prefer not to appear minimally clothed on strangers photo blogs.

Where icebergs come to hang out on the beach

Clear as glass

In come the waves

Ready to close out the day, returned to the van and set out to drive to our campsite for the night. This was the first time that we didn't have a destination in mind so the adventure was continuing. While on the road, we decided in the small 120-person town of Kirkjubæjarklaustur, located about 45 minutes east of Vik to ease our return journey with one more full day on the road. There is a small campsite there with a kitchen, bathroom with showers, and laundry, only the latter two cost extra so we passed on those. When cooking a scrumptious meal of pasta, I noticed a flyer for the town pool that cost about $4 per person that was a few minutes drive away. This is when I remembered that Iceland is full of hot springs and has more pools per capita than any other country in the world since they divert the spring water. And so we made the short drive to the community center that was constructed along with the pools to enjoy the hot water and take advantage of some wifi and showers.

And so our night concluded, giving way to our last full day in Iceland. Our next day was easier to figure out since we knew where we needed to end up the morning after --- the Blue Lagoon.