Ring Road Iceland, day 4

From Vík í Mýrdal , driving back to Sólheimasandur and then along the Ring Road all the way to Kirkjubæjarklaustur.

1- Solheimasandur Plane Wreck. The remains of the 1973 United States Navy DC plane ate still on the black sand beach. The plane would have ran out of fuel and crashed on the black beach at Sólheimasandur, in the South Coast of Iceland. Fortunately, everyone in that plane survived. Later it turned out that the pilot had simply switched over to the wrong fuel tank.
The tour was offered to us by Fernando Santos, a Portuguese bus driver who has moved to Iceland a year ago. We met Fernando at Lutton Airport where we were waiting for our Wizzair flight connection to Reykjavik. Fernando was on the same EasyJet flight from Porto and he was coming back from short holiday in Gralheira, not far from Castro Daire and where we are from, where his wife and children live. He is a vivid and cheerful guy you immediately make friends with🙂. He took us in his 'bus' when we arrived at the parking lot to the Plane wreck, which saved us a lot of time to explore more sites during the rest of the day.

2- Loftsalahellir Cave. We walk up a very steep and slippery path into the cave. We then took an offshoot trail up and had a 4kms walk up and back down. It was really worth the effort as we got an amazing view facing the grand and impressive Mýrdalsjökull glacier, which is Iceland 3rd biggest. You also get an open view of a myriad of colours lanscapes of the surroundings to the coast and Reynisfjara Beach.

3- Dyrhólaey: the lighthouse, the rock arch and the cliffs and the puffins.

4- Reynisfjara Beach lies beside the small fishing village of Vik í Myrdal. It is one of Iceland’s black sand beaches. We went there to see the basalt columns sitting off the shoreline, known as Reynisdrangar.

5- Vik Church and stop at Kronan for food before heading to our next stop.

6- Fjaðrárgljúfur Canyon which is a 2 kms long and 100 meters deep. The Fjaðrá River runs like a snake in between the palagonite walls and originates in the Geirlandshraun lava field. It also falls from a cliff into the Fjaðrárgljúfur Canyon, creating quite the scene. The river then joined the powerful Skaftá river. The canyon was formed at the end of the last ice age, about 9 thousand years ago. When the glacier retreated, a lagoon formed in the valley behind the canyon.
More detailsabout the Canyon: https://adventures.is/iceland/attractions/fjadrargljufur/

7- Camping site at Kirkjubæjarklaustur