Vik!

After a half-day break of lobster pizza and sunshine in Höfn, it's time to hit the road again. Headed north along the peninsula that Höfn sits at the end of, we can see the mighty Vatnajökull, and several of its glaciers.

Fortune (or the Nordic weather gods) smile on us (this is very rare), and we have favourable winds, and some lovely sunshine. Progress is good, and before long we're 30km out and have found a hilltop to snack on, with more excellent glacier views, as well as of the glacial rivers running out over the long gravel flats to sea.

Progress is so good today that we make it to our original goal, Jökulsárlón, with plenty of time & energy to spare. Jökulsárlón is a glacial lagoon, formed while parent glacier has been retreating over the last century. Icebergs calve off of the glacier and spend upwards of five years floating in the lagoon before they've melted enough to get carried out to sea.

Lovely, but cold & surrounded by gravelly hills. Not ideal for wilderness camping, so we press on to Skaftafell. We make it after 130 km and have earned ourselves an extra day off in the process! Skaftafell is one of Iceland's biggest and most famous national parks, so the campground, though well equipped, is a bit crowded.

We take the next day for some hiking around the park. We decide against a lengthy 15km hike, only to get semi-lost and wander for 14 anyway. We get some lovely waterfalls, vegetation actually taller than us, and only about 6km or so of trudging through gravel wastes.

'This is the hiking equivalent of biking into a headwind. Nothing seems to ever get any closer' - Zack

The next day we pack up and continue south-west. It's a short 70km ride that seems at first like it will never end. A (relatively minor) headwind is keeping the pace sedate, and while the vast floodplains are lovely, they never seem to end. Eventually though, the wind lets up, and some hills become an exciting bit of variety for once! We pull into Kirkjubæjarklaustur. That one's a mouthful, but it literally means 'church farm cloister' - it was originally founded by Irish monks, and the later addition of a cloister completed a name so long, it doesn't even fit on the local road signs. The locals just call it Klauster anyway.

In any case it has groceries and a swimming pool, so we're happy. We've learned there's no reason to use (and sometimes pay for) campground showers, when there's hot-tubs in just about every town.

Some twisted girders are all that remain of a previous bridge after the 1996 eruption caused  huge  glacial floods.

Leaving Vatnajökull behind after almost 200km.

This natural stone formation was thought to be the remains of a church floor.

The next day's ride to Vik is short and sweet - we're once again graced with a pleasant tailwind, and we burn through the 75km in hardly any time at all. After passing through large expanses of bizarre, moss-covered lava fields, we transition to green fields. In the distance, we see a new icecap - the much smaller Mýrdalsjökull.

For lava, it looks pretty comfy.

We're taking a day in Vik before the final 200km push to Reykjavik. Doesn't look like luck will stay with us as far as winds go, but almost there!