To describe the beach is not possible if you have not seen it yourself. The shore crashing on the beach which consists only of black sand and stones in all sizes. Directly on the beach sharp stones pile up and above we could see hundrets of puffins living and breeding their pufflings. The scenary of this beach is both: bizarre and beautiful.
Puffins? Such lovely, cute little birds. Extremely colorful with a red peek and very short little wings. They come here during summer time to raise their pufflings and then fly out to the open sea for the rest of the year. Compared to other birds they look rather funny when they fly due to their short wings.
At this point in time we were pretty sure that we would not continue to drive with the Kia ceed. The clutch was getting worse, the tires in bad shape and so I contacted our Travel Agency to arrange a car exchange for the next morning in Höfn.
We had to be in Skaftafell Visitor Centre by 12:45 am as we had booked the "Blue Ice Experience", a glacier tour for 2,5 hours. We rushed through the landscape to make it in time. On our right the sea, on our left big Jökulls, glaciers and prosperous fields.
The glacier tour was a highlight!! Kjell was the most happiest person with his ice axe and the spikes under his feet. We were driven in a small bus to our starting point, got a quick introduction in how to wear and walk with the spikes and how to behave during the tour.
Off we went with our guide Anna. She explained a lot about "our glacier", the Svínafellsjökull, its age, the reason for a glacier, the disappearing, its dangers,... it was extremely interesting to listen and to translate in parallel into German for Kjell. We hiked for 2 hours and made some experiments to show the nature, the power, the danger of such a glacier. It was truely a stunning experience. And afterall not that cold. ;-)
We continued our trip towards the next accomodation near Höfn and arrived at the glacier Breidamerkurjökull. At the foot of the glacier is the deepest lake of Iceland, the Jökulsárlón (250m deep). Icebergs of all sizes float on the lake. Kjell was asleep and on a small parking lot we climbed up a small hill to see the beauty of the lake (which actually was the lake where James Bond crashes his Aston Martin in 2002). We sat there all alone when suddenly one of the icebergs calved. This incredible sound of cracking and whooshing will stay with me forever. What a special moment - truely.
A few minutes later we got to the official sight of this lake. It was amazing to take a closer look at the Icebergs in all sculptures and forms. Even a seal popped up...
This lagoon definitely is worth a visit, even though again crowded with other tourists.
Our accomodation close to Höfn was simple and clean but not really worth mentioning. We changed our clothes and then went out to look for a restaurant in Höfn. We ended up in a lovely, very pretty small restaurant in the harbour of Höfn, called New Haven, Nyhöfn. I had excellent lamb and Jens was happy with his cod. Besides, I kinda fell in love with the waiter, a typical Icelandic young guy with shaved backsides and a tied knot. ;-) We also realized that in general the Restaurants don't really provide extra kids' dishes, which I think is ok as I like our son to try new food and not only rely on french fries and nuggets.
By the way, did I mention that in Iceland no McDonalds is available?!?!? Such a good thing!
On our way back to our place, we tried to find the Europcar station according to the address that our travel agency passed to us. We found each other in the middle of a normal private house area, with no house numbers and were curious on how the exchange of the car would work the next morning...
