Iceland Day 12 – Kerid, Seljalandsfoss, Skogafoss, Dyrholaey Lighthouse, Vik

April 6.

After a good night in the van, I left the Fludir campground in the morning going South towards the ring road. But one more stop was planned before – the Kerid crater respectively crater lake.

Even from a distance, you could see lots of people walking along the crest of the crater. Yes, I am still in the golden triangle. This was the first attraction that actually asked for an entrance fee. I did the walk around as well as walking town to the frozen crater lake. It was one of the places where you really see how Iceland is struggling with mass tourism. Even though there were marked trails and lots of fenced off areas with the respective signs, the whole area was disturbed, the grass destroyed.

I am a tourist too, contributing to this situation. But I wished more people would stick to the paths to keep the impact to Iceland’s beautiful nature as small as possible.

Continued towards the ring road. Arriving at ring road, taking the road South East towards Vik. Next stop was the beautiful waterfall Seljalandsfoss – the one where you can walk behind the waterfall itself, so you get a 360 degree perspective on the water falling.

Quite special – and quite wet. 🙂 I loved the water spray in my face. Standing there in my rain gear in the wet wind, this took me right back to the last weeks hiking the Pacific Crest trail in Washington. Oh PCT – I miss you so.

But I only brought two weeks for Iceland, not like the 5 months for the Pacific Crest Trail. So I kept driving on, further on to the Skogafoss waterfall. In search of Wifi, I took a coffee break in the restaurant there. No Wifi… :-p but a salad. Around 5pm, I walked up to Skogafoss, stair cases leading up offering a nice view from the platform above.

I passed the famous airplance wreck/respectively the parking for it at the ring road. My plan was to visit the wreck at sunrise next day – with maybe less other tourists around. So I drove on Dyrholaey lighthouse. At 630pm in really strong winds, it seemd like I would not be lucky to see birds. The winds were so strong that I could barely open my car door.

I didn’t give up on internet yet, so I drove into the town Vik in search of Wifi. It turned out the biggest store of the town (Icewear) had a connected coffee shop with decent internet. I stayed there backing up photos and blogging until being kicked out at the shop’s closure at 9pm.

As planned, I returned to the airplane wreck parking for the night. No other cars, looking good. Plan to get up 4.40am next day to make the one hour walk to the wreck before dawn.