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We arrived in Iceland at 9am local time (3am Denver time) to see the actively erupting volcano from our plane. Our first stop was to get a closer look and explore the other activity from the Sundhnúkagígar Crater Row which has been erupting off and on for several years just outside the famous Blue Lagoon and the fishing town of Grindavík. We couldn’t see much other than steam exiting the volcano (the lava flow was on the far side), but we saw massive lava flows from earlier eruptions which were amazing.

After exploring the volcano, we headed towards Þingvellir (Thingvellir) National Park, stopping at Helgufoss along the way. Þingvellir sits on the boundary between the North American tectonic plate and the Eurasian tectonic plate, so it allowed us to effectively “hike” between two continents!

Our day ended at the Haukadalur geothermal field, which holds several geysers. The next day, we visited the massive Gulfoss waterfall then took a ferry to Vestmannaeyjar (The Westman Islands) to see thousands of puffins on Heimaey Island and hike the Eldfell volcano which erupted in 1973 and expanded the island’s size by 20%.

As we continued down the southern coast of Iceland, we passed several waterfalls (in fact, we counted over 140 that we passed one day), but Skógafoss was one of the more impressive falls. We climbed stairs with LOTS of other people to reach the top then continued to hike another 2 miles back behind the main falls to find even more waterfalls and rolling grassy slopes (in the fog).

After Skógafoss, we headed to Reynisfjara Beach - a beach made up of small round black rocks and massive basalt columns. It was pouring when we reached the beach, but we still got out to explore the strange cliffs that towered over the beach and formed caves.