7 - Road trip Part 2

Dear readers,

Last weekend I made an amazing roadtrip with my friends Melissa, Barbara, Jarod and Alejandro. In chapter 6 you can read what we did on Saturday and here I will write what our road trip was like on Sunday.

We started off meeting quite early in the morning. At 07.30 we met up at the car. We wanted to make an early start so we could make most of the day and perhaps even see the sun rise. Sadly, we got some wrong information on where we could see the sunrise, so we ended up not seeing the sunrise but the sunset, which I will go into further detail at the end of this chapter.

We had quite a long drive ahead of us. We decided to drive to the furthest point first and then make our way back to Reykjavík. It was a 2.5 hours drive to the first stop, which was Reynisfjara beach. We thought it was going to be sunny today but the whole drive there it

was snowing and cloudy, which wasn't a problem because we knew that the Icelandic weather is unpredictable and it can change into exactly the opposite in just a matter of minutes. With good hopes we carried on driving and when we arrived at the beach, which is also know as 'the black beach', it was still pretty windy. We wrapped ourselves up warm and made our way to the sea. The waves were huge! I think about 4 meters high. We made sure we kept a safe distance from the sea as there were many signs telling you about the dangers of this place (being swept away by these enormous waves). A number of fatal accidents have occurred at Reynisfjara, the last of which occurred in January 2017.

The beach was nice, not as spectacular as all the tourist attraction flyers make you think but it is definitely worth a visit. Just off the shoreline, you can see rocky sea stacks, they look like square rocks stacked on top of eachother. I had never seen this kind of rock formation and I thought it looked rather spectacular. According to local Icelandic folklore, these large basalt columns were once trolls trying to pull ships from the ocean to shore. However, these trolls were dim and went out too late in the night; dawn broke on the horizon, turning the trolls into solid stone. You might also recognize

this place from Season 7 of the Game of Thrones series; you can spot them in a few scenes shot ‘North of the Wall’.

Even though we were pretty careful looking at the waves as they came to and from us, we did get soaked once: We thought the waves were approaching us just as before, but suddenly a much larger wave encountered us and we didn't have enough time to run away. This resulted in 3 of us being absolutely soaked, from top to bottom... After this little incident we decided to warm up in a café. Two of my friends spent about 20 minutes in the bathroom drying their clothes and shoes in the handdryer, which was rather funny.

After we were all warmed up and some of us put plastic (sandwich) bags around our feet against the wet shoes, we moved on to the next stop, which was a waterfall. I have learned that there are around

10,000 plus waterfalls in Iceland, so of course today we also had to visit some. Iceland's climate and location is suited very well for waterfalls as there are quite a lot of rain showers and snowfall, combined with the multitude of glaciers that melt in summer.

First, went to an easily approachable waterfall called 'Skógafoss'. You can park your car in the carpark and then this 60 meter high and 25 meters wide waterfall is already clearly visible. Luckily there weren't many tourists when we arrived. Probably because it isn't really the travel season right now. The waterfall was beautiful and you could also walk up a lot of stairs to look at the waterfall from above. While standing here, we had a beautiful view of the surroundings of this

place. After taking some pictures we carried on walking along the path, which was right beside the waterfall. This was really nice as you can follow the water all the way up the mountain, while encountering many more waterfalls.

After visiting Skógafoss, we went to one of the highlights of the day for me. It was the most spectacular waterfall which I have seen so far, not far from the last one. When we arrived here, the sun came out and the weather was just amazing. The sun shined onto the waterfal creating beautiful rainbows. It felt so magical to be here.

After looking at the waterfall from the front, we decided to walk behind it, because that was also possible at this waterfall! I had never experienced anything like this and it just felt magical. I am not going to write the name of this waterfall in this blog, as we promised eachother to keep this one secret so it won't get crowded by tourist, but if you come and visit me or send me a message (or a postcard ;)), I will tell you. I still think about this waterfall a lot as it just felt so nice to be there with these lovely people. We took quite a few group photos here, and after we spent about an hour at this place, it was time to move on. We all just couldn't stop talking about how amazing this site was and how glad we were to have experienced it in such great weather. We felt so lucky!

As it was such great weather, we started to walk to the DC Plane Wreck, located near the Solheimafjara beach. We weren't going to go here as it is quite a far walk to the plane wreck, about 1 hour, but we had some time to spare and we thought it would be best to go now while the weather was good. It was still on my to-do list, so I was glad we went there. The walk was indeed pretty long but we saw the sunset at the horizon, which made it all worthwhile. Also, the clouds turned pink due to the sunset, which looked beautiful and the mountains surrounding this site were also stunning. When we arrived at the plane wreck, we took some pictures of us standing on top of it. Fun fact, Justin Bieber has some shots of him skateboarding on top of this plane in the video clip of his song 'I'll Show You'. We were just wondering how in the world that would be possible but he must have people working for him, making it feasible. Also, later I heard he got in trouble with the Icelandic government for rolling around on the

moss... There has even been made a website on '5 reasons not to behave like Justin Bieber in Iceland'.

Enough about Justin Bieber, I am not even a great fan of him and I have already spent 4 sentences on him which is more than enough, if you ask me. The weather was still great and the sky looked beautiful so we decided to walk a little further, towards the beach. I am really glad we did this because once again the sight was stunning! I feel like I am turning into an Icelandic Guru, by telling everyone around me how beautiful this place is. But at least it's like this and I'm really enjoying myself.

Last but definitely not least we decided to have dinner at a restaurant nearby, and after that, see if we could spot the Northern Lights. This was a great succes: at around 9 o' clock we drove to a good spot to view the Northern Lights, and we managed to see them! This was mainly possible because we met a lovely couple from Singapore, who came to the same spot as us and they brought a really good camera. The husband was a photographer as a profession and took some amazing pictures of us with the lights in the background. To be honest, the lights look stronger on the photo than we could see them, but still, we were all really glad to have finally seen this phenomenon!

I will definitely remember this trip for the rest of my life as it was so

great and I want to thank my German friend Melissa once again for planning this wonderful trip! I already look forward to the new adventures and more road trips in this amazing country!

Love,

Camille