The next stop was myrdalsjokull glacier to meet up with the other part of the group we'd dropped off earlier. It was a bit of a hard drive to get in near the glacier. Our bus was obviously built to get to more difficult places, but some of the cars that were trying to drive in on the gravel road ahead of us got stuck, so we had to maneuver around them. We parked in a parking lot, and then our driver lead us on a walk towards the glacier.

It was a bit of a walk up to the glacier (and oh man, was I glad I'd saved my sandals from the waves), but the landscape was really interesting to look at. Everything was black or green. The glacier, because it's summer, has a big melt-water lake in front of it. It still, apparently, has receded pretty far in the past few years. We approached the glacier from the right. Because there was a big lake in front of it, it was a bit tricky to get over to walk on the actual glacier.

There was a giant chunk of ice that we could walk up to. The ice chunk was covered with a fine black soot, but you could see the clear blue ice underneath. Someone had carved steps into the giant ice block, so one by one, we climbed over the ice chunk, down the other side and over a little man-made bridge so we could go walk on the glacier.

The entire glacier was covered with a fine layer of black volcanic ash, probably from the eruption that happened close-by a couple years ago. Some of it had been washed away, and you could see the fine crevices of blue where the water was running. It looked beautiful, though, with the black on white and blue. It was pretty awesome to be able to walk across the ice and see all the little water rives and look down the crevices. Again, not entirely safe because if you lost your footing you could fall down one of the cracks very easily. If you wanted to walk around the glacier you had to jump over the fissures.

I've been on glaciers before in Canada and New Zealand,but this was the first time I'd been on a glacier with sandals on. It was a little ridiculous to see some of the glacier groups walking along with their studded boots, and me with my flipflops on the same piece of ice. One of the Australian ladies on our tour with us gave me a very concerned look and asked whether I was cold. Oh course, I gave the very Canadian response of 'Nooooo, I'm Canadian.' And really, I wasn't cold at all. By that point I'd dried off pretty well, and there was no rain at all, so I was pretty warm.

We met up with the other part of our group and took the long trek back to the bus along the edge of the melt-water lake. Our bus driver even brought a giant piece of crystal clear ice over for us to look at. All in all, a really beautiful place.

Then back on the bus again for a trip to another waterfall, Skógafoss. This waterfall is apparently one of the biggest ones in Iceland and has also been in a couple recent movies. There were two options to go see the waterfall. One was a path up the side of the cliff (with many, MANY, steps) to a platform overlooking the waterfall. The other option was to walk up the river bank to the base of the waterfall.

I wanted to go up to the top, but almost halfway up up the steps I realized that if I just went up the side, I wouldn't see much of the waterfall and it would take me a while to get there. As well, I'd seen a few people that had gone off the path and had found a way to a rocky outcrop about half way up the cliff that looked over the waterfall that I wanted to get to. There were two tiny (wide enough for only one foot at at time) paths that I tried to get over to the spot, but they were both just slick with mud and I got about halfway before chickening out because I was sliding all over the place and was sure I was going to fall down the cliff to my death. It probably would have been okay if hadn't been wearing sandals.

So started down again and found a small mostly-unsued set of steps that lead down near the bottom of the falls. I made my way carefully down and walked along the pebbled shore of the water right to the base of the falls. It was really loud down there in the little enclosed horseshoe of the waterfall and there was a copious amount of spray that thoroughly soaked me. But it was nice getting up that close because there was no one else around me at all, just me and the waterfall.

After giggling a lot about getting so soaked, I walked back along the water's edge and back to the bus. I was a little bit late because I had to wait for the bathrooms to pee.