Yum Yum my breakfast. I had this pretty much every day, buttered toast with cheese and ham sweetend up by a dollop of strawberry jam on the side!:
Today was out last day in the Hofn area. As Hofn had been our favorite place in Iceland (possibly the world). We were quite upset to be leaving but still excited about what might happen today.
It was Anna's turn to drive which was fine as she took a nice steady pace and I could try to absorb as much of the south east area as possible as we drove through it for the last time. We passed these sheep scratching themselves on the road barrier. They deserve to be eaten for being so stupid!:
The rest by Anna:
We woke to another beautiful sunny day. There were a few clouds in the sky but on the whole it was clear. Our mission today was the 300km drive from Hofn on the south east of the country to Skogar which sits on the south west. The drive along the south east coast was pretty with the various birdlife in the ponds either side of the main road, Our first destinaion was to be the lagoon that sits at the bottom of the glacier 'Fjallsjokull'. The further west we drove, the more clouds seemed to appear over the mountains. We arrived at Jolkularson to find the car park full of cars and loads of toursits (lots for iceland anyway!). We had been so spoilt so far that everywhere we had been it had been quiet, so it came as a bit of a shock. The lake was very impressive, full of icebergs of various shapes and sizes and we booked our (overpriced) trip out on the boat/bus to sail around them.
Whilst waiting for the bus / boat we took a few snaps and I had an icecream. A bargain at £2.50! -L:
We boarded the bus which drove round the logoon and then into it, where it became a boat. Here's a picture of it:
And here we go into the water. -L:
Small motor boats cleared the way of icebergs for the main boat and we chugged along.
The air was cold, for such a sunny day. Our tour guide then gave us some information on the lagoon, glacier, icebergs and history (2 x james bond films were filmed here as well as tomb raider - Angelina Jolie had actually been on the lake!).
Our guide was then was given a piece of the iceberg from one of the motor boat drivers so we could see how clear the ice was and hold it to see how cold it was (bloody freezing!).
She broke it up and we all got chance to eat some ice (quite random I know but we both did it anyway).
This peice of ice is over a million years old! -L:
Yum yum, old ice tastes goooood! -L:
in the next picture you can see this increadibly blue peice of ice. It only stays this blue for about an hour when fresh ice is exposed. A big peice must have fallen off this iceberg recently -L:
We eventually headed back to dry land. Quite happy to get away from the tourists, we drove the other side of the main road which passes over the lagoon to the sea. Now this was spectacular. The icebergs that had made it out of the lake were being washed out to sea. The black sandy beach was littered with all sizes of ice and pebbles and as the cold water lapped up along the warm black sands, steam formed quite an eary haze along the shore.
With the sun beaming down you could hear the icebergs cracking and we saw one large one break in half.
If we had more time (and a few sunloungers) we could have happily spent a few hours sunbathing here. We journeyed on to our next stop on the route, the Skatafell national park. From here there are several walks, leading to the glacier, waterfalls and longer ones round the park. We watched a short film inside on the last big volcanoc eruption on this glacier (the mountains under the whole glacier are active volcanoes and due to go off soon) and the devastating glacial floods that followed and learned lots about glaciers and the area in the visitor centre. We decided against a walk as we still had over 200km to drive and were both quite tired and set out on the sandur (black sand plains) passing bits of the old bridge that had been mangled by the big glacial flood. Thankfully the wind was low so we didnt have to worry too much about sandstorms. The plains seemed to go on and on, but after an hour or so, we arrived in the small town called Vik. We wandered down to the beach to see the renowened sea stacks and possibly some puffins in the cliffs and was amazed to see hundreds of Puffins.
Early August is when the baby puffins leave their nests for the first time and we could see them all taking off, doing a little round trip and flying back in again. We had seen a few puffins at sea when whale watching but this was something else. They were everywhere you looked.
Some people were climbing the cliff to get a better look. See what happens tomorrow! -L:
I was so pleased to have seen this. We had decicded against doing the boat trips to see the puffin colonis at sea and were glad of it now as we could get quote close on land. We eventually dragged ourselves away from this beautiful and spectaular sight and drove the last 30km to our hotel were we cooked our dinner (more pasta :-()and crashed out!
