Iceland: Day 5

After Myvatn, the next day was spent visiting Jokulsargljufur National Park. That is the one and only time I will be spelling that in the post. The park is composed of a gorge, a series of waterfalls, and unusual lava and erosion formations. If my guidebook is to be believed, the entire place was created in about three days as the result of a massive flood following an eruption. That's a lot of water.

The road into and through the park was rougher than I expected, so I didn't have as much time as I had planned to see all the sights. The first one up was Dettifoss, the largest waterfall in terms of volume in Europe. When you stand next to it, you can feel the ground shaking from the force of the water going over it.

From Jokulsargljufur NP

From there, the river enters the gorge. As you can see, it is quite narrow and deep, with vertical sides.

From Jokulsargljufur NP

There are a number of weirdly-shaped, enormous rocks scattered about.

From Jokulsargljufur NP

If you look closely at them, you can see that they are made up of millions of interlocking hexagonal columns of basalt (a type of lava rock) several inches to a foot across. It looks as though it has been put together by someone and that if you pulled hard enough, you could pull a whole column out. Rocks (some) are crystals too.

By the time you reach the end of the gorge, everything is peace and quiet.

From Jokulsargljufur NP

From there, I had a very long drive to my next stop in Egilsstadir. The side of the park that was supposed to have the "good" road, had a better-ish road until the last 30kms, where there was a sign that said bad road ahead. There have been plenty of bad roads so far, none of which had earned a sign warning of the badness. I expected the worst, and was right. The next 30km were some of the most intense washboard I have ever seen. I had to crawl along most of the way. I did make it to the main road eventually, and made it to the hotel in time for a late dinner.