Iceland: Exploring the south coast

One thing I really wanted to do when visiting Iceland was visit a glacier. Jökulsárlón caught my attention, even though it’s located 400km from Reykjavik, but after reading Gray Line’s excellent reviews for their south coast and Jokulsarlon glacier lagoon day tour, these convinced me to book - despite a 14-hour day trip, minimum (our trip took 15.5 hours).

The tour started early and, I’ll be honest, it involved a lot of driving. Which I knew when I booked it, but it’s only when you experience it that you get a handle of how much time you’re spending in a coach. Tanya, our tour guide, could talk about anything though. Anything she could share with us about the scenery we were driving through, she did.

Our first proper stop of the tour was at Seljalandsfoss, a waterfall you can walk behind it... if it's safe enough to do so. We started walking up the stairs and path to do this but it was super slippery - like, dangerously slippy to the point we immediately regretted trying - we got halfway up before we turned back. Just as we got back to the bottom, a man appeared to close the path as it was too dangerous.

Next up on the tour was another waterfall: Skogafoss (pictured above). There's no walking behind this one, though you can go right up to it, and if you head up a long set of steps (527, to be exact, and these weren't slippery stairs like the ones at Seljalandsfoss) you can view it from the top as well.

The tiny village of Vik (pictured above) was our next stop-off. We grabbed lunch from the Ice Cave Bistro, then headed as close as we dared to the beach to take some photos made more difficult because of the insane blizzard that was raging around us. Leaving Vik in this terrible blizzard is when we first started to notice cars in ditches at the side of the road which made me rather glad that we weren't the ones driving!

From Vik we had a further two hours before we arrived at the Jokulsarson glacier lagoon and the Black Diamond beach. The verdict? Stunning. The colours were incredible and made it completely worth the drive to see real-life icebergs. We also spotted seals swimming in the glacier lagoon, which was lovely, because who doesn't like seals?!

Full of love for Jokulsarson, we returned to Vik for dinner, before continuing our journey back to Reykjavik where we had the bonus of seeing the Northern lights from the coach window. There doesn't sound like much to this tour when I read this post back (did I mention all of the driving?), but it really was incredible to see some of Iceland's south coast, even if it was only for a day.