Astroboy at Sólheimajökull

Sólheimajökull

… is a small tongue which squeezes its way out of the fourth largest Icelandic glacier, Mýrdalsjökull. Okay, I’ve got to refer to Google Earth to give you an idea of the size of this bloody thing.

Iceland from Google Space - from here, focus in on the Southern coast. The white splotches (mostly) aren't clouds but glaciers.

The biggest white blotch in the centre is Mýrdalsjökull glacier.

Little groovy tonguey sticky out thing is Sólheimajökull. The black-blue colours in the bottom left isn't water but volcanic sand beaches. For real. It's like Mars down there.

I did a couple of tours in this area – dog sledding and glacier walking.

The glacier is one of the most amazing and bizarre things I’ve seen – Australians don’t exactly get to see glaciers all that often. Climbing up on (and around it) was wicked. Mountain Guides.is’s glacier walk tour is by far the best tour I went on – I highly recommend for anyone stuck doing the day-trips-out-of-Reykjavik thing.

Sexy crampons for ice walking.

We got spikes, crampons and groovy boots (well, not terribly groovy, actually, more oh-so-practical). Then we headed across the black volcanic sand and onto the blue glacier. Because of recent rains, the glacier was somewhat transparent – it was bizarre, looking through the ice to see pockets of black sand enclosed in the depths. Also due to the rain, large crevices had opened and mini streams flowed through holes and cracks down to the river on the beach.

It was incredibly beautiful. I can’t describe it. The colours, despite the overcast weather, were incredible – as were the dozens of tiny waterfalls that lined the cliffs to either side of the tongue. Also spectacular were the drifts of black sand, and the contrast with the blue ice.

Leading up to Sólheimajökull.

Crevices.

Crevices.

Across the ice, looking towards the break in the mountains which lead to Mýrdalsjökull.

Volcanic sand 'dunes' (mountains, rather) border the glacier.

Mountains next to the glacier and black sand dunes.

The sun peaks through the clouds at dusk, as we come down off the ice.

This was how beautiful it was on an overcast day – imagine what it is like in Summer? Amazing.

I came back to Sólheimajökull for the dog ’sledding’. Actually, dog carting, as there was no snow to sled on. Unfortunately, the weather was A W F U L. About worst case scenario – rain, rain, rain. We (the tourists) were saturated to the bone, first in our own clothes, then in the borrowed jumpsuits our guide set us up with. But hey, the dogs were cute, and the landscape on Sólheimajökull’s sandy beach utterly surreal.

Meggie and Jaime will remember that bizarre route we took down from Mt Fuji, across sharp brown volcanic sand, surrounded by fog – a seriously scary experience – well, this was similar.

Dogs take a break on the black sand.

The rain made it difficult to take photos – and my hands were far too cold to take steady shots. I did get lots of video of the dogs though (You Tube clip in the making).

Across the black desert appears ... a US Navy airplane wreck? WTF?

A surprise I wasn’t expecting: abandoned on the Sólheimajökull beach is a dismembered US Navy plane – apparently it crashed here in the 70’s and has since been stripped by the locals for building materials. Spooky.

Navy plane. It was raining heavily, so I had difficulty taking a photo.

Waterfall next to Sólheimajökull.

At dusk we’d returned to the glacier, this time walking alongisde it across the rocky dunes to the edge of the ice.

Photo of the underneath of the glacier.

Because of recent rain and warm weather, we could go in underneath the glacier at the edge – in the above pic, the grey above is the ice, and the black below the sand bed.

Near Sólheimajökull is several waterfalls I visited on both trips:

Seljalandsfoss at dusk, with the lights.

Seljalandsfoss is famous mostly because you can walk behind it and also because it’s lit up at night. Rather spectacular.

Seljalandsfoss, the waterfall you can walk behind - from behind it.

Probably the biggest reason as to why us tourists were absolutely saturated (and freezing) during the dog sledding tour was our crazy tour guide’s enthusiasm to take us behind Seljalandsfoss on a four degree day with heavy rain. It was wet. Would rather do it in summer.

Random waterfall, whose name I have forgotten.

The dog sledding tour guide took us to an extremely large waterfall on the way to the glacier – however I’ve totally forgotten the name. Due to the fog, most of the photos didn’t turn out – above you can see one small tributary of it. Apparently it is the waterfall with the highest volume of water.

Chunkabut waterfall, Skogafoss.

Visible from the road, Skogafoss is pretty high. And you can walk right up to it, and hike up to the top (I was way too lazy to run up there.)

Me in my groovy jumpsuit, lent by the dog sledding operators in place of my soggy jeans and snow jacket.

Other bizarrities of the area:

Old school cave huts near Skogafoss.

Apparently early last century Icelanders utilised the rock and cliff face of the region to build houses and huts. Some still remain.

Icelandic horses.

I did also go horseriding – on the grumpiest Icelandic horse in the pack, of course, a bugger who liked kicking the other horses and refused to cross rivers. Bumpy little shit, too. Anyway, on the dog sledding tour I met some much nicer Icelandic horses, who nibbled at my jacket and headbutted me for cuddles. They’re a bizarre breed, very very hairy and stocky. We were pointedly told that despite their small stature they are  n o t  ponies. Apparently, the breed has a fifth gait others don’t, and they’re also supposed to be very friendly.

Me and the grumpy Laxnes horse.

Laxnes (the horseriding tour operator) horses.

Cemetery decorated for Christmas.

Now this was something bizarre. Given the five hours of sunlight in winter, the Icelanders decorate their cemeteries with Christmas lights. From a distance, it is a really fantastic sight. They lights stay on all day and night – but environmentalists don’t fear, all power generated in Iceland is geo-thermal: dirt cheap and carbon footprint friendly.

Okay, one more Iceland post to go, for New Years and Blue Lagoon, cheers for bearing with me so far.