Two waterfalls, a beach, a siesta and a glacier

After leaving our friend at the airport at half past five, we started driving towards Skaftafell National Park, where we should sleep that night. Our drive was around 500 kilometres so it was going to take us the whole day to arrive there. I decided to drive from the airport, with the help of some coffee and a CD with heavy rock music, while my friend was having some sweet dreams...

After two or three hours, we arrived to a place with a very nice waterfall, which we mistook by Skogarfoss, but which, according to our map, was Gljüfurärfoss. The waterfall, anyway, was beautiful and when we walked a bit closer to it, we started to feel all the water falling over us, like rain. It was a nice stop after two hours driving, although it was not Skogarfoss.

Skogarfoss was waiting for us approximately thirty minutes later. It is probably the most beautiful waterfall in Iceland, as it seems to be taken from a fairy tale. There is a campsite close to it and it must be an amazing experience to sleep under the waterfall (we preferred, though, to sleep on a bed). If you climb on top, you will be able to see the rainbow around it and if you walk further, you will discover a number of smaller waterfalls in the same river, in a breathtaking landscape.

The next stop in our drive was Vik, a town with a remarkable beach. The views from there are very nice, with the famous cliffs in the background. The sand is dark but it is very clean. The only problem this beach has is the water temperature: I just walked two steps into the Northern Atlantic and all I can say is that it was freezing cold, it was so cold that it hurt like a million stings. But the walk on the sand and the landscape was worth our stop, it was my first visit in summer to the beach (the other one was in Durban, South Africa).
We still had a long way to our destination, so we started driving again... After a short lunch break, we suddenly felt the need of having a siesta. We were only an hour away from our hostel, but that hour was like a century: we were very tired, it was difficult for the driver to concentrate in the road and we hardly spoke. Finally, we arrived at our hostel, took the keys of our room and ran for a siesta, which initially was scheduled to last one hour but that was subsequently extended until two hours. When you wake up at four in the morning and drive for seven hours, all you can think about is having a siesta, believe me.

In the evening, once we were refreshed again, we decided to make a short walk into Skaftafell National Park, and we went to a glacier: Skaftafellsjökull. We were hardly alone in that path, but for a couple of Germans, which were cycling around Iceland. Then, we witnessed how the girl told the boy it was dangerous for her to walk further because she was wearing flat shoes and how the boy just went on, without taking care of her girlfriend (je, je, je, these are the gossipoing advantages of speaking German). Even Torrente would not dare to do so... Going back to the glacier, the fact that it was dirty with dust surprised us, as we were expecting pure white ice and we found something brown or even black. By the way, it was like being in a huge fridge there: we took our gloves, our scarf, our hut,...The next day was also devoted to Skaftafell National Park and to the visit of a second glacier.