Click to see the before image from post one to see the same street before the snow.
So Much Snow
It snowed throughout our first night in Vik. Luckily, the car rental company provided a scraper, because in the morning the snow was four inches deep on the car.
We drove up to the church on the hill in the picture, then headed for Jokulsarlon, where we had a Zodiac boat tour booked to see the glacier.
Glacier No Go
Unfortunately, the lagoon had not fully thawed. The winter ice meant we couldn’t sail right up to the glacier. We received a slight refund for that, but it’s still the closest I’ve ever been to a glacier. The guide was an Argentinian seasonal worker who had only just returned to Iceland for the start of the boat tours. He told us the reason iceburgs look blue is because of the densely packed air. This absorbs longer wavelengths like red and yellow, but scatters shorter ones (blue).
Walking back from the Zodiac boats, we took the long way round, treading in deep snow, for some amazing photo opportunities, something I’d definitely recommend if you take the tour.
Diamond Beach
This was one of the highlights of our tour around Iceland. It’s stunning, and not to be missed, genuinely one of the most magical experiences of my life. If a writer wrote about it in a book, you’d think his imagination had got the better of him. Ice from the glacier calves away into iceburgs of different sizes. these iceburgs flow into the North Atlantic, where they break up and are washed ashore.
Soup? Again?
We’d booked a snowmobile tour of the glacier the following day, but the snow of the previous night had made the roads up to the start point impassable, so that was cancelled.
Unfortunately, we’d also booked our non-refundable room in a country hotel close by, or we might have driven straight to Hofn after seeing Diamond Beach. There were no nearby restaurants, so we had to eat in the hotel’s restaurant, spending something like £25 each on a bowl of thin soup that would have left Oliver Twist wanting more. Still, Diamond beach sustained us through the meal!
Further Reading
Iceland (1): Land of Chess, Thrones and Soup
Iceland (3): Land of Horses, Viking Film Sets and Tourist Information Centres
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