A trip around Iceland on the ring road – Part II
Total driving distance and time approximately 140 km / 1 h 42
The next morning – after being woken up by the hostel-owned chicken and roosters that had taken over the lawn surrounding the hostel – we aimed to get through to Vatnajökull National Park as fast as possible, determined to spend this night finally camping in Iceland as planned.
Aside from Kirkjugólf – a range of basalt columns that look like they were the remainders of a church floor but are actually created by no one other than nature herself – as well as the beautiful waterfalls of Stjórnarfoss and Systrafoss, there weren’t many stops on the way so we got to the Skaftafell campsite by mid-afternoon, quickly set up the tent and set out on our hike in the beautiful Skaftafell area of the National Park.
There are lots of hiking treks available in the National Park ranging from short hikes of just one or two kilometres to longer, day hikes of up to 20 kilometres. We opted for S3, a loop through meadows and flanked by two glaciers. The hike turned out to be a true testimonial to the notorious weather in Iceland: To begin with it was quite warm, so much so that I cursed myself for putting on two top layers and bringing an additional one plus a raincoat. But the steeper up we climbed on the 700 metre elevation gain over the hike, the worse the weather became.
From this hike, several diversions are possible, one of them being the climb to the highest peak in the area, Kristiansand. We met some hikers that had originally planned to go up there but then discarded this endeavour since a big cloud had come in and was hiding the views anyway.
We were fortunate enough that we only entered the cloud on the highest part of the hike and when we came back down, we still had an (albeit foggy) view of the glacier next to us, which was just breath-taking. We didn’t talk much anymore as we made our way through the mist and persistent rain, careful not to slip over the sharp rocks that covered the entire track.
Back on the campsite, we were really dying for a beer but in Iceland, regular-strength beer is only available in special shops, called “Vin Budin”. Unfortunately we were in the middle of nowhere but whilst the girls were showering, myself and Peter, a guy from the Czech Republic that camped next to us, drove to the nearby fuel station in the hope of finding some fuel of a different kind. The regular shops are allowed to sell light beer with around 2% alcohol content but even that was totally sold out. Fortunately Mona had brought a couple of bottles of lovely Riesling from home so we digested them with our campsite-pasta-with-tuna-dinner which was only made possible thanks to Peter: It turned out that I hadn’t bought the right gas canister for my stove so Peter lend us his stove instead and was treated to some of the good wine from home in exchange.
