Waterfalls & Skogar

Today we continued on our adventure around the Ring Road. We hit up part of the Southern boarder. After a delicious breakfast at Hotel Gullfoss, we drove about 90 minutes to our first destination of the day. We did make a few pitstops for gas, food, and to briefly checkout the Lava and Earthquake center. Our first stop of the day was at Seljalandsfoss. (Your guess as to how to pronounce it is as good as ours.) Seljalandsfoss is a huge waterfall with a series of smaller ones between it and another large waterfall called Gljufurarbui.

Entrance to Gljufurarbui

Inside Gljufurarbui

Upon arriving, Scott and I decided to work our way backwards and start with Gljufurarbui first. This waterfall is partially hidden behind an open air cave for lack of a better term. You are able to see the very top of it outside the cave, but need to go inside in order to see the entire thing. Scott led the way and lent a helping hand to me when it was needed. We walked along rocks sticking out of the water by the edge of the cave. The spray coming off of the waterfall and the rocks surrounding us were all freezing. Scott took the brunt of the spray as he was leading the way into the cave and got closer to it than what I did. We took a wonderful selfie of ourselves right before we headed out of the cave. I think our photo says it all! It was awesome to witness but rather chilly!

Seljalandsfoss

Next, we made our way back down the path towards Seljalandsfoss. It's not a very far distance between the two. With this waterfall, we were able to follow the path and walk behind it. We didn't hang out behind here for long. I got some photos on the way there, took a short video of what the fall looked like from a side angle, and we hustled on out of there.

We then headed for Skogarfoss, but made a quick pitstop at the Eyjafjallajokull Visitor's Center. We did get a trick on how to pronounce that work and it goes like this: round your mouth and say 'I forgot my yogurt' as one word. Strangely enough, it does get the point across! Just like our luck with the guided tours in the past two days, the visitor's center was closed. I was looking forward to going in and learning some information about the volcano. This is the one that erupted in 2010 and caused tons of flights to be cancelled in and out of Europe because of the ash it emitted.

Platform overlooking Skogafoss.

Our official second stop of the day was at Skogarfoss, another huge waterfall. This one has 527 steps that lead to a platform overlooking the top of it. These same steps also lead to a 24km hike that can be done in a day according to our guide book. We walked a little ways up the path, but didn't go very far because we weren't really prepared for any kind of long trek. The sights were beautiful up along the top of the waterfall.

Once we got back down to the bottom, Scott did make his way to the back of the waterfall. He said he couldn't go all the way around to the back. I watched him disappear into the mist! lol

Our last stop of the day was at the Skogar Folk Museum. It turned out to be pretty cool and offered a lot of information about traditional Icelandic life and a look into what houses used to look like. Since there's not a lot of trees here, people used to build their homes out of rock, turf, and into the side of the mountains. Driftwood was a hot commodity. If you lived on the coast and it landed on your property, then you would carve your initials into it, and it was was yours even if you didn't haul it away before it was washed away again. We also learned that farmers made the majority of their own tools and were a jack of all trades.

The museum was cool but ate up a lot of out time today. While we were in there the clouds/ fog rolled in and there was a heavy mist. We drove quite close to the coast and couldn't see much of anything. By the time we got to our guesthouse, we decided to head into Vik for dinner. There we made the decision to head to get up early tomorrow in hopes that the rain and clouds will have cleared away a bit so that we can go to the coast and see some puffins, a lighthouse, and sea stacks.