Reykjavik to Vik and Back

 On Friday, July 28th, since we had to catch an eight o'clock bus, we decided to pay the 2500 kroner (around twenty dollars) apiece for the hotel breakfast.  It turned out to be the best hotel breakfast buffet of the whole trip, with a wide variety of fresh and well-made foods, the bread, especially, was very good here and most other places we went.

At bus stop 9, a number of different tours were picking up, several of them with "Your Day Tours" minibuses and destination cards in the windshield.  We were looking for Arctic Adventures again, but it turned out, rather confusingly, that our South Coast tour would be in one of these "Your Day Tours" vehicles.  The guide-driver was an Englishman, many years resident in Iceland, whom I would have called elderly, except that he is a year younger than I am!  We got a late start, because we spent a long time waiting for one passenger, who, it turns out, was correctly at bus stop 6, but the company had it wrong.  We picked up most of our group at that stop and headed out for the coast, with running commentary by our guide (generally interesting).

It took about an hour-and-a-quarter to get to our first stop, Urriðafoss, the highest-volume waterfall in Iceland.

Afterwards, we stopped at a lookout for Eyjafjallajökull, the glacier-covered volcano that caused air-traffic disruptions in 2010.

Shortly afterwards, we arrived at Skógafoss.  We approached the waterfall both from below and, after climbing a long stairway, from above.

About half an hour later, we arrived at the parking lot for Sólheimajökull.  It was about a fifteen minute walk to the glacier overlook.  Other groups were coming and going, many equipped with cleats to walk on the glacier.  Our guide advised us not to get close to it, due to the chance of avalanche.  We followed that advice, though others in our group didn't, and everyone survived.

Now it was lunch time, but first, we drove up a hill, by a small, red-roofed church, overlooking the village of Vík í Mýrdal, and a set of odd stone columns, rising out of the sea.

Lunch was down in Vik, on our own.  Mary Joy and I ate ate the Ice Cave Bistro, a very touristy place.  She was pleasantly surprised by the lamb stew.  I had a reasonably passable cheeseburger.

On the road again, not far back west toward Reykjavik, we stopped at Reynisfjara, the best-known of the black sand beaches, with more sea stacks and a cave, which our guide said was the inspiration for the front of the Halgrimskirkja church. 

Last stop was Seljalandsfoss.  We had brought along waterproof or water-resistant clothing, but hadn't made up our mind as to whether to walk the path behind the waterfall and get drenched.  In the end we chickened out, though we did get close enough to receive some spray.  Other people, including some in our group, were braver than we were.

We had expected the tour to end around 6 p.m., so we had made reservations at Messinn for 7:30, but we ended up going straight to the restaurant from bus stop 6, getting there at 7:35.  We had fish plates--very nice.

There was still daylight when we finished and walked back to our hotel through the lively streets.