Iceland VI: A girl’s best friends

‘Diamond beach’ wasn’t very high up on my priorities of things to see in Iceland.

But it turns out that I really really like diamonds:

Let’s begin.

It’s worth mentioning that we woke up to a landscape that can only be described as ‘sublime’….

and then popped onto the bus to travel to something ‘otherworldly’….

Behold the stretching expans of moss carpets- 40-60cm thick, clinging on to bubbly lava flow.

I’m not sure why he chose to do that face.

After marvelling at the moss, we headed back on the road to Kirkjubaejarklaustur.

A small village (only a couple of hundred inhabitants), which seems to mostly be famous because of its name.

Which, despite being incredibly long, is actually just a compound description that adds ‘church’ to ‘farm’ and ‘convent’ to give you a rough idea of what has been going on in the area.

In addition to the church-farm-kloister, the area was also quite famous (according to our guide) for a dog who liked to leap for stones.

And of course, it would not be Iceland, without another Foss.

There was a bit more driving, and a bit more storytelling.

As we drove along the ring road, our guide told us about the Laki fissure, and how it opened up in June of 1783 and subsequently poured out an estimated 42 billion tonnes of lava, as well as clouds of sulfur dioxide and deadly hydrofluoric acid.

The acid burned through the bones of the livestock, then the people, and the substances contaminated the soil. In total it’s estimated that on Iceland alone, 50% of livestock died and resulting famines from crop destruction led to death of 1/4 to 1/5 of the population.

Further afield, the sulfur dioxide that spewed its way across the Northern Hemispheres led to crop failures in Europe and droughts in Asia and Africa.

Pali, our guide, suggested that the long term climate and subsequent crop events, may even link to major political overhauls, like the French Revolution, which began 5 years later.

While we didn’t pass the fissure itself, our next stop was another monument to the massive might of nature.

The Skeiðará Bridge used to carry drivers across the Skeiðarár Sandur, a broad patch of sand mottled with creeks of run-off from the Skeiðarárjökull glacier inland.

But eruption of the volcano Vatnajökull in 1996 melted parts of the glacier, and massive volumes of flood waters, carrying house-sized icebergs crashed their way into the bridge.

So here’s how it looks now:

We spent a bit of time playing on and around the bridge-sculpture, and the more daring of us slid down the very abruptly-ending slide it made.

Of course, there were also some shots of the very-cool-scenery to take:

I call this our ‘Yogurt Sales’ Pose.

Slightly more natural?:

And then, we got back in the van.

The next stop of the day was one that the people in our tour bus were clearly very excited about, but which I had read nothing about and was not super fussed by based on the name alone.

Diamond Beach

Sounds fine.

But

It.