August 15: Landmannalaugar

We were up early again today and headed out by 5:00 am back to Jokulsarlon to see if we could move my glacier kayaking trip to an earlier time.  Unfortunately, the office didn’t open until about 9:00 am and we were greeted with bad news about earlier trips.  We ended up selling my 17:00 ticket to Soowan.  

Our first stop of the day was at Skaftafell where we did a short 45 minute trek to an interesting waterfall with basalt columns similar to Studiagil. The remainder of the day was spent traveling to Landmannalaugar (Rainbow Mountain).  We drove on a back road that required a 4x4 vehicle to manage the rough terrain and small streams.  We must have gone through about 10 of these waterbeds.  We had no problem passing through each of them except for the last one, which was right before our campsite.  The trip was enjoyable for both the driving experience and the beautiful scenery with ever changing terrain.  We passed by mountains with varied colors including green, volcanic black, and slate gray.  We drove by glaciers, black sand beaches and moss covered humps.  Every few minutes we encountered new, amazing terrain.

When we arrived at our campsite, we were happy to find out that they had natural hot spring pools.  We quickly made our way there and found it mobbed with tourists who were enjoying their favorite libation and soothing smoke.  We met two guides from the Czech Republic who we spoke with about their trip and even discovered a place (Thakgil)  that Ashley hasn’t been to yet.