Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon — CESAR MENDEZ

The sound of stones hitting my van woke me up, at first there were a few, then the frequency was rapidly increasing until it sounded like rain, but it was no rain, it was hailing hard, it was dark and I was a little bit confused of where I was, it took me a minute to remember that I was in Iceland, I open the shades and look outside, I’m able to see a soft blue light on the distance through a small part of the windshield that was yet not covered by the hail, it was 2:30 in the morning, it was almost sunrise time, but with the weather like this I was sure that there wasn’t going to be any.

I had the alarm set on my phone for 2:50 am, it was almost time, so I take my phone and see that even if it was connected to the power, it wasn’t charging, in fact, it was draining charge, I was confused, why is this happening? I know that batteries do not perform well in freezing temperatures, but this was the first time I saw the effect with my own eyes, so to fix the problem I put the phone inside my sleeping bag between my clothes, it worked, maintaining the phone as warm as I could it solved the problem.

After the phone incident I go back to sleep, there was zero chance that I would venture with that kind of weather conditions.

A few hours passed, I decided to get going, it was 9:30 in the morning, I cleaned my van and prepared all my equipment and then had some breakfast, there was a small shopping mall in Vik, it had clean restrooms, a cafeteria, a super market and a huge store of wool clothes made in Iceland. I stopped over at the mall to buy new gloves and a hat, the cold was so brutal on me for the past two days that I decided to prepare myself for the cold before adventuring deeper into Iceland. After I had something to eat at the cafeteria I hit the road again.

This time I didn’t know what I was going to do, I just knew that I was on my way to Höfn, but I didn’t know if I was going to sleep there, to watch the sunset there, or to be there the day after tomorrow. There were so many places to visit and explore between Vik and Höfn that again I didn’t have a specific plan.

So, with no plan in mind, I started driving, I was keeping an eye to my google maps pointers, taking decisions on the go as I was passing through these places. The scenery of this road was by far my favorite of all the trip, on your left there were beautiful mountains, canyons and glaciers, on your right the south coast sea and the black sand desert. I drove so many gorgeous places before, like the Dolomites in Italy or the around Yangshuo in China, but this Icelandic road is beyond words, something that you must try for yourself.

When I rented the guy at the car rental gave me a tip of advice, it said, “it is very likely that you would want to park beside the road to take some photos, but we strongly advice you not to do that, the chances that you get stuck are very high, and if you get stuck and the toll truck needs to take you out, they will charge an estimate of 3 dollars for kilometer that it needs to get to you and to wherever needs to take you, besides the fact that driving off road is highly illegal in Iceland.”

I’m that kind of person that don’t feel comfortable breaking any rules, big, small, doesn’t matter, no rule breaking on my book, so, I stayed always on the road and never stopped unless there was some sort of parking lot; saying this, there was this part of the road filled with round volcanic rocks covered with moss, kilometers and kilometers of it, so, at first I wasn’t going to stop because of the no breaking rules thing, but after a while I see some small roads going into the country, the road looks ok, no 4x4 needed, so I went through and stopped to get some snapshots. After a couple of stops at a different roads and I couldn’t find a nice composition until I spotted on the left side the same rocks but with the highlands mountains in the background, I though to myself, that’s it, the thing is, is that there was no roads on the left side to park because it was private land, so I followed the fence until I saw a small gate entrance (closed), the road was made for one car only, being a ford entrance there was a couple of meters drop on each side; after I finish taking photos I made one stupid mistake, because of safety I didn’t want to go back to the main road driving backwards, so, I tried to make a 180 degree u turn being very careful not go over the edge, I was doing small turns back and forward until I went too far and the van started to slip backwards, so immediately pushed the breaks when I knew that pumping the gas wasn’t going to save me from falling.

Before I go on, let me tell you a little bit about my experience driving off road 4x4 back in my home country, when I was little, my dad taught me how to drive, he taught me in a dodge 4x4 pickup truck, why? because that’s what we’ve got and we use it a lot for going out camping out in the mountains where we needed 4x4 trucks to get there, plus also I learned to drive a trailer, so plenty of experience there.

Going back to the story, I was on reverse when one of the tires went over the edge and had no traction to move, as the van started to slide over I knew that there was nothing I could do to pull me back out, so, I pushed the breaks before it was too late. I turn off the engine, go out of the van to evaluate the situation, literally the back of the van was tipping down, one of the train tires was on the air, the chassis is not touching the ground yet, so, my diagnose is that I could still get out by myself if I do things right; the first thing I did was to put some big rocks behind the tree tires that were touching ground to avoid slipping farther down on my next attempt, and for the tire not touching ground I dug a small hole under the tire, big enough to fit some rock underneath and make some traction ground to get me out, so picked the roughest volcanic rocks that I could find, even as the other tires were touching ground I was slipping off a gravel road, the possibility of not having enough traction were high. Once I knew that the work done was the best that I could possibly do with the tools that I had, I decided to give it a try.

Manual break and foot break, I start the engine, first high gear, pumped the gas and accelerate, manual break off, and off I went, Woooohooo! I manage to get out of a tricky situation in the middle of nowhere with no damage done, I was very lucky, even if lucky had little to do here, thankfully I had the experience to get me out of a situation like this, but for further experiences, I rather be more careful, next time I might not be so fortunate.

After the incident I stopped several more times by the road, with the exception that this time I didn’t took a narrow, mud or gravel road that could get me into trouble again.

Here are some of the shots from the road.

Back on the road I aim directly to the Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon, on my way I decided to stop in one of the glaciers, I wanted to stretch my legs and walk a little, so I took the deviation from the ring road into a gravel road for 3 or 5 kilometers, the stop over was fun, the lagoon where this glacier is melting has a brownish color but either way was impressive how massive the glacier is. After scouting the place and few pictures I went back on the road.

It was around 3 pm, and I knew that Svartifoss was close from this glacier, so I went back a few kilometers to pay a visit to this waterfall. The thing about this waterfall is that you must hike through the mountains to get there, if I remember well and from my trustee Fenix 5, my hike was around 40 minutes for 3 kilometers hike. The scenery was beautiful, and the exercise did me well as I was driving for a little bit over three hours. When I parked the van, the parking lot was full, I was afraid to find hundreds of people around the waterfall, but later I learned that this was also the starting point to many tours, like hiking to glacier and other waterfalls.

When I started the hike, the stormy clouds were closing in, I thought that maybe it could rain during the hike, either way, that doesn’t bother me as I was prepared for it, and this means that the crowds were drove off. I arrived at the waterfall and didn’t rain, but still, there were just a few tourists, as I am preparing my gear to take the photograph that’s when the rain started, the only annoying thing is that I had to clean all my filters again for taking the picture. After the rain came a little bit of hail and that empty the place and left it all to myself, so, I just took cover and waited. Not even 10 minutes passed when the sun peaked through again. I took a couple different compositions and then I packed everything up and headed back to the van, I still have another hour drive to the Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon.

By the time I was back to the van, it was 6 pm, sunset was to happen around 10 pm, so still enough time to get to the lagoon, scout and shoot.

This time I drove directly from Svartifoss all the way up to the Glacier Lagoon. Just a couple kilometers before the lagoon, I came across a parking lot, and because I didn’t know what was behind the hill I stopped to have a look, to my surprise I was already on the lagoon, so I went down and started practicing with a small iceberg that was near the shore. I was very excited, it was my first time to see and touch an iceberg, what I didn’t know, was the scenery that was waiting for me just ahead. I continue my way to the lagoon, you’ll know that you arrived after you pass a big white bridge, on your right you see the Diamond Beach and to your right the Glacier Lagoon; oh my God! Huge icebergs were floating down towards the ocean, it was just amazing to see.

My first stop was the Diamond Beach on the right side, just like the day before, the winds were strong and cold, it was very hard just to stand there completely exposed to mother nature. For my photo I needed to walk a little towards east to get away from the crowds where the sand wasn’t stepped on. Once I found a good spot where the sand was fresh and pristine I started to look for my composition. The icebergs washing up in the shore were a mess, ice everywhere you look, I had a hard time to find a simple composition in all this chaos, besides, the weather wasn’t cooperating, the rain came again, and then some hail. I needed to be aware of the waves also, even if this beach felt less threatening than the one in Vik, the waves were very aggressive.

I spend some 30 or 45 minutes on the beach shooting, I came with a couple of decent photos but nothing to brag about, shooting here is more difficult than you think.

By 8 pm I crossed to the other side of the road towards north where the Glacier Lagoon is, I walked around the shore, same as the beach, trying to find something out of the chaos, also here it was very difficult. The weather was mixed, some rain, and some low clouds were in the scene, the sun peaked and then hide again, at first it looked promising for a nice sunset, but as the hours passed by, no sunset happened. I spend two hours shooting until the blue hour around 11 pm, then the fatigue hit me, I was tired, after the long day of driving, getting the van stuck, hiking through the hills, etc. I was done for the day.

Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon from the top of a hill.

At this point I didn’t know where I was going to sleep, so I got into the van and fixed a sandwich for dinner, while I was having dinner I backed up all the photos and rest a bit. After the sandwich I felt a bit rested, Höfn was only at 80 kilometers, and because I wanted to be at Stokksnes for sunrise, it was better to sleep at Höfn campsite.

I drove all the way to Höfn in the middle of the night, I was the only one on the road, the feeling of having Iceland all for myself was not very common. The scenery from Jökulsárlón to Höfn was beautiful, the road takes you around the highlands and the Glacier on top of the mountains, it was 1 o’clock in the morning and still there was blue hue on the landscape, it never got dark, a peaceful filling, it relaxes me, it makes me remember how lucky I was for this experience.