The first stop we made was at Fjaðrárgljúfur canyon. We had to take a small gravel road filled with potholes for about a mile to get there but it was worth it! The canyon is 100m tall and 2 km wide. We hiked the trail up to the top of the canyon that had some very unique and amazing views of the sorounding landscape.
Our next stop was at a small little town with less than 150 residents called Kirkjubæjarklaustur (I promise I'm not making that up!). The town was right off of ring road, which is the main road re goes all the way around Iceland (basically where we're going on our trip). Anyway in Kirkjubæjarklaustur there was another hike (about 4 miles) up to another waterfall, which, if you haven't realized yet, there a ton of in Iceland. The waterfall was fed by a large lake. The views from the top were amazing!
After the hike we drove another 40 minutes or so to the Skaftafell national park. The Skaftafell park is a part of the Vantajokull glacier which is the 3rd largest glacier in the world. The park itself had even more hiking. The first hike we did was to a really unique waterfall called Svartifoss. The waterfall was surrounded by lots of basalt rock formations which made it look really amazing.
After hiking to the waterfall we continued up the mountain. The hike had great views of the glacier. Jake and max ended up getting tired so they stayed back and rested while I continued to hike. I was determined to make it to Kristínartindar, the peak of the mountain. The hike up was brutal and very steep! The rocks I was climbing to get to the top were all very loose and would fall as I moved. I'm pretty sure at this point I wasn't on any sort of trail but I could see the top so I just headed directly towards it. I didn't get quite to the top since it got too steep to climb by hand without risking falling, but I did get really high up in the ridge and the view was very rewarding. I was exhausted but of course I had to snap a quick selfie.
I stayed on the ridge for a few minutes and then started to make my way back down to meet back up with jake and max. In total the hike up took about 3.5 hours to hike up and 1.5 to hike back down.
In total today we hiked over 20 miles! Needless to say we were all exhausted! We headed to our hotel in the small town of Hoff. Our hotel had a hot tub and Suana which was perfect after our long day of hiking! Our room was actually a small little cottage, it was pretty nice. We headed to a nearby town for dinner. It was a buffet and actually wasn't too pricey. I had lamb and potatoes. Afterwards we headed back to the hotel to sleep.
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