Day five in Iceland was planned largely on the recommendation of the family we stayed with the night before. So we headed out and traced our steps from the day before. But before going very far we came across three raindeer just chilling along the side of the road. They really didn't seem to care that we were there.
This was the boat we were loaded into for the first trip onto the lagoon for the day. It was somewhat postponed, however due to the fact that the lagoon was too full. With spring arriving nearly a month late in Iceland, the glacier had recently release a lot of ice into the lagoon and it had not yet melted enough to flow down the river to the ocean. But the little boats were hard at work pushing the bergs out of the way and making a path for our boat.
The lagoon tends to have lots of fish come into it with the tides, so it tends to be a popular fishing hole for birds and seals alike.
Josh sporting the snazzy life-jacket with some of the smaller bergs in the background.
Some of the Icebergs were striped back and white - which is caused by ash from volcanic eruptions settling on the glacier and then begin covered by more snow. Each layer of black in the iceberg represents a separate eruption. Pretty crazy when you think about that and look at a berg like this. Other icebergs were really crazy blue in colour - which apparently means that it's actually a perfectly clear iceberg, and the blue is a reflection of the water created by the sun, that causes the ice to look strangely blue. We didn't see too many of those kind though.
After our boat tour we headed back towards Myrar (where we would spend the night again) but stopped along the way for a hike at Fellsfjall (it's the dotted red line furthest to the left on the picture above). The first 200m (which was actually more like 2km but it's so hard to judge distance in Iceland cause you can see so far and the mountain really through perspective) was really flat and boring, but then we came to the small river where the trail more or less ended and began our own explorations. We spent a good chunk of the day here and it was one of the days we enjoyed the most - something about getting off the beaten path.
One of the forks of the river - the one that we decided to follow.
Josh standing to the bottom of one of the little waterfalls coming down from the mountains. Josh really had this thing for wearing clothes that really camouflaged him. He did climb right up to the top of this waterfall while I played with my camera.
Further up stream the river cut through a small canyon which was really neat. We managed to climb right down into the canyon and see the many stages of the waterfall, and how the power of the water had cut through and smoothed the usually quite jagged lava rocks.
After 3 attempts, we finally managed to get a half decent shot of the two of us as Josh enjoyed his Gull beer. It was Josh's goal to try as many Icelandic beers along the way as he could. I believe Gull was the first one he tried, and he seemed to really enjoy the Icelandic beers in general.
After our hike in and back out I was dying for a washroom so we went back once again to Jokulsarlon where we enjoyed hot chocolates and then crossed over the highway and followed the river to the ocean where you could watch the icebergs flow and roll their way to the ocean, then get played with by the powerful waves of the ocean. It was a little strange seeing bits of ice all over the beach.
Following our adventures for the day we headed back to our guest house where the family we were staying with prepared for us a wonderful meal of lamb (very fitting considering it was a sheep farm in the midst of lambing).
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