Iceland 2025

June 10th, 2025 - Vik and Puffins

It was a very rainy night, it had been pour­ing with rain, but it was soooooooo cozy in the camper. After break­fast and the usu­al camper rou­tine (emp­ty­ing the toi­let cas­sette, fill­ing up the water tank), we first drove to a shop­ping cen­ter above the beach in Vik to stock up our sup­plies. How­ev­er, the gro­cery store was closed because of a pow­er out­age. So we used the time until it was fixed to go down to the beach.

Vík í Mýrdal, mean­ing “bay by the swampy val­ley,” is locat­ed in the Ice­landic munic­i­pal­i­ty of Mýrdalur and is the south­ern­most town on the Ice­landic main­land. On Jan­u­ary 1st, 2023, the town had 645 inhab­i­tants; it is an impor­tant ser­vice and sup­ply cen­ter for the peo­ple around Mýrdal­sjökull. The town is home to the famous Reyn­is­f­jara beach, which is formed from black lava: in 1991, it was vot­ed one of the ten most beau­ti­ful beach­es in the world by Islands Magazine.

There are three black rock pil­lars (dykes) made of solid­i­fied basalt lava in front of the coast: the Reynis­dran­gar (“young men’s tri­als”), Skessu­dran­gu, Land­dran­gur, and Langsamur. There is a leg­end that trolls want­ed to bring a ship ashore and were turned to stone in the process.

We then walked a lit­tle fur­ther along the beach to the head­land on the right, where we spot­ted our first puffins. They rank pret­ty high on the cute­ness scale:

After return­ing, the shop­ping cen­ter was back on pow­er and we stocked up our food sup­plies. Our next des­ti­na­tion was now the Dyrhólaey penin­su­la.

Dyrhólaey (Ice­landic for “door­hole island”) is a 115-meter-high penin­su­la in south­ern Ice­land, about 6 km west of Vík. The cape, which drops steeply into the sea, was formed as an island 80,000–100,000 years ago dur­ing a sub­ma­rine vol­canic erup­tion. The tip of the cape forms a rock arch through which boats can pass, giv­ing the island its name. Dyrhólaey is known for its abun­dance of birds. In sum­mer, a large colony of puffins nests here along­side terns and oth­er species.

And we were lucky: after a short climb, we got very close to a large colony of nest­ing puffins. The cute birds were busy deliv­er­ing more and more food to their off­spring wait­ing in caves. The birds were not shy at all, so we could get very close to them. I was very glad that I had brought my “Big Bertha” (Canon EF 400mm f/2.8L IS II USM) with me on the trip, as it allowed me to take some (in my opin­ion) very nice pic­tures of the cute puffins:

That was absolute­ly mag­nif­i­cent. We then con­tin­ued along the ring road through Vik again, where I took some more shots with the drone as the weath­er had improved:

We con­tin­ued on to Fjaðrár­gljú­fur Canyon. The gorge is up to 100 meters deep in some places and is about two kilo­me­ters long, with the Fjaðrá Riv­er flow­ing through it, giv­ing the canyon its name.

Mean­while, it had already got­ten late. On the way to our overnight loca­tion (Skaftafell Camp­ing), we passed a water­fall, the 82-meter-high Foss á Siồu, right next to the ring road. You can’t get right up to the water­fall because the land is a pri­vate prop­er­ty. But we were able to take some beau­ti­ful pic­tures with the drone. Best of all, you can oper­ate it from the camper, which means you can sit com­fort­ably in the warm. It’s real­ly great to have a pri­vate water­fall like that – now my wife wants one too😉.

We then con­tin­ued along the ring road. Final­ly, we arrived at the foot of the Vat­na­jökull glac­i­er, where the Skaftafell camp­ground is locat­ed. It was large but not very busy. So we found a nice place a lit­tle off to the side.

Tomor­row, we plan to hike from here to Svar­ti­foss first. After that, we will con­tin­ue on toward the ice lagoon.