This Saturday
was also an early departure, this time we were looking towards a 2½ hours’
drive to reach the Sólheimjökull glacier where we were to do some hiking on. Arriving
at the site it was hard not to notice that it is a very popular spot for
tourists to go, hiking on the glacier or not.
We got equipped
and started the trip up the glacier. We got a few talks on how much it has been
receding the last few years (since 2000 it has receded almost 100 meters) and
the problems people in the surrounding lowlands encounter when the volcanos
erupts and melts a lot of the snow and ice on the nearby glaciers.
We
finished off by trying to do some ice wall climbing – it was fun, but requires
much more technique than I had time to acquire on the 8-ish meter wall we had
to our disposal.
Driving
back we passed by the Skógafoss waterfall, one of the biggest in the country.
Coming
back to the hotel I decided to sign up for another trip out to see northern
lights. It was with another tour company than last night and it wasn’t until I
had gotten the ticket I realized that the meeting time was 1930. Less than an
hour to find a place to have dinner, so any fancy restaurant visits had to be
postponed to some other time.
The
drive out was good and standing outside for almost 4 hours we did see some
activity, none of it as impressive as the previous night. Due to the low
activity the ticket could be used as a rain check within the next 2 years for a
similar tour. That’s pretty good service! Back at the hotel at 0200-ish I
realized that this would not be a vacation where I got a lot of sleep.
With light pollution from Reykjavik
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