Iceland 🇮🇸 Day 3 - Skógafoss 🌨️ 🌬️, Svartifoss ❄️ and Vatnajökull

Today I want to tell you about day-3 of my vacation in Iceland. If you are curious about how the first two went, I'll leave you a link below:

Day 1

Visiting Iceland - Saxhóll, Kirkjufell and Game of Thrones

Day 2

Visiting Iceland - Djúpalónssandur, Geyser, and being trapped in a snowstorm

We left the last time with a blizzard, thanks to which we were able to visit the Geysir practically alone. That evening, we booked a beautiful little house in the middle of nowhere made entirely of wood in which we spent the night. For someone like me, who is used to living in a fairly populated city, Iceland is something really special, because you can drive for miles and not see a soul. When we arrived at our accommodation, I thought: are we sure this is the place where we have to sleep tonight?

Indeed it was. The house inside had all the comforts imaginable, with heating (without which we would probably freeze to death, given the prohibitive temperatures in Iceland during the winter), super comfortable beds, a fully equipped kitchen, and a very nice bathroom. After a good rest, we left the next day by car, with a destination: the Skogafoss waterfalls.

Skógafoss, located near Skógar in the south of the island, is fed by the river Skógaá, which originates from the glacier Eyjafjallajökull and flows over a cliff that was once a cliff; currently, the sea is several tens of kilometers distant.

It is 25 meters broad and 60 meters long. A 700-step staircase to the top of the waterfall and a few steps from the start of the leap is located to the right of the jump.

According to a local legend, the first Viking to settle in the area, Þrasi Þórólfsson, concealed a treasure of gold coins in the cave below the Skógafoss waterfall, and when the sun hits the water with its rays, some say you can still see the glittering reflection of the coins. Many people looked for the treasure in the years that followed, and legend has it that a young boy discovered it.

In the hopes of recovering the chest, he tied a rope to it. The boy lost the chest under the weight of the Skogafoss Waterfall's water. He was left holding the rope, and the ring to which he had fastened the rope remained the adventure's only pitiful treasure. Later, the silver ring with runic inscriptions was used as the handle of the portal of Skógar's church, and it is now on display in the area's museum.

As if that weren't enough, the Skógafoss waterfall is also claimed to have a magical power: anyone who bathes in its waters is said to be able to locate a lost object. Unfortunately, we were in Iceland in March and the temperature didn't allow for a bath, so we hadn't the chance to try if this magical power was true or not 😂.

After walking all 700 steps, with no little effort, we finally managed to climb over the waterfall and we set off to begin our trekking in the surrounding area. The main problem, as usual, was the weather conditions. In fact, given the amount of snowfall that occurred in the last period and the cold temperatures, unfortunately, the path had been banned to the public and as a deterrent, there was a fine of about €2000 and even a few months of imprisonment for those who wanted to transgress. Do you think this stopped us?

Obviously not. We decided to continue our walk anyway and I must say that it was worth it because being able to admire such a landscape, with no one around, is something that is truly priceless.

Obviously, we also understood the reason for the ban of access to the area, since while we were there it also began to snow heavily, and then we found ourselves again in a blizzard (which by now we were beginning to get used to).

After this improvised trekking, we went back to the car, and before leaving we had to clean it from the abundant snow that had settled on it. While doing so, we noticed something quite worrying. In fact, while we were cleaning the underside of the car, we saw that the protection present under it had tilted to the left side due to the accumulation of snow. This startled us since the car was rented and we had been warned that there were sensors underneath as well.

After removing the snow we made sure there was no damage to the car and fortunately there was none. Looking at the ground we realized that a small piece had fallen off and it was actually the one that held the two parts together.

By now it was no longer usable, so what we decided to do was to stop at the first available store and see if there was anything we could try to fix the car. After several kilometers, we found a grocery store, we stepped inside and asked the owner if he could help us out. His response was that he could provide us with some tools that we could use to try and fix the car, but that he obviously would never put his hands on it himself since it was rented and he didn't want to take that responsibility. The only thing we were able to get were some plastic ties that we could try to use to reattach the two parts. Another problem was the fact that in order to go out and do this operation we had to raise the car somehow and luckily there was a kind of rise in the ground and there we were able to go up with the left front wheel and we tilted it slightly. We then used the plistic tie and somehow managed to connect the two parts together for the better. Obviously, our hope was that when they returned the car they would not notice this problem. We then finally left and headed towards our next destination, the wonderful waterfalls of Svartifoss.

Svartifoss translates to "black waterfalls" in Icelandic, and the dark hexagonal basalt columns on either side of the structure are one of the waterfall's distinguishing features.

The scientific answer of the innatural color is straightforward but intriguing. When a volcano erupts, such as Hekla or Eyjafjallajökull, ash and smoke billow into the skies. Superheated magma that had been churning deep within the volcano has now overflowed and erupted as lava in the crater. When exposed to air, this iron- and magnesium-rich liquid cools quickly. Basalt is a fine-grained, black volcanic rock formed by fast cooling lava. Basalt has a tendency to crystallize in the form of a column due to its chemical nature.

We admired the waterfall for a long time and also took quite a lot of photos.
Here we gave free rein to our creativity and decided to celebrate with a cigar we had previously bought and a very good bottle of Jameson 😎.

From here we then set off to reach our next destination, the glacier of Vatnajökull.

With its 8000 square kilometers of surface, Vatnajökull occupies almost 10% of the Icelandic territory. It also boasts the title of the third-largest glacier in the world and second-largest glacier in Europe.

The glacier has been used as a set for a lot of famous Tv Series/Movies.

_{Of all the series filmed in Iceland, Game of Thrones is undoubtedly one of the most important. The Vatnajökull Glacier was chosen as the location for Game of Thrones as it was perfect for recreating the landscapes of Beyond the Barrier.

In addition to Game of Thrones, Vatnajökull Glacier was chosen as a location also for: 007 Death Can Wait, Tomb Raider and Batman Begins.}

I must admit that this was a truly incredible emotion, walking in the middle of nature for hours and finally arriving at the edge of the mountain and seeing below you the largest glacier in Europe was something indescribable.

Here we decided to enjoy the moment and went to the outermost edge of the mountain and sat there for a few hours admiring the amazing view in front of us.

And also take some really stupid photos 😅.

And it was at that very moment that we decided that the next day we were going to visit the glacier with a guided tour. Up to that moment, we were quite undecided about this point, since we knew that the tour had a quite high cost and basically the vacation up to that moment was not this little, but once we arrived there on the spot and having seen the wonderful spectacle we decided that we could not go and visit it.

You can check my post on our guided tour on the glacier at the following link: [Vatnajokull].(https://ecency.com/hive-148441/@aurzeq/exploring-the-vatnajokull-glacier-in-iceland)

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