July 30 Lava and glaciers

A wee portion of the mammoth Vatnajokull icecap

Over the past week, we’ve passed lava tumbled together in shelves, massed in solid walls, spewed out in crazy bumpy, lumpy fields and crumbling tongues stretching out into the sea - quite awesome. Mountain sides, fallen off eroded by time, wind, water and snow, collapsing in huge cones of deep dark loose scree like swirling Dervish skirts around their feet.  But today was about glaciers. This morning in the distance we could see the massive icecap of Vatnajokull from Hofn, where we’d stay overnight. The very idea of such a huge mass of ice was jaw dropping - 8000 km2! Throughout the day, we drove and snapped and oohed and aahed - it was staggering in its immensity. And we were to drive close to other icecaps that day.

Much of the day we drove the southern edge of this huge icecap 

Most of Iceland's icecaps are in the south.

Diamond Beach and the iceberg graveyard

We walked down to the famous black sands of Diamond Beach where chunks of ice, 'bergy bits', carved off the large Jökulsárlón glacier, one of the icy tongues extending from Vatnajokull, had become beached. There they sit glistening, sparkling and dripping, frigid and dazzling against their dark backdrop. Scrambling along the gushing river bank, where huge chunks of ice were being swept along and where birds were diving for fish thrown up by the gushing churning water, we climbed to see Jökulsárlón glacier lagoon where massive chunks of ice, calved off that massive glacier, share a communal graveyard. Apart from the hoards of tourists, we were watched by a few curious Harbour seals.  

This was a flight of Giant's stairs

Rather overwhelmed by it all and in order to escape the milling throng, we found a 'quiet' spot to have lunched beside a gushing, surging stream the colour and texture of which resembled café-latte. The water rushing seaward was ice melt from one of the many glaciers which extrude worm-like tubes of icy toothpaste from Vatnajokull, the origin of 30 odd glaciers. Incidentally there are a number of volcanoes under that icecap. Can you image what it would look like when one erupted? It is awesome as it is - there is no other word that I can think of. 

Stretching out to the sea from the base of those lofty mountains and glaciers is land scoured bare for miles by glaciers and lava flows. I imagine that once these glaciers may have covered this entire area. 

When we could drag our eyes from the road and snow capped mountains, the sky was gentle and restful.

Desolate now, this once must have been covered by glacial flows 

Many lava fields are being infiltrated by lichen
which slowly and imperceptibly breaks down the rock

Feeling rather exhausted with the excitement of it all, we collapsed into a delightful wooden cabin set beside a dreamy little lake at the Magma ‘hotel’. Our only company was a pair of loons and a wee herd of Icelandic ponies. We were wishing we could stay for a few days of silence, contemplation and rest, but a ship was awaiting us in just 2 days - so we just drank in as much as we could. 

That night we snuggled into this wee wooden grass-capped cabin