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Iceland Day 4 - From Skógar to Skaftafell

Added: July 06, 2008

Tags: Iceland glacier lava mountains photos waterfalls
Tuesday 17th of June is finally sunny and beautiful. No wind is added bonus. I wish all our days were sunny here.

Whole bunch of waterfalls is planned for today, some are small, some tall, and at least 2 are famous. A word about waterfalls. Our plan contains about 16 waterfalls, but we probably have seen so many of them already. But most of them were small streams falling from cliff. Interesting sight, but we are getting to be used to that. Day after afternoon we will stop taking pictures of those anonymous completely :-)

Morning

I am not sure how to paginate these photos. They clearly do not fit 1 or 2 pages. I will try something really creative: Morning, Afternoon and Skaftafell :-)

Skógar

Skógar is small settlement with 2 attractions. Impressive waterfall Skógafoss and open air museum.

Skógar is the first place we can "taste" Icelandic famous sulphuric hot water. It takes some time to get used to it... But cold water tastes wonderfully.

Let's start with waterfall. It's so close it would be shame to use car :-)
Skogafoss1

Skogafoss2

We need to leave soon, becasse we have a lot of to see today. But it would be great if we could stay a few more hours to see rainbow and waterfall "in one frame".
Skogafoss_rainbow

Above_Skogafoss2

Above_Skogafoss1

Very nice location for hostel. It is there - under that mountain. Waterfall is on the right, but it is not visible, because it is behind slope.
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Glacier Eyjafjallajökull above Skógar.
Eyjafjallajokull

Now, let see open air museum. These turf houses with grass on their roofs are wonderful. There is also folk museum here, it has nice collection of old stuff. The funniest part was small bones used as children toys. The Addams Family might have Icelandic origin :-)
green_roofs

open_air_museum

open_air_museum2

School.
school

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Road to Vík í Mýrdal

Our travel started this day by road to Vík í Mýrdal. We wanted to get also to Dyrhólaey, that is stone arch in sea (shown from distance in photo), but because it was Independence Day "tours" were not organized.

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Lupines with glacier Eyjafjallajökull. Lupines are not native to Iceland. They were brought from Alaska in 20th century. They like it there, but cause problems with original flora and sheep hate them.
lupines_with_glacier

DSC_3691_raw

power_lines

Dyrhólaey from distance.
dyrhoalaey

Tour was in quotes, because I cannot decide whether it is usually ride or voyage. Strange thing on the left was not manned on this day.
dyrhoalaey_boat

Anyway, we could see nice rock formations instead of the arch. And it was for free this way :-)
DSC_3696_raw

DSC_3706_raw

Iceland is full of strange birds (at least for us). And most of them have long beaks. Forgive me bad composition, but what would you expect from stupid birds shot through wind screen.
birds

Vík í Mýrdal

Vík í Mýrdal is longer stop than was planned (in my plan), because we stopped for lunch in restaurant instead of self catering.

But first thing first. Let's go to see Reynisdrangar - basalt see stacks and famous black beach.

Reynisdrangar in distance.
Reynisdrangar

Black beach. That reminds me we should buy some dose to install black sand we brought from there. Question is if we want to recreate that beach or just do some simple decoration :-)
black_beach1

black_beach2

boulders

You might feel that colors are not completely right here. The truth is it visibility was quite low, some kind of unidentified haze started to form slowly and it ruined some photos later too.
church1

church2

And finally our first serious lunch in Iceland. We've met bunch of waiters from Slovakia here - very nice surprise. We accepted their suggestion to try lamb dish and it was delicious. A bit less useful was their advice where to buy bottle of wine, because it was holiday, hence Vín Búð was closed.

I nearly forgot - the same building is also information center and small museum of some kind, but we did not care, because our itinerary is always full if I do planning and Zuzka applauds it! :-)
restaurant

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