And I thought the photo album I posted from yesterday would have the most pictures. Looks like today beat it!

We have got to be the luckiest tourists that ever toured Iceland. Today we hit a bunch of near snags, but bypassed them all. I will start at the beginning. (duh)

We woke up to mostly darkness (again) I was able to get a photo of our ocean view room before we left as the light came out. I posted that. But we couldn't see that at night, and as you can see in the photo, it was very cloudy and rainy. When we went down to breakfast, one of the people in our group said the Glacier Walk we were supposed to partake in this morning did not look promising.

So we finished breakfast, and luckily found out the hike would go on as planned. This was an additional expense, but was totally worth it. The rain had cleared up just a little, and boarded another SuperJeep to go to a no-so-crowded area to start our Glacier Hike. This was on Vatnajokull, Europe's largest ice cap. This is a popular thing for tourists to do, however our guide and planned tour took us to a different area far from where the bulk of tourists go.

The weather in Iceland can change in an instant. It was raining early in the morning, the hike was almost cancelled. Then it stopped, so the hike was on. Then as we were gearing up, the winds and rain came in full force yet again, however we trudged on. I could have sworn it was hail, but apparently it was just the rain being blown really hard that it felt like that.

It was about a 15 minute hike the the glacier's edge. There we put on our crampons - little spikey attachments that go on the bottom of our boots, that allowed us to stomp on the ice and not slip. We were also wearing harnesses, and were given an ice axe. I asked what the harnesses were for, like would we be rapelling down some cliff or something. The guide said no, it was in case we fell through a crevice, that way they could pull us out. Well, that sparked a lot fo confidence. But, spoiler alert, nobody fell through a crack, we all survived the hike.

Learning to walk on the crampons was quite the challenge. You had to walk wide as to not hit your leg or cut your other foot. You also had to stomp down hard to dig into the ice with the spikes. It was like you were a cowboy doing the strut after getting off your horse. It was rather comical seeing everybody walk with these on.

Our guide was awesome, told us the history of the glacier, informed us that global warming is indeed a thing as Icelanders can see the effect of it daily. Also showed us some cool running water, ice cave formations, and other cool natural occurances on the glacier.

As the wind and rain were picking up, we only spent about an hour or so on the glacier, then headed back. And let me tell you, the walk back was terrible. First of all my expensive ass "water resistant" pants I bought from REI - not so water resistant when the rain is coming at you in full force. We got SOAKED through every single layer we had on. Which of course makes it heavier and harder to walk. The shady bridge we had to cross to get to the glacier was even more shady on the way back as the water level rose even more than in the photo I posted. However, finally we made it back to the SuperJeep alive, safe, well, but drenched to the bone.

I was pretty shivery, and Jaime was soaked as well, but we were able to make a pit stop and change into some dry clothes. We felt awesome after that.

Our tour guide, Karl said he was super excited because if not everybody wants to participate in the hike, he has to stay back with the ones who opt out, but luckily all 8 of us opted in, so he got to join as well. he said it was the first time he got to do that, so thanked us for it. There was one of the ladies, who was a little older, she was retired, who almost opted out, she said she couldn't make it once we got to the glacier's edge, but we all encouraged her, and she made it through, and was happy she did.

We were heading to the town of Vik to a Black Sand Beach, which can close down if the weather is bad. On the way we stopped at a viewing point to see some cool lava rock formations, and then continued on our way.

So remember how I said we were lucky? Well it was raining a good portion of the day. Right as we got to Reynisfjara, the Black Sand Beach, it let up. We were there a pretty cool time of day to allow for awesome lighting with the photos, and also it was not that crowded.

The sign leading up to the beach also gave us a lot of confidence - warning signs everywhere stating to be careful. There was a recent tourist death there. Basically the waves are so strong and dangerous, they are called "Sneaker Waves" and they come out of nowhere and literally grab you and pull you under. The person who did our orientation on the first day even mentioned this beach and straight up said if we were dumb enough to go close to the waves and got pulled out to sea, nobody would go in after you. They are that crazy.

You may have noticed in our photos from this trip, Jaime and have not done our classic Piggy-Back pose as much, and are not quite as silly. Well, we wanted to be safe, and also not put anybody else in danger by asking them to take a photo of us, so we utilized our "selfie stick" a lot, and only was silly if we were 100% sure the area was safe.

At this beach, we stayed far, far, far awy from the waves, and took lots of photos on the basalt stacks (formed by cooling lava - very cool cliffs to see in person). And wouldn't you know it....right as we were heading back to the our little bus, the rain started up again.

We also found out later that just a while ago, that beach was shut down, and a tour group that was doing our exact same route, just a couple days earlier than us had almost 75% of their activities cancelled due to weather. AND we were driving away from a storm that was about to hit the east coast, we just missed it. Talk about lucky.

We arrived at the farm in Vik, and did not have high hopes of seeing the Northern Lights since the weather was so bad. We got our rooms, and headed into dinner when we got a notification on our app that if the sky was clear, you might be able to see the lights. The rain had stopped at this point, however the clouds were still hanging around, but you could tell they were moving away, so we all ate dinner and felt more optimistic about the skies clearing up.

I will remind you again about how freaking lucky we are. After dinner, the clouds cleared up and we saw the Aurora Borealis in ALL ITS GLORY! Not like the first night when I said you couldn't see it with the naked eye. This was clear, dancing, moving, amazing, brilliant Nothern Lights. Our tour guide Karl, and one of our group, Megan (the one from North Carolina) had awesome cameras and knew how to use the settings to capture them. So were nice enough to share the photos and get some photos of us in them. So all photo credit for the Aurora Borealis photos goes to Megan and Karl.

We were out watching them for over an hour. They would light up the sky, move, come back, change shape. It was indescribable. Once the clouds started rolling in, and it got colder, we came back inside and hung out for a bit. A couple of hours later I got another notification on my app that they might be visible if the sky was clear, but I went outside and looked, and alas, the cloud coverage came back. So we had just the perfect window. What made it even better is that Karl, who has seen these many times, rated this experience of seeing the lights as an 8 out of 10. That was pretty cool.

Our first night the person who did our orientation said that we should have it in our mind that we just won't see the lights. They are hard to predict, as is the weather, and they didn't want that to be the focus of our journey so we wouldn't be disappointed if we didn't see them. After our unsuccessful first night, and clouds the second night, and the rains hanging on, we had given up hope and just accepted we would not see them. But we did. And it made it all worth it. We weren't even thinking about how miserable we were this morning, being drenched to the bone after hiking a glacier in the pouring rain and wind. We just took it all in. One of our top travelling experiences for sure.