July 29, 2016 - July 31, 2016
From Jökulsárlón Lagoon, we drove almost 3 hours to our next waterfall. Hengifoss is the third tallest waterfall in Iceland and is surrounded by basaltic strata with thin, red layers of clay between the basaltic layers. It was a nice 2.5km hike from the parking lot where we got to enjoy the scenery of rolling hills and smaller waterfalls up to Hengifoss.
As we hit the Ring Road again, we passed several areas that, after just recently binge watching Stranger Things with Jason and Allie, reminded us of the "upside down" world so we had to stop and snap a photo. Thankfully, there were no monsters.
Next, we made our way to the Mývatn Nature Baths with a quick stop at the Viti Crater. Similar to New Zealand, it was really interesting to see the varying landscapes in just short distances from each other. We've gone from crazy glaciers to rolling hills to big waterfalls to desert like landscapes. We opted to go the Mývatn baths instead of the infamous Blue Lagoon in hopes to avoid the big crowds. The baths were refreshing....but still a good number of people. It definitely made us miss and appreciate the onsens in Japan. But hey, it was our first and only shower of our trip...so feeling clean is always great too! :)
We couldn't resist a quick stop at this icy blue lagoon just across from the nature baths. We even spotted some people in the water -- pretty sure that wasn't allowed!
Goðafoss was next on our list, which was just a short drive from Mývatn. The falls are also known as "waterfall of the gods" - in the year 1000, an assemblyman named Þorgeir had to make a decision on the country's religion and after 24 hours of meditation he decided Iceland would be a Christian nation. On his way home, he tossed his pagan carvings of the norse gods into the waterfall, hence the name.
Down a steep path, if you can even call it that, we made our way to check out Hvítserkur, a giant basalt stack at the water's edge -- kind of looks like a dragon or troll stopping to take a drink of water.
As we were making our way across the northern part of Iceland, we made a quick stop at, you guessed it, another waterfall called Kolugljúfur. Suffice to say, there's no drought here.
At this point in the trip and probably just by reading our post, it was easy to feel waterfalled-out. But nothing would really prepare us for our next waterfall, Dynjandi. Wow.
It was a little bit of hike from the parking lot to the main waterfall, but there were a handful of smaller ones to entertain you along the way. This one was by far one of our favorites...since it seemed to come from nowhere, there weren't a ton of people, and the surrounding area was just beyond beautiful.
Just a quick jaunt through the West Fjords and we'll have made our way around Iceland in a quick week!