Our plans for Monday called for a daylong drive along the spectacular south coast. I took this tour on my last trip and felt that there was more along the route that I wanted to see this time. Even though the weather forecast confirmed this, I could know without looking that it would be a rainy day. The south coast in summer is like that.
What was amazing was that after driving through one heavy shower and putting up with some lighter ones at are first stop, the weather turned beautiful and sunny, albeit rather windy and cold. Our stops included two spectacular waterfalls, a glacier, a puffin-laden sea cliff, and a lot of walking. Oh yeah. A lot of driving, too. About six hours’ worth, with our turn-around point being Vik, 104 miles distant.
The south coast ranks as Iceland’s second most popular tour and the western half can be covered in a day if you don’t mind missing out on Vatnajökull, the country’s largest glacier. The first third of the trip south takes you along the last section of the Golden Circle tour. That can’t be helped. Paved highways are a comparatively recent thing in Iceland.
There are several can’t-miss sights along the route. I outlined our drive in Rick Steves Iceland the evening before to help us decide on how to use our time. (Note: I don’t get any commissions or anything. I just like the guy.)
Goin’ Down
The drive starts feeling like a coast after about two hours when snow and glacier-covered mountains start rising to the north and you can begin to see waterfalls streaming down from the crests. If you look to the south as you’re entering Solheimassandur, and the rain or fog isn’t too thick, you can see the fairly well-preserved wreck of a C-117 (Navy DC-3) to the south of the highway. If you’re willing to take a two-mile hike, you can walk right up to it from a parking lot right off the highway. (A lot of people do, for some reason.)
The crash, not a rare occurrence for US military planes in the island’s terrible weather, was actually somewhat of a miracle. The young pilot, quite new to flying that kind of plane, lost both engines to ice over the mountains to the west. He decided that landing in the sea was a better option than hitting a glacier head-on, so he turned south. As they were preparing for a water landing, the pilot noticed that there was the moon-like terrain of a lava bed just below him. The plane would never fly again, but the pilot and all the passengers walked, rather than swimmed away unharmed.
Grand Falls and Glaciers
Next, you’ll be coming up on Skógafloss, the first essential stop on the trail. (Turn left at Skógavegir—there are plenty of signs.) You can walk under the falls (wet), take a trail to the top (long and steep) and continue upriver to a series of smaller falls.
Next up is the Sólheimajökull Glacier. It is one of the best places in Iceland to get up close and personal with one of these slowly retreating giants. The visitor’s parking lot just off Rte. 221 to the north was, at one time, conveniently located. Now you have to walk around a half mile to get to a viewing area. Don’t expect to see the pristine white shelfs you’d see in a documentary about Antarctica. Keep in mind that there has been a lot of black, glacier-melting volcanic ash floating around southern Iceland over the centuries. There’s an on-site agency that provides professionally guided, safely equipped tours to climb on the glaciers and a lot of signs warning you not to if you aren’t an expert at it yourself. Glaciers are, after all, just a lot of ice and rock.
Puffin Along the Beach
Our final stop was to enjoy spectacular views of the south coast beaches, cliffs, and puffins (and other seabirds) from the Dyhólaey Promontory. There are two parking lots, upper and lower, that offer vastly different and equally spectacular views. On my second trip here, where I was driving, I couldn’t find the lower parking lot, which offered, I think a lot more spectacular views. (Tired out from a day’s driving, I honestly didn’t try that hard.) However, Mapcarta makes it clear how to get there. It’s the one near Dyrhólaey.
Just down the road, the small coastal town of Vik is a great place to stop to eat or stay over if you’re planning to continue on the Ring Road. Just off Hwy. 1 is a little shopping complex with a great, casual restaurant. Souvenir shoppers should also note that there is a big Icewear outlet store and a supermarket where you can get all kinds of Icelandic chocolate (great to bring back to friends) for about half the price you’d pay in Reykjavik.
It’s a long drive back from Vik, but at least you won’t have to worry about driving in the dark