Being intelligent Aussies it hasn't taken us long to work out the typical Iceland stereotype - males with stone chiseled viking faces, a country of place names that require about 3 bottles of Vodka to pronounce, a price regime that varies from expensive to bloody expensive and a weather pattern that makes Melbourne's 4 seasons in one day seem very stable !
We left Largavatyn surprisingly on time as we made our way in beautiful morning sunshine to Highway 1 (it circles the whole island) and on to our first point of call at Seljlandsfoss a lovely waterfall that you can walk behind if you bring ice skates and a wet suit and the Gfrundi waterfall for those that enjoy getting hypothermia by and walking right to its high powered stream through a cleft in tbe rock face.
With one tick out of the way our plans rapidly fell apart as the morning sun gave way to cloud and then icy rain in a short time. Even the beautiful black beaches of Vik were obscurred in the mire ! With the rain persistenting we even took lunch in our little HyundaiI20 with little dry cover available elsewhere !
Once havg exited Vik the sun reappeared - well at least until I got out of the car in the Laki Lava fields grabbed my camera and was promptly drenched in icy rain !l
The rain this time kept going until we reached the glacial tongues of the immense Jokularson Glarcier. Here we scrambled across rocks for various views or just stood in awe of some of the most amazing sights you'll see anywhere on the planet !l Glaciers folding or calviing nto immense iice blocks and in the case of Jockularson Lagoon floating out under a bridge to the open sea !
The last 100 kms were a blur as fatigue from last nights Northern lights experience set in ! We'd sat out in bloody freezing conditions on a nearby hill in our car to watch a display that turned out to be even better than our first night . It amazing how the lights appeared often quickly in different shapes before folding themslves back into oblivion !
After having finally reached Hofn we dashed into the supermarket for supplies before driving the last 30 kms to our remote cabin at Staffafell finally locating the owner to let us in. Monika prepared dinner on a basic stove (I said romantic she said rustic ) before unpacking, watching our first english tv show on trip and crashing into bed keeping one eye open just in case the lights made an aplearance yet again !
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