A Travel, Photography and Points Blog
The red-roofed church in Vik is one of the more iconic buildings in Vik. After Dyrhólaey, we drove to the town of Vik to visit this church. We parked at the empty carpark and took the short walk up a hill to get to this vantage point. From here we could see the church and the streets and houses of Vik in the foreground. While in the background the sky was vibrant in the late afternoon light.
Dyrholaey, is located not far from the town of Vik. The drive up to the cliff carpark is a little bit windy and narrow, especially when you have two cars trying to pass each other. When you get to the top, you do get a pretty good view of Dyrholaey Arch and the expansive black sand beaches. As we arrived in the area late in the afternoon, the light was great for photography (even better in Vik, more on that in future blog posts). The Dyrholaey lighthouse is a century old building, impressive and stoic. It has the staple Icelandic lighthouse architecture.
This is my favourite shot of the (in)famous Icelandic plane wreck. The plane is an abandoned US Navy DC plane which crash landed back in 1973 on the black beach at Sólheimasandur. It was one of the cooler places we visited in Iceland. The walk to the wreckage is around 45 minutes to an hour. Make sure you have a few hours to visit the plane wreck. The scenery that greats you on this walk is the barren black land that seems to span to infinity. In the far distance to the side you can see some mountains. When we were there, there were plenty of tourist climbing and posing on top of the wreckage.
In my previous blog post I mentioned the infamous volcano Eyjafjallajokull. We actually drove past it on our way to the next waterfall, Skogafoss. There was even a spot for cars to turn into and park, and a sign describing the volcano. You can see the giant volcano completedly capped with ice. The 2010 volcano eruption stopped the world.
Seljalandsfoss is one of the most iconic and frequently visited waterfalls in Iceland. The waterfall is fed from the infamous glacier capped Eyjafjallajokull volcano. I say infamous because its the volcano that erupted several years ago, stalled flights across the world and put Iceland on the map! One of the unique experiences at Seljalandsfoss is being able to walk behind the giant waterfall. And be completely drenched from the waterfall spray since you’re so close to the falls. The walk behind the falls can be challenging and slippery so you just have to make sure you’re well covered and have good hiking shoes. The falls is around 2 hours drive from Reykjavik so it’s an easy drive out. There are a load of very iconic photos of this waterfall taken by a heap of famous photographers. This is my take and experience of the falls, tourists and all.