Day 3: Tomas Nicholson

Tomas getting his crampons fitted to his hiking boots

In action on the glacier

Father and son on the glacier

The day started at 9 o’clock, when we left the hotel and went to the first of three waterfalls for the day. The first one, Seljandafoss, we could go behind the curtain of water and we all got soaked. There was an overhang in the rock underneath it and a path that went to get there. We were about ten metres behind it and about seven above the plunge pool, yet everyone got very wet. William decided to go under a smaller fall the ran off the main one for a picture, but only succeeded in making his clothes need to be squeezed dry.

Then we walked to another waterfall that was hidden in a gorge, but before that, we came across a small building. This building was a generator for the nearby farm, and only that farm, running off a stream. The waterfall was in a small gap in the cliff. We went through to get a good look, and it was quite a sight, tumbling down over the cliff with amazing power and again, we got wet!

We went to a farm that showed a short film about the 2010 eruption of Eyjafjallajökull, which showed how the family that farms directly underneath was affected by it.

We got back on the bus and drove to the next waterfall, Skogafoss. This one we had to climb a very large amount of stairs to get above this feature, as the fall was very big. We could also get relatively near to the bottom. We had lunch at a nearby restaurant, which also had a shop.

While we were travelling in the morning, we drove past a waterfall that actually went up, not down. This is because the wind was just right to blow it back up from when it was about half way down, which gives an indication of the strength of the wind over the past few days.  

After lunch was the highlight of the day. We went to a glacier and walked on it. We put on crampons, grabbed our axes, and made the hike. We looked at molans (holes made by streams on the glacier) and crevasses on the glacier itself, and looked at what they can do. We were led by the same person who took  us cave-diving, Orri, so we had some good fun.

By then, it was too late in the day to look at the beach formed by Katla, the biggest volcano in Iceland, where there was nothing, so we drove onto our hotel in the middle of the Laki lavas, in the hope of seeing some Northern Lights.

By Tomas Nicholson