We officially start our “round the island” road trip on day 2! On average, we drove about 4 - 6 hours every day, so we tend to get going as early as possible to hit as many attractions as possible. On day 2, we drove to the southernmost part of Iceland and started to get a glimpse of what this country looks like.
Kerið Crater
This is supposed to be part of the golden circle. We did not have the time yesterday, and this is on the way out to the “Ring Road”, so we decided to stop by. The red slopes and the aquamarine color of the lake are part of the appeal of visiting this crater.
On our way to the southern coast, driving on the main road around the island, we saw beautiful mountains, massive green grass land, dozens of sheep and horses everywhere. The combination of them creates such an incredible sense of freedom and tranquility.
Seljalandsfoss
Beautiful waterfall right off the main road. The short trail leads you to the back of the waterfall as well.
Skógafoss
This is one of my favorite waterfalls and also one of the biggest. It is so big that you can see it all the way from the ring road. There is also a stairway that leads you to the top of the waterfall.
Skógar Museum
This is right next to the Skógafoss. There are three parts to the museum: the folk museum (artefacts), the open-air museum (turf houses, see picture below) and the museum of transport. It looked like an awesome museum to visit, however, due to time constraints, we decided to skip this, but we were able to see the turf houses from outside.
Sólheimajökull
This is one of the many glaciers in Iceland, and there are day tours offered to tourists if you want to do glacier walks and/or climbing. We will be doing a glacier walk on the largest glacier on Iceland - Vatnajökull on day 3, so we just took a short walk for this one.
Dyrhólaey Viewpoint
Dyrhólaey is basically the arch with the hole. It might sound like something that you are not sure you want to make a detour for, but it turned out to be a nice ocean walk. There is the upper and the lower part, depending on how much time you want to spend here, it could take you 2 hours to walk around the whole area. You can see from the pictures below that the walk offers some stunning views, and we were totally blown away by the scenery and even more so by the WIND!
Reynisfjara Black Sand Beach
Last stop of the day, the Reynisfjara black sand beach. This is not the type of beach that you would see people sunbathing and swimming. However, it has a panoramic views of the Atlantic ocean, and you can also see the large basalt columns.
On day 2, we drove about 240km / 150 miles and this day is considered one of the easier day for driving. In the coming days, we had to drive so much further in each day that we actually had made some tough decisions in choosing which attractions to go and which to skip. To be continued….