We woke up to a gorgeous day, with views from our room that spanned the three glaciers nearby. Absolutest stunning. After a lovely breakfast, we packed up, reluctantly, to depart. We headed out, stopped by a place with a great view of a Jokuldarlon glacier, and took a short walk along the ridge the to see the glacier. It was amazing to see even more of the icebergs which had cleaved off that glacier swimming gently toward the sea.
After a long drive, about an hour, to the Skftafell entry to the whole Jokusarlon national park, from which started the Svartifoss trail. Little did we know that while it was only 2 km in distance, it had a lot of up and down, with a 130m elevation gain. To be honest, this was not what I had expected, and we had to stop more than a few times to rest and catch our breath. We kept on, and were rewarded with views of the Svartisfoss black basalt falls. The sight of the Svartifoss falls with the amazing vertical black basalt columns that framed the falls was impressive and worth the hike. It was 50 minutes up and about 25 minutes down. We grabbed a Parma ham sandwich at the cafe to split, and headed out. Next stop, the Black BeachSuite where we will stay.
The Black Bech Suites are lovely, ours has a beautiful view of the black sand beaches below. We went off to dinner at Smiðyan Brugghus in Vik for burgers and beers, which were good, and to another black sand beach briefly.
Our last stop was the lighthouse area and overlook. We finally saw some puffins flying into their nests, very exciting! There was one small area in the path which overlooked the grassy part of the black cliffs which stuck out a ways, and this was puffin central. Once we found that spot, we stayed for almost an hour, and saw them coming and going, buzzing back and forth on their fast wings, diving into their nests hidden by the tall grass. There were two that landed about 8 feet below us, so we saw them go in and out, there was an overhang so we could not see them in the nest close up. This was much closer than the ones we saw on Vigur Island, so I was very glad we got to see them here. They look so comical in a way, their coloring so bright and distinct. I can understand why every shop we have seen has puffin something’s for sale. There must be millions of stuffed puffin toys in Iceland.
We ended the evening on the deck, watching the sort-of sunset, and realized how lucky we are to have this experience. I’m glad we had our independent days after the expedition rather than before, as we are long past jet lag and can really enjoy it.
Off to bed as we have a 9:00 am horseback riding appointment!
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