Saturday August 12, 2023
Cloudy grey morning. It’s already busy in the common room. Fried eggs and cornflakes to wake me up. Then we take off to the glacier. It’s a 45 minutes drive, and the road is very quiet.
Just for your information, there is one circular road around Iceland, route 1. This road has asphalt everywhere. We haven’t finished yet, but I believe everywhere it consists of one lane in each direction. It has side roads that are dirt roads, although gradually more and more asphalt is applied. So certain side roads are very well paved. Then there are also F-roads; these are dirt roads that require 4-wheel drive. Sometimes you have to pass through a small river. Car insurance specifically doesn’t cover damage to the bottom of the car while driving through a river. (Neither does it cover damage caused by strong winds if you don’t hold on tight enough to your car door. Apparently the wind can be intense).
Now we are driving on route 1, and in the south where there are more tourists. Yet it’s quiet and a soft drizzle falls on the flat coastal plains.
When we arrive at the lagoon made by the glacier, we park near the sea and walk onto the black sandy beach where chunks of ice are slowly melting. They have the strangest shapes and the ice looks different in each chunk. Some is clean, some is filled with air bubbles and some is filled with soil.
We follow the outlet of the lagoon, where large icebergs float. The outlet is shallow so the big icebergs can’t get out. They get stuck, and some crash into each other in a rather spectacular way.
We follow the coastline of the lagoon for several hours and I am fascinated by the shapes and diversity of the icebergs. Some are an amazingly beautiful aquamarine blue. Small ones come close to the coast and show shapes like animals or wine glasses sticking up from the water.
If indeed with global warming all this sea ice melts, the sea level would drop. Because 90% of the ice is below the water surface. And ice takes more space than water. But I don’t know how much of polar ice is on land and how much floats in the sea.
When we return to the car we are quite tired and when we eat our faces become warm and rosy. Our car is parked facing the sea and we see a lot more people than this morning, all bundled up against the cold, looking at the ice on the beach.
We have another glacial lagoon on our schedule, Fjallsárlón, half an hour away.
Here also we take a nice hike over the desolate landscape - bare except for mosses, and strewn with stones and boulders.
Small boats - zodiac types - carry tourists closer to the massive glacier. They can’t get too close either, because every once in a while a piece of ice falls off. All my life I have read in books that it happens with a sound like a cannon being fired. And now for the first time in my life I hear it. And indeed, it’s a distant booming sound like a canon.
The glacier is cold and the air above it produces a fog. The atmosphere is filled with moisture and it rains gently when we drive home.
We are just in time to take a shower. By the time Sisi has prepared hamburgers, there is a line of people waiting. The common room is packed with happy but exhausted people. Not enough cooking stoves, so some people place there own camping stoves on the tables. Lots of action. I like it. Decent people. Lots of talking everywhere.
Now laying in my sleeping bag. Voices all around. Most are Dutch, but also plenty French and Italian.
The inside of the outer tent is dripping with water. Things got wet inside. The bottom end of my sleeping bag is soaked. But I am quite tired. I think I will sleep fine.
Good night, my friend.
2025-02-12