South coast and glaciers, part 2

Oops, in my last post I said that Eyjafjallajökull was under Mýrdalsjökull. Wrong, it sits by itself—getting my “jökulls” mixed up…

We just had not had enough glaciers the first day, so early the next morning we went back to Skaftafell Park for a look at Skaftafellsjökull, also a tongue of the giant Vatnajökull. The surface is very gray as well (perhaps from this May’s Grimsvotn eruption?), with deep cuts and crevasses in blue. Glacial melt and quicksand at the base kept us at a distance in spite of jumping rock to rock across the stream.

Noe showing his lunch (baby carrots) in front of Skaftafellsjökul 

Onward to the glacial lagoons, and some blue ice! Fjallsárlón is the smaller one (and just the notion of small is absurd here!). The guidebook describes it as “Jökulsárlón for loners”—hardly! Lots of folks there, but not as busy as Jökulsárlón, the big hitter just down the road where all the tour buses go. At both of them you look across a lagoon filled with floating icebergs in blue and white, with the glacier face behind them and a backdrop of 2 major glacier tongues spilling out of the mountains. It is so extraordinary a sight that it does not look real, my mind unable to quite believe what it sees. 

Fjallsárlón (the "small" one)

Fjallsárlón

Jökulsárlón

At Jökulsárlón, I took a crazy amphibious vehicle out into the lagoon with all the other tourists. They say the ice is 1,000 years old here.

Jökulsárlón

Jökulsárlón

As if the day was not surreal already, this was our dinner spot, a restaurant/museum combo that looks like a giant bookshelf. Somebody’s trying to mess with my head on this scale thing!