South Iceland

For our first post-pandemic travel foray, Will and I chose Iceland. We’d come up a few years ago on a brief visit and decided we had to come back in summer when the daylight lasts nearly til midnight. Traveling with masks on the ferry, bus, and plane is tiring for sure, and I was really glad to take it off once we were driving south along the Ring Road.

We stayed in Vik i Myrdal, a village in the south that has the Myrdalsjokull glacier up above it and beautiful cliffs nearby at Reynisfjara that attract lots of sea birds— including puffins. Watching them from the beach was incredible. The puffins fly really fast with their little wings, zooming out from their spot on the cliff and back again in minutes.

We left the puffins and beautiful black sand to make our way to north to get a ferry to Vestmannaeyjer (Westman Islands). It’s an electric ferry that makes the crossing in about 40 minutes. The islands are an achipelago, all formed by underwater volcanic eruptions- the newest island just emerged between 1963-67. We’d seen a film about Heimaey, the only inhabited island, about the volcano, Edfell, that erupted there in 1973, destroying 400+ buildings. Amazingly, no one was killed because bad weather the day before had forced the fishing fleet into harbor. Islanders were all evacuated. The volcano was actively erupting until July 1973. When it was over, the islanders rebuilt their houses and buildings to what it is today. We did our hike up the crater left from Edfell’s eruption at 9pm, marvelling at the light and views at that time of evening.

It’s a beautiful island with large cliffs everywhere you look, birds zooming in and out of crevices high up, lovely houses and restaurants, and art work or other commemorations of the losses from volcano eruption in the 70’s. There’s pretty tough golf course where golfers have to get their ball straight onto the fairway, or the ball goes into the sea; the campground is right beside it complete with a traditional turf roof house beside it.

Our final stop before leaving the island on Sat was at The Sea Trust Beluga Whale Sanctuary, which has a tiny aquarium along with a puffin rescue and home to 2 beluga whales brought over from their life in captivity in China. Icelandic museums are full of information in rather small spaces, and the Sea Trust lived up to that. The pufflings in their care are baby puffins found in the town or on the rocks, needing some tending before they are released back to the wild. Adults and childen in the town are on alert when the puffin eggs hatch in August and young pufflings may go astray. We got to watch them being fed in their tank, and then sat for half an hour communing with the remarkable white beluga whales.

The Sea Trust is currently building a protected place in the harbor for the belugas to live in more naturally. Because they were born in captivity, the first attempts to place them out there were short-lived because the belugas are accustomed to a lot of contact with their carers. The new plan is to make it between the tank and the harbor so they can go back and forth.

We left the island on a late afternoon ferry, and took on one more South Iceland adventure for the evening. Reykjadalur Thermal River is a spot we’d read about, and we (again) took advantage of the late light to take on the 2 mile hike to the thermal springs. It wasn’t sunny like the evening before, but I was ready to don the rain pants and go for it. I’ll admit- the uphill climb was tough though.

We saw about 25 people coming down as we did the ascent, and were lucky enough to have the river practically to ourselves. It was heaven to soak in a warm river and then move slightly to be able to get cooler water. It was an amazing way to finish our brief South Iceland tour. Once we picked Charles up the next day, our drive took us north. More on that soon.