Today was waterfall/beach day. We had another nice breakfast at our hotel and headed south and east for the first waterfall of the day. At major parking lots they have an interesting way of making sure you pay for your parking. They record your license tag as you enter and leave and correlate it to a payment that you make with an app on your phone or at a computer terminal inside an entry building where you input the size of your vehicle, email address, and pay with a credit card or apple pay. I have used Apple pay for nearly every credit card transaction – but not at the filling stations. Any way the parking fees are all automated – I saw no humans involved at all.
The first waterfall was Seljalandsfoss and was the one we had hoped to walk behind. In the summer it would have been no problem – but the spray from the falls had made a think coat of smooth ice on the walkway towards the falls and so we decided not to walk behind them. Even with textured sole shoes I felt like I had leather soles on black ice and nearly fell a long ways from the falls. Others had come prepared and had put crampons on their shoes and were having no problem.
The parking lot had some humorous signs on the restrooms.
Nearby we drove by Gljufrabui
Further down the coast we walked to see the Skogafoss waterfall. There was a walkway nearby to a viewing area above the top of the falls. It would have been quite a climb.
We had a very nice lunch at a restaurant nearby.
After lunch we drove to the black sand beaches of Reynisfjara. Several people have been drowned by sneaker waves at this beach – so we stayed well away from the water. Most people seemed to be totally ignoring the signs about the “sneaker” waves. There was a huge sea cave nearby and we got a picture of the rock arch.
We then headed to Kirkjubaejarklauslur and the Magma Hotel for the night.
We ate dinner in town at the Systrakaffi restaurant. We had thought we might see the northern lights tonight but it was too cloudy.
The Magma Hotel is built near a glacier lake that is fed underground from a nearby clacier. Each of the cabins making up the hotel rooms is named for an active volcano and has the year of it’s last eruption. Our is the Krafla 1984 – Number 8
