Our final tour in Iceland was also the longest tour. It started at 8 AM with the pickup at our hotel and with expected return to the hotel around midnight. I guess for that reason, the minibus was really nicer than the other. We ended up in the back seat like usual which we did not mind at all since I have access to both windows. Thong just had to change seat with me all the time.
We went through many small towns in Southern Iceland, one of which was of special interest. Selfoss was a small city that has a Bobby Fischer Center. Bobby Fischer was the American chess Grand Master and the 11th World Chess Champion. Later in his life, his US passport was revoked and Iceland granted him a citizenship. He died in Selfoss and his grave was a simple headstone there.
We saw glaciers and volcanoes along the way. We stopped at Skogafoss waterfall. It was a beautiful waterfall, but nothing like Gullfoss. We saw a lot of sheep and horses. I learned that the sheep just grazed in the fields until they got round up and brought to a huge warehouse and the owners just came to claim them by the tags on their ears.
Our next stop was what Thong said the reason we sat in the tour for 12 hours to see: the Reynisfjara Black Sand Beach with the rock cliffs and the sneaker waves. Tourists have been washed out to sea by the sneaker waves and we were warned repeatedly by the tour guides and by posted signs. The beach was amazing and the cliffs were a sight to behold.
We then drove on to Jokulsarlon Glacier Lagoon and got upclose and personal with the icebergs that broke off from the glacier: the guide on the lagoon boat tour let us handle a piece of ice from the glacier and chopped little pieces of the ice for us to taste (it looked like ice in the freezer and tasted like water! LOL). Then we went to the Diamond beach to see blocks of ice strewn all over the black sand by the ocean, looked just like diamond (big chunk of it!). The tour was so long that the tour guides changed in the middle of the tour. The new tour guide, Olga, was a hiking fan. She told us about taking a hiking tour of the glacier and how exhilirating it was to reach the summit and watch the sunrise. I’ll just take her word for it.
We saw the remains of a steel bridge twisted and torn up by a flood from a glacier outburst in 1996. The bridge was reconstructed but abandoned and not used right now due to the change in landscape caused by the glacier flood. Olga also told us about the change in the plants and trees caused by the flood and time. It was very interesting. Some of the guides were very knowledgeable and excited to tell us about their country, Olga was one of them and I was very glad to listen to her. Around 9 pm, we arrived at Seljalandsfoss waterfall. It was lighted by spotlight and some brave souls from our tour donned their rain gear to walk behind the waterfall to take pictures. We were perfectly happy in our heated minibus after a quick look at the waterfall. On the way back to Reykjavik, Olga put on an audiobook about Thor and Odin stories while we all slept until we arrived at our hotel.
I was glad we went to Iceland. It was amazing to see volcanoes, glaciers, waterfalls, tectonic plates, ocean, lava rock field, mountains all within a short distance. I have obtained 2 books about Iceland: Sagas of Icelanders, a compilation of stories about Iceland, and Independent People written by Halldor Laxness, the only author from Iceland to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1955.
