aka ‘basalt baes’*


(*Yes, I feel shame about that one).

Let’s begin!
After the glacier….
… we hoped back on the bus and travelled a bit towards Dyrhólaey, which is apparently a promontory, and now I learned a new word.
noun. . a high point of land or rock projecting into the sea or other water beyond the line of coast;
Ok then.
The main point of promontoring, was to look at the very stunning view.

This is almost definitely a painting, no?
I mean, apart from the tyre tracts maybe.
I have not edited this shot to make it more painting like. But if I saw this in a gallery I’d be like ‘ok, nice, but a bit too impressionist maybe?”

Here’s the zoom-out, complete with glaciers!

And now with bonus and all-too-lifelike Sameer.
In case that’s to your taste.

And with us both!
(but not with very much view).


Dyrhólaey is a famous stop-off point because of the views, and also because you can often see Puffins in these there lands.
As it turns out, October is very much not Puffin season. Largely, I suspect, because all the puffins have been blown into the sea by the insanely cold and gusty winds.


Apparently, Dyrhólaey means ‘the hill island with the door hole’.
See if you can guess why that is:




I think we spent a bit more time running around the lookout than the rest of our group, but even our warmest wrappings weren’t enough to fight off the wind, so soon enough we were also drawn back to the warmth and windlessness of the bus.




In any case, our next stop was only a very short drive away, and also happened to be one of the tour stops I was the most excited by.

Reynisfjara; a black sand beach most famous for its dramatic basalt columns.
And second most famous for its incredibly dangerous beach with sneaky sneaker waves.


Our guide spent quite some time explaining that tourists died every year on the beach, so even ‘though the specially designed warning sign was only registering at an ‘amber light’ we were a little cautious about spending too much time too close to the sea.






In any case, my main interest was the rocks; namely, the incredibly impressive hexagonal columns that formed from cooling lava.

We joined the other tourists, and posed a bit with the columns:


^(Some of us even tried to blend in)



Sameer really wanted to go along the beach slightly to a kind of cave, which worried me slightly (SNEAKER WAVES!)…..


.. but it turned out that the cave was VERY VERY cool.





I kind of loved that you could see such perfect hexagonal tubes in some sections, and from some distances away, but further back you could see the tangled chaos of flow and crack:




If any of you happen to NOT like hexagons, there was also a nice variety of pointy bits of rock, as well as book like bits, wood like bit and marble-y bits:






^It’s unclear why I am pulling that face, but presumably Sameer was being annoying while photographing me.

After a lot of gawking and stroking and photographing, we headed back down the beach to each some overpriced soup in a nearby cafe.




Our final stop of the day was a small village called Vík í Mýrdal which was very uneventful and mostly just involved us buying some crackers.
That evening, we stayed in a kind of homestead that seems to have been built/run by our tour company. There was a fairly delicious dinner of soup and some rest…

And then, we waited for the sky to darken, and the lights to appear.
dot. dot. dot.
October 6th, 2024