Honeymoon in Iceland – Day 5: Jokulsarlon Glacier Lagoon

Long story short of our Iceland Honeymoon day 5: We have landed in the Blue Lagoon and when I say “in” I literally mean it. We afterward took route to East Iceland on ever winding roads that passed through small towns like Höfn, Djúpivogur, Breiðdalsvík, Stöðvarfjörður, Reyðarfjörður, Egilsstaðir all the way to end at Seydisfjordur.

Our day on Google Maps

Midnight glimpses of the Aurora

Last night our thoughts were converging in secret at the idea of a magical moment: to sleep at the footsteps of the biggest glacier in Europe and to be accompanied by the marvelous lights of the Aurora Borealis.  To be honest, our chances at this were really slim because of the evening rain and dense cloud formations combined with the future forecast that predicted even more precipitations, but hey… you know what they say.. hope dies last! Close to midnight I suddenly got up out of the blue and I’ve rushed to the car window.

There seemed to be something on the night sky, but we had to get out to take a closer look. We put on some warm clothes and we were amazed, it’s a feeling hard to explain. A little green veil of light flickered in a clearing of clouds on the sky and for a moment we had double thoughts, are we both wishfully imagining this or is it really happening? We turned around and we were relieved when we saw the meanders of the northern lights happily flowing all around. We tried to immortalize a shot but failed probably because of our emotional state and  because of the fact that even though we brought a tripod with us we forgot the small camera adapter. Nevertheless, the Aurora Borealis was low in intensity and was only visible for a few minutes until the clouds grouped up again and obscured our view.

Finally, we took the wise decision of going to sleep as we had a long day tomorrow.

Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon

The fact that we woke up in the morning without a drop of sunshine had stopped bothering us as we got used to the weather in Iceland, as a result we had breakfast and left for Jökulsárlón, the famous golf with black shores and large chunks of ice.

It was raining when we got there but it was really hard detaching ourselves and leaving this scenery full of light blue floating icebergs and playful seals that were swimming around under the delighted view of the tourists.

Fun part: As we were relaxing on the banks we positioned the GOPRO camera on a rock to capture and store these wonderful memories in it’s small magic box. Our failure was that we didn’t take into account the rising water level caused by the icebergs that were violently detaching from the glacier. That is exactly what happened as we were really close to losing our camera to the icy blue waters of the lagoon. Luckily Alex was fast on his reactions and managed to save the little thing by sacrificing one leg to the cold waters. Better to get a bit wet than to forever abandon our fiend to the lonely blue depths.

After this event we retreated to the car and to a dry pair of shoes. We then proceeded on conquering the East with its mountains that trickle in the sea, with black shores and foamy waves and with ever winding roads across grand fjords.

The road to Eastern Iceland

From Skaftafell we continued East passing through Höfn, Djúpivogur, Breiðdalsvík, Stöðvarfjörður on the Ring Road, after which we took road 96 until Reyðarfjörður and then road 92 all the way to Seydisfjordur via Egilsstaðir.

At Höfn we picked up a nice couple from Germany that were hitch hiking  around Iceland. They shared some stories about West Fjords and told us that during their 10 day backpacking trip in the outdoors they have only met 9 people there – this was happening during the full touristic season.  The region is absolutely beautiful and you have a pretty good chance of spotting arctic foxes, the largest predator in Iceland (rest assured they are not really dangerous). We asked what was the best place they have visited in Iceland and they replied it is an extremely hard question and that they can’t pick only one place – by the end of our holiday we will come to realize how right they were!

After Höfn, right before exiting the small golf that is the town’s home we took a detour, bypassing the tunnel on the main road and choosing a secondary dirt road that would take us to a vantage point on the mountain.

It is pretty common to find such curious creatures on the road in Iceland. For this one we actually had to stop the car because it didn’t had the slightest intent of moving out of the way. After a short photo shooting it decided to go on its way and continue whatever routine it had going on.

We did a short stop in Djúpivogur where we had our launch and check the weather forecast at the town’s info center.

I can honestly say that the road until Stöðvarfjörður was impressive, with scenic roads on the ocean banks that sometimes pass close to green mountains or to grey volcanic landscapes, but what would follow on would leave us profoundly impressed.

After a 6 kilometres long tunnel, carved through the heart of a mountain, we would come out on a whole new world.

Out of the blue the whole view changed and we were surrounded by mountains, valleys rich in waters and peaks forever covered in snow. This country simply refuses to let you get bored! For the first time the mountains resemble the ones we are more used to, our own high peak in Romania, but don’t think that they don’t have an Icelandic signature.

We will spend the night in a camping in Seydisfjordur,  a small fairy-tale town on the shores of the ocean situated in a remote golf.

Hope you found the information helpful and accurate, but remember, if you have any questions drop them in a comment below!

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