They say that the southeast coast of Iceland is beautiful; we'll have to take their word for it. After visiting the southern edge of the Vatnajokull Glacier and hiking to a spectacular, secluded waterfall at Skaftafell National Park, we set out across the flat, lava plains of southeast Iceland. By the time we reached the coast, dense fog and steady rain had arrived, shrouding the scenery in all directions.
We did manage to see the famous lake of icebergs; the latter, which break from the southeast edge of Vatnajokull, drift across a long, glacial lake before moving out to sea; in the hazy twilight of our pea-soup weather, their milky-blue silhouettes were barely visible. From our vantage point, on a flanking moraine, their melting hulks had taken on bizarre shapes and harbored pockets of till, scraped from the mountain walls and valley floor.
This unique site was followed by hours of mind-numbing travel, curving along fjords or crossing ridges that were evident only on the map. Of course, such weather is not uncommon in Iceland, an island country that lies in the path of the Gulf Stream. While the latter keeps Iceland's weather relatively mild for its latitude, it feeds the dense fog and steady showers that often sweep across this magnificent landscape.
