Helvítis Ferðamenn

We swapped around our normal morning routine......shower, breakfast, touring became touring, breakfast, showering. That gave us some nice light on the glacier in the morning. This particular glacier tongue:  Hoffelsjökul is a part of the larger Vatnajökul glacier, which occupies about 10% of Iceland, is the biggest glacier outside of Greenland and Antarctica and is very impressive looking. To get a measure, imagine a line starting just north of Tullamarine, running around Sunbury, Geelong and the Bellarine, All of the Mornington Peninsula around Westernport around San Remo, up through the Dandenongs and across Warburton, Kinglake and back to the airport. That is a rough estimate of the glacier.

So after our initial visit in the morning we wound our way south, admiring the scenery, often dominated by glacier tongues and landed at Jökulsárlón where we spent some time and Marjan went on her third boat trip. The lagoon is only 80 years old and has been formed by the retreat of the Glacier by approximately 200 metres a year. We enjoyed the boat trip and a walk along the lagoon outfall and beach. We liked the different mini-icebergs and the seals and ducks playing in the water.

We then kept wandering and stopped at Fjallsárlón, a similar but different lagoon, for a picnic by the water. It was really strange weather, sunny one moment, low lying cloud the next.

We next decided to go to the main part of the glacier at the national park office.....could not get a car park........helvítis ferðamenn. Half of Europe was parked there. Apparently visitor numbers have gone from 490,000 in 2010 to 1.2 million last year. They have 16-30% growth per year. Almost all of them were parked in Skatafell waiting to go on the glacier.

So we moved on and did non-glacier things.........like a waterfall (for Laura)......a nice gorge....a basalt column outcrop......and generally mooching about.....oh yeah we cleaned the car because we thought having an invisible number plate might be illegal......not illegible....invisible.....the mud on the back of the car made it hard to distinguish just what we were. We made it in to our accommodation at Kirkjubæjarklaustur (say it one time fast) in time for dinner.

Marjan has made note that she is heartily sick of the fact that Iceland is all uphill. She is threatening to go to Holland for our next hiking trip. Hopefully the quads are benefiting from all the climbing.

Off Highway 1 tomorrow, up a bumpy, lumpy dirt track with several river crossings, so we should have less of the buses and the mass tourism. We are not necessarily of the belief that our particular form of tourism is any better than everybody else's....we just hate people.......all people........especially if they crowd out where we want to go........