Day 2 - Sun Aug 17 - South Coast Tour
A 7 am wakeup leads us to a hotel breakfast of Skyr and nuts. Skyr is a kind of cheese, but is basically the same as Greek yogurt.
We chose to skip the traditional breakfast cod liver oil, though
It’s 8am on a cloudy Fri morning and we meet our driver from East West Tour Company, Martin from Spain. He’ll be taking us on our two day trip along the South Coast.
The South Coast has some of the most striking parts of the country and the cruise ships don’t generally go there. This tour was our chance to see some of those amazing sights. We head out on the Ring road, which circles the entire Island country in about 800 miles.
The weather wasn't too bad but the visibility was terrible. Being driven through walls of fog made us glad we had a driver.
Iceland is so small. After 90 mins, we stop at the first of 3 waterfalls. We were happy that we prepared and wore raingear, because some of these waterfalls are very wet. There's something to climb, so of course we hike up the 483 steps for the great view.
We also stop to see the beginning of Vatnajökull glacier. We’ll see far more of that tomorrow.
Starving, we stop in Vik (biggest town on the South Coast). First, we go to Skool Beans, a fun coffee shop built in a school bus. After some exploration, we eat at the Black Crust Pizza (inspired by the black sand beaches, but they use charcoal for the crust, not actual lava rock. Or so they say). The pizza was good.
The mini-marts were interesting also. We did pass on the dried fish snacks, which, yeah, makes sense. I was more surprised that no one wanted to try my Salty Salute.
The fog shrouded hillside church in Vik made a nice backdrop during our stop.
Nearby is Reynisfjara, a black sand beach filled with volcanic basalt columns. This is also known as Iceland’s most dangerous beach. They have ‘sneaker waves’… riptides that can come in fast and rip a person out to sea, even if they are just walking along the beach. Someone had died a month before we were there. We paid attention and didn’t get close to the water.
It was incredibly windy here, but that didn’t help with the massive Icelandic fog. You wouldn’t know it, but there is an ocean behind us. You know, right behind that massive wall of fog.
The fog also prevented me from getting a good photo of the one lone puffin left on the cliffs. For the GoT (Game of Thrones) fans, the black sand and columns filled in for Eastwatch-By-The-Sea in season 7.
We end our day at the Smidjan Brugghus, one of the best known brew pubs in the country. After a decent meal and some good beers, we arrive at our hotel for the night.
An hour later, we’re at Fosshotel Nupar, our lodging for the night. The view from our backyard is incredible. The hotel is also the best place on our trip to see the Northern Lights. Mel and I keep checking throughout the night, but that was not to be.
Tomorrow, we finish up our South Coast tour with a much anticipated zodiac tour on a glacier lake.
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