DAY 35 – TUESDAY 8TH JANUARY 2019

Today Steve and I were venturing out on our own again.  This time we wanted to check out Dyrholaey Headland and the Black Beach.  Again, we were blessed with good weather… 

Lighthouse of top of this headland

Dyrholaey, is a 120 m high and precipitous headland on the south coast of Iceland, is famous for its prominent and natural arch. The name Dyrholaey means “door hill island” in Icelandic. The reason behind the name, is that the arch is so big, that ships and even small airplanes can pass through it at certain times when the sea is calm. It is the power of the ocean that has worn the black basalt into this 120-metre high arch.  We were fortunate that the weather was good as it afforded us an excellent view of the black beaches along the southern coast of Iceland… 

You had to use your credit card just to go to a public loo... and it cost $2.50

Stunning views of the black beaches in Iceland

View of the public loos.   Very hard to find these in Iceland... there are not too many around...

Puddles are all iced over

On top of the headland sits a century old lighthouse.  These days it’s not your regular kind of lighthouse. On the inside, it has been renovated and converted into a private luxury hotel. Nevertheless, the exterior look is extremely charming, and we enjoyed photographing it….

Amazing views of the black beaches from up on the Headlands

Lots of birds nesting on the cliff faces

We spent a couple of hours here just soaking in all the beauty around us and enjoying the amazing views.  It was early afternoon before we left to go and explore the other natural attraction on our list of places to explore today. 

Lighthouse on top of Dyrholaey Headland

 Next we were off to Reynisfjara to see the famous black sand beaches and basalt stacks.    Snow capped mountains in the distance made this a very pleasant drive...

Before arriving there we past through a little village with a rather cute little church which we stopped to photograph.

 Reynisfjara is a world-famous black-sand beach found on the South Coast of Iceland, just beside the small fishing village of Vík. It is a place of wild and dramatic beauty where the roaring waves of the Atlantic Ocean power ashore with tremendous force.

    With its enormous basalt stacks, hexagonal-shaped basalt columns, stunning lava formations, towering cliffs, basalt caves, breathtaking views of some stunning stone arches off in the distance, roaring Atlantic waves and stunning panoramas, Reynisfjara is widely considered to be the most beautiful example of Iceland’s black sand beaches. In 1991, National Geographic voted Reynisfjara as one of the Top 10 non-tropical beaches to visit on the planet.

Basalt Rock STacks

Reynisfjara is located near a large volcano that erupted several times during the last thousand years. The notorious Katla volcano has been dormant for nearly one hundred years but is due to erupt at any time. Reynisfjara’s black sand was formed during one of Katla’s major eruptions.
Black sand beaches rise from volcanic ashes. When molten lava enters the water, a violent interaction occurs between the hot lava and the sea water.

The lava cools down so rapidly that it breaks into debris and sand instantly. A huge amount of lava flow entering the ice-cold sea at once may produce enough fragments to create a new black sand beach in a matter of hours!

According to local Icelandic folklore, these large basalt columns which vary from 0.5-1 meter (1.6-3.2 feet) in diameter and can be up to 20 meters (65.6 feet) tall were once trolls trying to pull ships from the ocean to shore. However, these trolls were dim and went out too late in the night; dawn broke on the horizon, turning the trolls into solid stone.

Another legend tells of a husband whose wife was kidnapped and killed by two trolls. The man followed the trolls down to Reynisfjara where he froze them, ensuring that they would never kill again

Our last stop for the day on Tuesday was to visit the Soleikajokull Glacier. It was late afternoon by the time we got there, that is around 3pm, about 45minutes before sunset, and the rain had started again. Not the best weather to view a glacier, but we stopped anyway.   

 As the sun was setting, and  the weather terrible, I decided to sit in the car and wait for Steve, as I knew I would slow him down, and I didn’t want to be walking back to the car in the dark, especially since the weather was so poor and I didn’t want to slip or fall.  

Solheimajokull glacier has a wealth of dramatic ice formations including crevasses, rugged ridges and sinkholes. Sólheimajökull is a glacier tongue or outlet glacier of Mýrdalsjökull, the 4th largest glacier in Iceland, which has the mighty and feared Katla Volcano lurking ominously beneath its ice cap.  It is about 8kms long and 1-2kms wide. The most striking thing about Solheimajokull glacier is how it is shrinking and retreating. It is often called the incredibly shrinking glacier. It has retreated about a kilometre in the last few decades and since the bottom of the glacier is below sea level it will probably leave a lake or a lagoon behind it.  It thickness is about 250 meters and at the core at the top of Mýrdalsjökull, the ice sheet is about 700 meters thick.

Steve was so glad that he did the walk, as seeing this Glacier was one of the highlights of the trip so far for Steve. 

It was after dark by the time we arrived home…  Pete and Steve had a soak in the hot tub again tonight, and then after dinner we all enjoyed another night of board games, playing Carcassonne this evening.  What a great game…. Loving these evenings spent together….