Wow wow wow, Iceland...where do I even begin? I mean, the entire country is an absolute feast for your eyes. While spending time in the Southern region, somehow it feels like you go from a glacier winter wonderland, to a scene out of the Jurassic era, to hiking on the moon, all in the span of an afternoon. The landscape is so diverse, so breathtaking, that it is truly indescribable. I'll do my best with that, but I'll let the pictures speak mostly for themselves (just remember that it's even more stunning in person).
Tuesday, August 15, 2017
We arrived at the Reykjavik airport around 5:00 am local time...meaning that we had gotten almost no sleep on our overnight plane ride and were completely exhausted. We got some coffee and breakfast at the airport while waiting for the public bus to begin running (yeah, we arrived
that early) and prepared to spend the day exploring the city as basic zombies due to our lack of sleep.
Despite running on fumes for the whole day, we were able to experience Reykjavik enough to determine that it's a pretty cool city! There were a lot of cultural opportunities, like a variety of museums and concert offerings, that we didn't partake in but still seemed cool. We spent most of our time just walking around, checking the city out on foot. There were also a lot of stops for coffee involved. Reykjavik seems to have recently begun to establish itself as a food center, so we did manage to enjoy one sit-down seafood meal, despite the insanely high prices. Iceland is supposedly one of the most expensive countries to visit, and I certainly believe it! But we went to a restaurant right on the harbor and got lobster soup, a grilled fish (Tusk, kind of like cod) kebab, and a little sampling of whale! Everything was so delicious. After finishing our day of exploration, including a walk out to a weird little dirt mound with a wooden house for drying out fish on top, we made our way to the city campground for the night.
Wednesday, August 16, 2017
The bus that would drive us to the Laugavegur trailhead arrived at the campsite at 7:10 the next morning. We hopped on for the 4.5 hour drive out to the Landmannalaugar region. On the way out, we started to get a glimpse of some of the amazing sights we would soon be hiking through. Not even on the trail yet, our minds were already being blown!
Once arriving at Landmannalaugar, we took advantage of the natural hot springs near the base of the trailhead. Iceland has so much geothermal activity--95% of the country's energy is actually provided through renewable sources! This is something they're really proud of, for good reason. But it also provides some amazing opportunities for backcountry bathing. It was so crazy cool to hop in the warm water while it was about 50 degrees outside and soak. Certain areas of the springs got SUPER hot, especially closer to the waterfalls pushing water out from where the underground heat was most concentrated. After soaking for awhile, we hopped out (luckily while the sun was shining, so it wasn't too awful getting out into the cool air) and started our hike!
 |
| Lovin' it! |
 |
| Mike getting a little too close to the hot hot hot portion |
Right away, the hike was breathtaking. My head was on a swivel from the get-go. At one of the first overlooks we stopped at, another hiker asked, "What do you think?" My response? "I don't even know what to think!!" Which was true. The landscape was like nothing we had ever seen before, and it was indescribably beautiful.
 |
| On the moon, maybe? |
 |
| I get twice the view ;) |
And that's basically how the rest of the day went. Hiking through unbelievable vistas, past steaming sulfur hot springs, over snowy passes...until we reached the first campsite after about 7.5 miles. You're required to camp at designated spots only on this trail, which I think is excellent. The trail, and the country in general, attract so many tourists from around the world each year that trying to limit the impact that we all have on the landscape is imperative. Leave no trace, folks.
 |
| My happy hiker! |
 |
| The colors of the landscape were so stark in contrast. |
 |
| Sometimes desolate, always beautiful. |
Upon reaching the campsite at the end of our hike, we set up camp and ate dinner in our tent while it was raining outside. The rain lasted for about 20 minutes, and that was the last time we saw any while on our trip. And that is just something that doesn't happen in Iceland. The weather is generally all over the place, and almost always contains rain. We spoke to one employee on our bus who said that when he first moved to Iceland, he saw 2 days of sun in his entire first month. And we ended up having 7 days straight of it. We were so incredibly lucky!
We had read in advance that there was a side hike at this hut to some nearby ice caves, so after eating dinner, we headed back out that way. After a couple of kilometers of more incredible views, the glacier came into view. Heeding the sign that warned us to be careful of falling ice inside of the caves, we headed into the dark entryway. The caves were beautiful, with their patterns of polygonal ice forming the entirety of the walls. The light shone through in certain places and turned the ice glacial blue. We played around in the caves for an hour or so before hiking back to our tent for the night. It was such a cool experience!
 |
| First campsite on the trail, Hraftinnusker Hut. |
 |
| Checking out the insane views on our way to the ice caves. |
 |
| Inside the ice caves. |
 |
| For scale--see the tiny people in the bottom right quadrant? |
 |
| Excited to enter the caves. |
 |
| Beautiful blue ice. |
 |
| This really shiny volcanic rock was everywhere. |
 |
| Stunning sunset for our first night out (probably about 9 p.m. in this photo). |
Thursday, August 17, 2017
The next morning, we headed out into heavy fog. The trail was very well marked the entire way, so wandering off trail wasn't a concern. Our goal for the day was about 16 miles of hiking, passing by two huts to get to our intended designated campsite, the Emstrur/Botnar Hut. It was another full day of beauty, hiking over high alpine peaks down through black sand, past streams, rivers, and lakes, surrounded by green volcanoes standing solitary in the distance. The beauty of this trail cannot be overstated.
 |
| Sharing the trail with folks from all around the world. |
 |
| The fact that we have ultralight packs & gear gave us an advantage over the many people lugging around gear that was way too heavy. |
 |
| Not a bad view for a snack rest. |
 |
| Honestly one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen in my life. |
 |
| Such colorful geology! |
 |
I thought I knew river crossings...I was wrong. This was one of the most painful experiences I've had. The ice cold water coming straight from the glacier runoff felt like actual knives repeatedly stabbing all over my legs.
|
We arrived to our campsite at the end of the day with another side hike in mind. This time, we were headed to
Markarfljótsgljúfur canyon (good luck pronouncing that...we sure couldn't). After walking around the canyon rim for about an hour, during golden hour, we called it a night and fell asleep to the sound of the stream running right next to our tent.
 |
| Campsite #2. |
 |
| Mike being a literal walking advertisement for Altra shoewear. |
Friday, August 18, 2017
On Friday, we hiked the last leg of the Laugavegur trail, since our last day of hiking would be on a different trail called Fimmvorduhals. It was a pretty diverse day in terms of landscape, with a long walk through an area so desolate that nothing grows, but also through some grassy areas with a plethora of colorful plants that we hadn't seen before. We even descended into a valley with actual trees in it!
 |
| A rock shaped like a rhinoceros that we really enjoyed. |
Upon completing the Laugavegur trail, we stayed the night in the yard of a place called Volcano Huts in Thorsmork. There we were able to do a side hike up to the summit of a nearby mountain with incredible views down on more summits, rivers, and even all the way out to the ocean. The huts had showers, albeit very cold ones, so we were able to refresh ourselves a little bit, and even eat our dinner inside of the heated common space. It was a nice night of (what felt like) luxury in the middle of an amazing hiking experience!
 |
| Tiny Mike! |
 |
| All the way in the back, the ocean. |
 |
| Yet another gorgeous sunset! |
Saturday, August 19, 2017
Like I mentioned before, we switched to a different trail for our final day of hiking, the Fimmvorduhals. It's also a very popular trail, but managed to again be quite different from what we had seen before. Its culmination would be at the famous Skogafoss waterfall, back down on the main ring road of Iceland, just a few kilometers from the sea (just over 50 miles from where we began our hike).
We spent the first few hours climbing back up from the river we crossed first thing in the morning. We traversed across a couple of knife's edge cliffs (exhilarating and terrifying), looked down on more glaciers and waterfalls, and made our way over to the site of the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull volcano eruption. Since this seismic event 7 years ago, the trail has been rerouted right over all of the ash and rock spewed by the volcano. It was so wild to be hiking right over the source of such a powerful force that had so recently caused so much disturbance in Iceland and all of western Europe.
 |
| It's no secret that I'm very afraid of heights and having to use chains to climb up the side of a mountain is not my favorite thing. |
 |
| Sometimes they had bridges for us to cross, instead of experiencing the glacier ice water on our legs. |
 |
| Knife's edge hiking...it was a loooong way down on either side. |
 |
| We choose good lunch vistas. |
 |
| Volcanic ash in front & huge glacier behind. |
 |
| Thanks, random hikers, for being my photo subjects. |
 |
| On top of a bunch of volcanic ash deposits. |
After leaving the immediate area of the volcanic eruption, the second half of the hike turned into a waterfall wonderland. This portion of the Fimmvorduhals trail passes by something like 35 waterfalls in a 5-mile span. Seriously, every corner we turned, there was another one. And serious waterfalls, too, not just little cascades! It was incredible.
 |
| Waterfalls & sheep...gotta love it. |
After passing by waterfall after waterfall, we eventually concluded our hike at Skogafoss, the biggest one of them all! Since it is right on the ring road, it's a more crowded area than what we had gotten used to over the last few days. We arrived late enough in the afternoon that a lot of the crowd was already gone, however. After setting up our tent for the night in the campsite only a few hundred feet away from the waterfall, we made our way over to one of the town's restaurants for a real meal to conclude our backpacking adventure! And by real food, I mean we both got hamburgers and fries. It was amazing.
 |
| Skogafoss from its top/the end of our hike. |
Sunday, August 20, 2017
The next morning, we rolled out of our tent and drank our coffee right by the waterfall...since nobody had driven in for the day yet, we still had it all to ourselves for the most part. We did end up getting our photo taken by a few people who had noticed a rainbow from the falls' mist and were having quite some fun with that phenomenon.
After finishing up our coffee, we hoofed it out to the highway, where we had to hitchhike to get to our next destination--the Solheimajökull glacier for our glacier hike and ice climb! The man who picked us up ended up being a guide for one of the competing glacier hike companies in southern Iceland...oops! He managed to see past that and continued to take us to our destination, however. See, people in Iceland really are nice!!
After arriving to our meeting point somewhat early due to the ease with which we caught a ride there, we sat and had more coffee and a chocolate croissant at the little cafe in the parking lot to pass the time. Then our hike began! Our group consisted of only two other Americans and our guide. It was so much fun hiking on the glacier and feeling so secure thanks to the giant crampons on our shoes! Normally I'm sliding all around on ice and worried about falling, but with the crampons, I actually felt safe. It was really beautiful weather, and despite the constant wind on top of the glacier, it was quite pleasant being out there.
For the ice climbing portion, our guide set up the anchor points, gave us the main pointers for climbing, and away we went! Going one by one gave us the opportunity to see everyone else climbing up--and doing it well! It was a lot more difficult than it looks (your toes start to hurt after awhile from kicking your crampons into the ice wall), but it was soo much fun (albeit scary). We climbed up one wall first, and then we moved over to another portion of the glacier where our guide anchored us in and lowered us into a crevasse until we said stop! I didn't make it down very far before claiming my limit...looking down into the crevasse was terrifying because THERE WAS NO BOTTOM. It just went down, down, down. It was insanely cool...and petrifying. Good motivation to climb back to the top, though!! Mike went down somewhat further than I did; he actually dropped out of sight for a minute. But he did a great job climbing back up, too! All in all, it was a super fun experience that we're both really glad we did despite our apprehensions toward ice climbing. It was also my birthday present this year from Mike, so now I've got a lot to live up to when his rolls around in a couple of weeks.
 |
| Strappin' in. |
 |
| Looks like a natural! |
Sometimes you fall, but that's okay--the guide's got you!
 |
| Made it to the top! |
 |
| Also made it to the top! |
 |
| Lowering down, down, down...can you tell by the series of my faces that follow that I was a little bit skeptical of this process?! |
 |
| That's my "don't look down!" face. Too late for me, though... |
Seriously y'all, this whole day was insane. Thankfully we had SO much trust in our amazing guide, Brecht, from Icelandic Mountain Guides. If you're ever in the area looking to do something similar, look them up! They're an amazing company with a ton of skill, training, and know-how and will make sure that you never feel uncomfortable or unsafe at any time. Despite all of the faces I was making, I never believed that anything bad would happen to me. (Really, mom.)
 |
| See, still totally enjoying myself! |
 |
| The moment we lost Mike to the abyss. |
 |
| I wasn't joking about not being able to see to the bottom. |
 |
| Makin' the ice fly to get back to the top! |
Success!
It turned out that the other couple on our glacier excursion were headed to the same town that we were...but they had a rental car. So we were lucky enough to catch a ride with them and not have to hitchhike again! It worked out perfectly. So we made it to the little town of Vik, ate an early dinner of grilled lamb and traditional Icelandic meat soup (also lamb), and strolled around the town for the rest of the evening. We talked about how everywhere we've been, the tourist economy seems so integral to the way of life in Iceland. As a country, they are now receiving somewhere between 2 and 2.5 million tourists each year--with a permanent Icelandic population of only 350,000! It's easy to see why so many people have the desire to visit this amazing place--we certainly weren't disappointed, but I can only hope that they are able to retain their charm in the face of the influx of outsiders like ourselves.
 |
| From the famous black sand beaches of Vik (Reynisfjara). |
 |
| The Reynisdrangar rocks in the background. |
Monday, August 21, 2017
The next morning, we decided to complete one last hike before leaving Iceland. There was a 6-mile round trip hike up an old road built by the Allies in WWII that led up to the top of the sea cliffs in the photo right above. And we were promised puffins. So up we hiked.
The view looking down on Vik below was gorgeous in the soft morning light, and looking out over the vast expanse of the ocean beneath us was breathtaking as well. We passed plenty of sheep on our way up, but hadn't seen any puffins yet. We walked all the way to the edge of the plateau before some movement caught our eye--puffins! Seeing a few of them flying around, we knelt down and started to look closer. It didn't take long to realize that there were actually HUNDREDS of them flying all over the place. They would go out over the ocean, down to the water, and back up to their nests all up and down the sea cliffs. And these little guys were freaking hilarious. It turns out that they can swim down as deep as 70 meters, but their bodies are actually not as well-suited to flying. This meant that their awkward swooping around proceeded to crack us up for about the next hour. They also weren't afraid of us at all, so while our proximity to them was limited by the presence of the 600-foot drop down to the beach below, we were still able to get pretty up close and personal with the funny little birds.
 |
| Because who doesn't want a puffin selfie? |
I mean, try looking at these next 3 pictures without laughing. You can't. These birds are ridiculous.
 |
| No joke about there being hundreds of them. |
 |
| Clearly I was stoked to be hanging out with the puffins. |
So after our puffin hike, which was the perfect way to round out our time in Iceland, we headed back on a bus to Reykjavik for the night. After first taking long, hot showers at our Airbnb, we got an incredibly nice dinner at a place called 73 Restaurant. We both had fish--Mike, cod, and myself, Arctic Char. It seems to be a specialty in Iceland, or at least a regular occurrence on menus, so I wanted to try it out. It was delicious. We also got traditional Icelandic pancakes for dessert. Also delicious. And there was a mix-up when our food was delivered, which meant that we had to wait another 15 minutes or so for the correct dishes to come out (not a big deal to us, but apparently they felt bad)...because the manager brought us out ANOTHER dessert, a delicious crispy waffle with a bunch of whipped cream on top. And if you know me, you know that nothing could have made me happier. An amazing seafood dinner and then TWO breakfast foods for dessert? Pure heaven. If you're in Reykjavik, go there.
And that's about it for our Summer 2017 vacation to Iceland! Everything went off without a hitch, we made it back safely, and we had an absolutely incredible time! The only bad thing is that I was still a little bit jetlagged when we started classes 2 days later and I didn't get out of mine until 9:30 p.m. That was a rough one. But if you are on the fence about visiting Iceland some day, jump off that fence and DO IT (just in case all of the amazing photos somehow haven't convinced you yet).
All in all, I'm so thankful to have been able to travel to yet another amazing location with the love of my life and enjoy some world-class hiking. It is definitely a trend that we intend to keep up!
