Day 4 (June 23, 2025)

Day four of our trip was the biggest day yet. We only had two major activities set for the day, but both of them took up a lot of time and showed us some amazing things. We started the day off by waking up in Klausturhof Guesthouse. I had to rig the curtains so they’d stay shut for the night, and was surprised in the morning by how well they’d held up.

One wild thing about Iceland in the summer, is that it doesn’t get dark at night like it does in the states. This is cool if you want to squeeze in a few more activities late in the day, but not exactly the best thing if you’re like Sofie and I and quite eepy by 9 pm. The problem is, it’s still as light outside at 9pm as it was at 9am. Even now as I’m writing this at 10pm, it’s as light as it was all day. A lot of people told me that, for this reason, a lot of the hotels have blackout curtains. I don’t know if we’ve booked some weird places for the trip, but not all of the curtains have been the blackout curtains I’ve been expecting. Altogether though, we’ve had pretty good sleep here in Iceland.

After a quick hotel breakfast at 7:30, we were on the road to our first destination of the day, Skaftafell. We were meeting at Skaftafell as our “basecamp” (it wasn’t actually that serious) for our glacier hike in the first part of the day. At Skaftafell, we geared up, with helmets, harnesses, an ice axe, and crampons, and hopped on a bus bound for Falljokull, a glacier in Vatnajökull National Park. Guided by the wonderful Vero, we climbed a good ways up the glacier, got some amazing photos, saw a lot of interesting crevasses, and learned some interesting facts about how glaciers work. My biggest takeaway is that glaciers move about a meter every day in total, but the foot of the glacier is actually receding while the other end of the glacier is accumulating, so the amount that the glacier appears to move is much less than it actually moves. I also learned that the glacier we were on today makes up about 8 to 10 percent of Iceland’s landmass, roughly 7,700 square kilometers. We of course didn’t even walk 1 percent of that glacier, but it was cool to stand on something so massive, even if I couldn’t really fathom how big it is.

We also made some friends on the hike! An older couple named Mike and Melissa were in our group, and they were so sweet. Mike is quite the photographer, and had a lot of great stuff to show. They had been doing the ring road in the opposite direction that we were, so we got a few tips for things we were planning to do later in our trip. We now follow each other on Instagram! They reminded me a bit of my parents, with both kids out of the house, they’re now enjoying seeing the world on their own terms. I hope to be like them when I get to that age.

After we returned from our glacier hike, we drove about 40 minutes up the road to our next big activity, lagoon kayaking. We took kayaks out on Jokulsarlon, a glacial lagoon. This was another instance where we met up with our guide, George, who was from Greece, and had to don some gear (more gear than glacier hiking!). We found ourselves looking much like the Michelin man, with waterproof pants and jacket, big rubber boots, and a chunky lifevest. But everyone was wearing that, so we all looked similarly goofy. We paddled around the lagoon for about an hour and a half, getting much closer to some of the icebergs in the lagoon than most people did. Another company was offering lagoon tours in these wild amphibious vehicles. Picture a boat on monster truck wheels, and you more or less can visualize what I’m talking about. I got a real kick out of watching these things drive off the road and into the water, thinking it must go against every human instinct of self-preservation to drive a land vehicle into the water. Sofie and I got some amazing pictures of the icebergs in the lagoon, but much like I’ve said the past couple days, it is really difficult to capture all we’re seeing in photos.

After the lagoon, we realized we were actually right next to Diamond Beach, another destination on our list, so we spent a few minutes there. This was my first black sand beach! I had never seen one before, but I’ve always been interested in getting to see one in person (mostly because of seeing them in Rogue One, but we don’t have to talk about that). It was kind of a wild experience, as there were just chunks of ice sitting on the beach. Sofie said it looked like someone had just dumped a giant cooler of ice on the beach, and I’d have to agree. It was really cool though.

After Diamond Beach, we had a long trek up the ring road to our next destination, Egilsstaðir, which was about 3.5 hours away from the lagoon. And that’s 3.5 hours if the ring road cooperates, which is definitely not a given.

I haven’t really discussed the ring road here, so I think it’s time I break the ice (lol) on that. If you’ve looked into Iceland at all, you may have heard of the ring road. It’s essentially a road that goes all the way around the island, staying close to the coasts for the most part (mainly because the middle of the island is a big glacier and a bunch of mountains). But I had assumed a road that went around the entire island would be kind of akin to a highway in the states, with multiple lanes, adequate guard rails, and things of that nature.

I was very wrong.

The ring road is much more like what we’re used to as rural roads in the states. It’s two lanes, one going one direction, and one going the other. That’s it. And honestly, that’s probably all it really needs to be. Iceland, though a popular tourist destination, is still pretty sparsely populated. We had stretches during our drive today where we didn’t see another car going either direction on the road for about half an hour. Similarly, we could go quite a long time without even seeing a building. Sometimes it was all just nature around us, which was simply amazing.

But like I said before, the ring road cooperating with you is not necessarily a given. I mentioned the sheep issues in yesterday’s post, and we had even more sheep encounters today. Sofie and I both tend to be pretty darn alert in the car, so we didn’t have any issues, but it is truly wild to be driving along at about 55 mph and have to slow down or even stop completely because a sheep happened to amble onto the road.

We also found that, in some rare occurences, the ring road is not necessarily the most direct route. For the last little bit of our trip to Egilsstaðir, we actually took a mountain road that Google Maps said would save us some time. The ring road would have gone around the mountains altogether, but you could take a road up and over the mountain to save a good amount of time, theoretically. We were exhausted, so we thought, “hey, how bad it can be?”

Well, I’ll tell you, calling that route a road is maybe not the best way to describe it. It was a gravel road for most of it. Furthermore, it had some really steep hills that our little car’s engine wasn’t exactly in love with, and we got to such a high elevation that we were in the clouds. Given, the clouds were pretty low today, but we were driving on a very foggy gravel road, with plenty of twists and turns, and incredibly low visibility.

So maybe on a good day and with a more equipped vehicle, that route would save you some time. But we had no choice today but to take it slow, and I’m not totally convinced the route we took was faster than the ring road. Lesson learned!

We finally arrived in Egilsstaðir, tired and hungry. We didn’t want to put much thought into finding a good restaurant, and we had heard that gas station food in Iceland was surprisingly good, so we opted to give it a shot.

But here’s the thing about Iceland food, you’re gonna have to lower your standards.

I mentioned in a previous post that we have not found the food here to be very good. That hasn’t changed! But I was surprised by how…not bad…my gas station hamburger was. It wasn’t great by any stretch of the imagination, but I’ve eaten worse food at gas stations in the states for sure.

Finally, we went to our hotel in Egilsstaðir, called Hotel Edda, where I’m currently writing this! It’s an odd building. Sofie noted that it looks like it used to be a school, and I’d have to agree. It’s just very oddly set up, and doesn’t make much sense as a hotel, but the curtains cover the windows well, so I’m not complaining.

All in all, today was our best day yet here in Iceland, full of experiences I’m not sure you could find anywhere else.