May 27 – Djúpivogur and Glacier Lagoon

We are on an all day tour and do not have any time to explore the port of Djúpivogur where we are docked.  Perhaps we can see more of it when we do our driving tour later.  The bus headed out first thing for a 2 ½ hour drive along the coastline...

to the Black Sand Beach and the Glacier Lagoon, Jӧkulsárlón.  The drive is very long because there are no harbors along almost the entire southern coastline so we had to anchor quite a distance from the Lagoon.

We had a stop midway for a stretch and bathrooms at a hotel.  The hotel had great views of mountains and meadows.  Along the way we saw a lot of sheep...

and swans.

Our first stop was the Black Sand Beach.  The beach is actually almost 400 kilometers (250 miles) long.  The section we visited was just across the river from the Glacier Lagoon.  There is a river that runs from the lagoon to the ocean, right by this stretch of beach.  The tides are strong enough here that when the tide comes in the river reverses course.  We were there when the river was flowing inland.

There were fairly large chunks of ice in the water and on the shore.

 We also saw a couple of seals…

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Watch video of seal.
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and Mary found a line of small pink items at the tide margins on the beach.  Turned out they were krill, food for the whales.  They are really tiny.

We then headed over for our tour of Glacier Lagoon on an amphibious landing craft converted for tourists.  We call these Ducks in the US.

The cruise took us out into the lagoon, among the icebergs and close to the glacier.  

They guides picked up a pretty decent chunk of glacier ice from the lagoon and we all got to hold it.  They also carved up another chunk and we each got to have a piece of glacier ice to eat. 

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More photos of Jӧkulsárlón Glacier Lagoon
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The weather was beautiful with sunny skies and almost (but not quite) warm weather.  On the drive back we saw some reindeer, up pretty close.

We then headed about 20 minutes back up the road to another hotel for a soup lunch and then on back to the boat with only a short stop along the way.

When we got back into town we managed to get a few pictures of some of the more interesting items around town.

Along the port was a series of stone models of bird eggs from all of the various birds in the area…not life size.  These were quite large.

We departed early as the captain was expecting some weather and choppy seas.  It actually got very rocky as we headed out and then changed course.  We were sitting in the Club Lounge when the boat started rocking and all the glassware and liquor bottles started rattling and crashing around.  Not sure how much broke but it sounded like every glass in the place had shattered.

We were having a gala dinner tonight but it had to be postponed for almost a half an hour while kitchen and dining room crew repaired the damage.  We had dinner at the captain’s table as Jessica and Tara had been on a winning team of some games the night before and their prize was dinner with the captain.  We had a great visit and then retired to the Club Lounge for some evening entertainment.

The ship’s crew put on quite a great show.  The performers came from Ukraine, South Africa, Germany, Greece, Mauritius and Indonesia.  And they were all exceptional. We really enjoyed the evening.

Today we were given Arctic Circle Crossing certificates for the cruise that indicated that we had traveled far north over the Arctic Circle (to the island of Grimsey).  In actuality we didn't make it that far as the seas were rough and we couldn't make it.  However, the certificates were nice in that they included a map showing the route of the cruise.

By this time the seas had calmed down and the cruising was lovely.