After we all got some excellent sleep on June 5 (we left the US on June 4 but due to the time change arrived on June 5) - Dena fell asleep around 7 pm and slept a solid 12 hours while Aaron and Savannah got about 10 hours, we ate the breakfast we purchased at the grocery store the night before and headed to the tour place. We arrived and met our tour guides for the day, Lucia and David. They were both so nice! Super sweet, and very knowledgeable and so funny too. They were from Italy but had moved to Iceland about 10 years ago. We were in a big van that could hold around 20 people but there were only 13 on the tour that day so it wasn't too crowded. We spent 12 hours driving around the south coast of Iceland and saw 5 or 6 beautiful waterfalls, went to the black sand beach, and tromped around on a glacier! It was amazing, beautiful, tiring, and slightly painful for Savannah since she apparently lacks the skill needed to walk on ice and ended up falling on the glacier...twice.
The first waterfall that we went to we could actually hike behind!
The second waterfall also could be hiked....up 437 stairs! Yes, that's the real number of stairs and no, I'm not exaggerating. It was kind of exhilarating but mostly just painful, haha!
We had lunch at the second waterfall and then after that headed for the glacier. We kind of expected the glacier to be white and shiny but instead it was covered in inches of volcanic ash. We walked about 1/2 a mile through the valley that was carved by the glacier (called Mordor, as in Mordor from Lord of the Rings) before we could get onto the glacier itself. Savannah definitely doesn't love hiking in a group and definitely lacks the balancing skills necessary for walking on ice but still ended the hike with a smile!
After the glacier we went to a town called Vik which is known for the black sand beach there; it's strange that Vik is so famous for black sand when literally 95% of all beaches in Iceland and black sand. Regardless, it was beautiful to see the basalt columns and large cliffs that were formed by lava. The lady in the red jacket in the photo with Dena was our guide Lucia. She was adorable! Just as we were leaving we saw a couple climbing up the rocks to do a wedding photo shoot! I wanted to stay and watch longer but the tour van was ready to leave.
We stopped at one other waterfall on the way home but have no pictures on this camera from it since you actually had to hike into the hole in the mountain that held the waterfall- it was too much water to get pictures of it here, but beautiful and windy and wet and cold, and still beautiful!
We arrived back in Reykjavik around 10 pm, hopped in the car and drove 1.5 hours to our next destination- a hostel that used to be a school located near the town of Selfoss.
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