Ice and Water

A short drive back to Vik to become a real tourist and join a tour on a souped up bus with balloon tyres to the terminal face of the Myrdalsjokull. Jokull means glacier for future reference.

Talking about Vik, apparently it rains here about 300 days of the year. And more generally the government owned bank, bottleshop and police station are all in the same building. Convenient.

This glacier is fairly stable at its face, so it’s possible to clamber into and through some of the tunnels left by meltwater. The ice is sculpted into some fantastical shapes and scallops by the action of wind and water.

Then onto another waterfall, Seljalandsfoss. You can actually walk behind this one and get quite wet if the wind blows in the right direction.

On the way back to today’s base we passed a couple of hydro powerstations. This produces about 73%of the nation’s power, with the remaining from geothermal sources and a bit from wind. Iceland has been able to attract industry due to the low cost green power available. Impressive.

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