Return to Iceland Part 2: The Highland
Day 4 - Wednesday
I met Thor, my guide, first thing in the morning at the hotel’s restaurant and we did a little game-planning and then headed out to our first stop: Háifoss. At 400 feet high, it is one of the tallest waterfalls in Iceland and the whole area couldn’t be more photogenic. It’s a massive plunge that falls onto some large boulders and from there, the water continues downstream through a canyon with moss-covered walls. Oh and there’s also another large waterfall nearby named Granni, which means neighbor in Icelandic. In any other location, Granni would be a destination in its own right, but here it is overshadowed by Háifoss. The sun was out during this stop and since it couldn’t make it all the way down into the canyon, it created an exposure challenge for my images. I assumed it would be cloudy again at some point on the trip and decided I would go back then.
Leaving Háifoss, we headed to to Sigöldugljúfur, a scenic canyon whose beauty is partially due to human interaction with the landscape. Slightly upstream, the glacier river Tungnaá is dammed to form the reservoir called Krókslón and this dam prevents sediment-filled water from flowing through the canyon. Instead, water filters through the ground and pours into the canyon via falls emerging from the canyon wall. This results in the water flowing through the bottom of the canyon being an almost unbelievable cerulean color. There were so many remarkable compositions that I could have spent hours here, but tore myself away after about an hour of shooting.
The next stops were two blue water-filled craters: Bláhylur and the slightly more photogenic Ljótipollur. Despite their beauty, these both were tough from a composition standpoint. I think I would have needed quite a bit more time there to figure out how to make shots work. Instead, we moved on to Landmannalaugar.
Landmannalaugar is kind of like the hub of the highland. It’s the start of the Laugavegur, the base for other hikes, and a good place to eat, shower, use the restroom, etc. Thor and I stopped here and grabbed a quick lunch before heading out on a hike to photograph the multicolored rhyolite hills that the area is known for. The hike brought us past a green hill shaped like a dragon, through a small creek bed, over part of a lava field, and near geothermal vents. Reaching the turnaround point of our hike, we could see the famous rhyolite hills in one direction and the Tungnaá and distant peaks in the other. On our way back down, we noticed an older couple taking a naked polar bear plunge in a small mountain lake. I wasn’t sure which to be more impressed by - the guts to go naked or the determination to swim in cold water with such a whipping wind. Our hike back down via a slightly different route took use by the side of a huge field of white flowers that kind of looked like cotton and finally back to the tourist center. The day was winding down, but on the way back to the hotel, I had to return to Sigöldugljúfur for more shots with a different sun angle.
Day 5 - Thursday
This day was a bit less structured going into it. I told Thor I wanted to see Mælifell, a moss-covered volcano in the middle of a black sand desert. If you Google it, I’m sure the image will look familiar to some of you. Other than that, I had no set agenda and I kind of wanted Thor to surprise me with whatever he thought was most interesting. We started our drive south past the volcano Hekla (although we couldn’t see it) and first stopped at an overlook of the mountain called Löðmundur. This mountain is visible over a large area in the highland and I had started using it to stay oriented on our drives. It is a prominent, yet wide mountain with a distinctive top that has many small peaks. Thor explained that the name may mean “knuckles” and that seemed like a fitting description.
Moving on from Löðmundur, we drove through a geothermal area that had rolling hills, streams, pockets of snow, and steam vents all over the place. Next, we made our way further south and east, crossing rivers and stopping at a few viewpoints along the way. We reached the Álftavatn hut, one of the waypoints along the Laugavegur, around lunch time and decided to stop and eat. We returned to the car after lunch and discovered that one of the tires on our Land Rover was flat and rapidly leaking what little air was left. Changing a tire on a Land Rover wasn’t easy as it took us a while to determine how to release the spare tire as well as to locate the jack that ended up being squirreled away in a side panel of the trunk area. We (and by “we”, I mean Thor) got the tire changed and we were on our way after maybe an hour delay.
I had been pretty lucky with weather so far on this trip - not that I didn’t have some showers, but it had been variable enough that I was able to work with it and continue shooting. Things changed at this point as we ended up driving into some low clouds and rain and they persisted for the remainder of our drive. We made it past Maelifell, but couldn’t see a thing. Next we attempted to visit the waterfall called Ófærufoss, but at the trailhead the rain was coming down pretty hard and you couldn’t see anything, so we bailed. I also had wanted to visit Langisjór, a scenic, long, narrow natural lake on the western end of Vatnajökull National Park, but given the likelihood that the weather would be the same there, we decided to table that and head back to the hotel and revisit Háifoss.
We showed up at Háifoss and the whole area was completely fogged in, despite there being no fog on most of the approach to the parking lot. I thought it might be a bust, but instinct told me to stick around a bit. We didn’t have anywhere else we could make it to prior to sunset, so the decision to stay wasn’t that difficult. That decision proved to be the right one because soon the fog started lifting and we got to see not only a beautiful sunset but Hekla emerging from the clouds in the distance to the south. This brought my time with Thor to a close, but we have stayed in touch since then and I hope to be able to connect with him again this coming summer and maybe even help him with one of his tours.
Day 6 - Friday
This was my last full day in Iceland and the forecast was for more rain. I decided I was going to use it as a relaxation day and visit one or two hot pools and skip the photography. Normally I’d have ended my blog entry here since it probably isn’t too exciting to read about someone sitting in a pool, but I had one more adventure in store. For the night, I got a hotel close to the airport in Keflavik so I’d have an easy time the next day. I grabbed some dinner after checking in and then went back to the hotel around 9:00 pm. While parking, I noticed that in the distance over some hills to the south I could see the Fagradalsfjall volcano erupting. The red glow of the lava was so clear. I hadn’t made it a priority to visit the volcano since I figured it would be over-crowded with no guarantee it would be erupting. When I saw this, however, I grabbed my camera, jumped in the car and sped down to the trailhead 30 minutes away. I had done a little research so I had a general sense of what to do, but as sometimes is the case, I showed up and what was in front of me was a little different than I remember the directions being. Fortunately, I pulled in at the same time as two other tourists, a guy and his mom who were visiting from Marseille. Not only were they super-friendly, they had been to the volcano before so they knew where they were going. I asked them if I could tag along on the hike and together we made our way on the 45 minute trek to the viewpoint. It was cold and windy and I was feeling my out-of-shapeness, but the hike was so fun. The anticipation of seeing the eruption in person and feeling a shared energy with the other hikers - fueled by the understanding that we were part of something so special - made up for any discomfort. We made it to the viewpoint and stood there in awe of the spectacle. I know very little about night photography and even less about how to shoot an erupting volcano, so the photos I took there were nothing more than record shots that prove I was there, but the experience is something that outweighed any images I could capture.
Day 7 - Saturday
I had several hours to kill before my flight, so of course I went to the Blue Lagoon. I had been there before and yes, it’s super touristy and not a natural pool, but I still loved it. Such a nice way to cap off a successful trip. I was ready to return to Iceland before I even left on my flight home.
