3 -South Coast Tour Pt 2 - Glaciers and Icebergs

Published on 20 May 2026 at 21:45

Day 3 - Mon Aug 18 – Continuing the South Coast Tour

7:15 am and we’re getting ready to leave. Different hotel, same breakfast of Skyr, nuts and seeds. We head out before 8 am for our 90 min drive to the Jökulsárlón glacier lagoon. I'm particularly excited for this one. It's the far end of the South Coast, and not every tour takes the time to make the trek.

Jökulsárlón is Iceland’s deepest lake. In the 1930s, the glacier started to recede. The runoff over the decades created this lagoon.

It's a cloudy day. You can just about see the sun poke out at times.

On the 90 min drive to the lake, we start to see hints of the glacier. We arrive and Martin points out what we'll be seeing.

It's not too cold yet, but they have us suit up in parkas, warning about the cold winds closer to the glacier.

We board a small zodiac tour to see the HUGE glacier and the icebergs that break off from it. It did indeed get cold once the zodiac got moving, but this is such an amazing experience.

Full icebergs break off from the glacier wall. Seals can be found hanging out here. And once we got close to the wall... wow. Well, I don't know if I fully captured it, but check it out:

The wall itself is massive. In the short video, the other zodiac is about 150 feet away. The wall is about 130 feet high. We could feel the cold radiating off of it.

We head back after our amazing glacier adventure

We're now at the furthest point of our tour, and we have a long drive back to Reykjavik. Our tour isn't done yet, though. We wrap up our South Coast tour with more sights along the way.

Diamond Beach - this is where the icebergs from the lake drift too once they break into smaller pieces

A cool turf roofed church.

Turf houses are an old architectural style of houses in Iceland. With violent weather and a lack of building materials, this was an ingenious way to build a semi-permanent house that still had good insulation.

Hiking in Skaftafell Park

A natural cave that looks like.... well, I'll just let the Icelandic name describe it:

We are back to our Reykjavik Centrum hotel at 7:15 pm. It’s been a long day and we are starving! We quickly check back in and leave to get dinner. We eat at a local brewpub (Bastard Brews. Okay food, but it costs us $128 per couple). We end the evening brewery hopping and getting the girls more gelato (Ruth loves the Blueberry Skyr cake gelato)