Ice caving

Fri 4/11/22

For today, we have booked the Crystal Ice cave tour via Glacier Adventure based at Hali, about 60km from Seljavellir guesthouse in Hofn. Our tour starts at 9am and were asked to arrive 20 minutes before departure. For the tour, I booked by emailing Glacier Adventure and only paying on arrival. Our tour costs ISK 19500 (RM 651) per person for 3 hours. It is very expensive.

We departed from our guesthouse at 7.40am and arrived at 8.30am at Hali. I wasn't sure if there would be any glacier hiking also included in the Ice Cave tour, so I did not book a glacier hiking tour yet and will decide based on today's tour. 

It turned out that and Ice Cave tour does not include glacier hiking. We were only provided with helmets and headlamps, but not crampons, ice axe or harnesses. From our meeting point at Hali, we were driven off road to Breidarmerkurjokull, which is located in the Vatnajokull National Park in a van by the guide. Only licensed tour operators are allowed to drive in the national park. The road was not gravelled and really bumpy. From the van parking, we hiked for about 45 minutes (with stops for photos and guide explanation) to the entrance of the ice cave. There were about 12 of us, including 2 guides - Mariana and Sandra. The ice cave is ever changing, the location and size of the cave changes every year, and is shrinking by the year due to global warming. 

meeting point in Hali and our van

Breidarmerkurjokull

walk to the cave and black ice

ash with ice

ice cave entrance

inside the ice cave

Ice Caving trek

The ice cave tour was just okay for us, we were not excited as it was really crowded in the small ice cave with other tourists from other tour operators as well. Anyhow, the guide did a good job on the explanations and trying to entertain us during the bumpy ride in the van. 

We arrived back at the Hali camp around 12noon. There is a toilet facility and self service free coffee machine for the guests. After helping ourselves with a cup of coffee and relieving ourselves, we drove to the nearby Jokulsarlon glacier lagoon and Diamond beach. 

We have already visited here in Feb 2018, but decided to stop by again as it was on the way to our cottage in Kirkjubæjarklaustur. There were so many tourists on both sites. The parking at Jokulsarlon glacier was already full, so we had to park at the Diamond beach side and crossed to the other side. The "diamond" is actually the broken fragments of the iceberg from Jokulsarlon glacier lagoon floating into the sea. The beach there has black volcanic sand, which is common around Iceland. We did not spot any seals or orcas around.

Jokulsarlon Diamond beach

Jokulsarlon glacier lagoon

On the way to Kirkjubæjarklaustur, we found at viewpoint stop nearby, which offers excellent views of the Jokulsarlong glacier lagoon with hiking trails around the lagoon and no other tourists. If we had time, we definitely would have liked to hike the trail. We made a few more stops along the way before arriving at Horgsland Cottage at 4pm (booked via Booking.com, EUR 131 or RM 618 per night). 

Jokulsarlon glacier trail

Horgsland Cottage

We headed out to the nearest small town of Kirkjubæjarklaustur to buy groceries shopping at the only supermarket there Gvendarkjor. Unfortunately they didn't have salmon, so we had to make do with haddock fish and the local char fish. 

local char fish

Again, no luck with the Northern Lights tonight.