Glacier Country
July 2, 2026
After breakfast at our hotel, we drove ten minutes back to the Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon. We parked on the ocean side of the lagoon to walk along Diamond Beach. This black sand beach is where the glacial river empties into the ocean and deposits large chunks of ice that glimmer in the sun and look like diamonds.
The weather is indeed better today (view from hotel, above). Diamond beach shown below.
We then walked under the bridge to the main lagoon and admired the many shapes and colors of icebergs and the very large glacier beyond. Here are photos taken at Jokulsarlon Glacier Lagoon, starting with our walk towards the bridge.
We then drove about a half hour to the check-in point for our Ingólfshöfði puffin tour. Here are some photos taken en route from the glacier lagoon to the tour meeting point.
During the tour, which was a highlight of the trip, we learned some facts about this area of Iceland, including the fact that the area is the first to have been permanently settled in Iceland. The first settler was named Ingólfur Arnarson, hence the name of the area and the cliff we will visit.
The puffin tour will take us to a seaside cliff which is home to a large puffin colony. We start with a thirty minute drive in a trailer pulled by a tractor through marshes, across rivers and along a long black sand coastal plain. The wind was howling and we could see the sand blowing. After parking, we trudged up a black sand dune to the cliff top, about two hundred feet high.
On the left is the vehicle we rode in, taken from the hillside after we climbed it. On the right is the coastal plain we were driven over on the way.
We walked around for about 90 minutes getting very close to many puffins. We learned they mate for life and nest in holes dug out by the males along these cliffs. Most of this year’s young puffins had not yet emerged from their nests.
These photos give an idea of the location, what the nesting areas look like, and how many birds there were.
Here are smaller groups taken closer.
And now some portraits of attractive poses!
The area is also a nesting area for great skuas, a large brown bird. We saw a few of them too, but they are very territorial and we were told to walk fast and not look at them too directly or we would risk being attacked! Here’s a bird sitting on its nest.
After enjoying the bird encounters, we retraced our steps and arrived back to our car. We had lunch at a nearby cafe and then headed back towards our hotel to drop our bags containing items we did not want to take on our next (potentially wet) excursion. But then our phone rang. The zodiac tour company called to tell us the winds were too strong for afternoon glacial lagoon tours today. Too bad. So we made another stop at the lagoon just to admire the ice bergs and glaciers once more, since we would miss going out around them due to the cancelled tour.
Here’s a panorama shot of the Jökulsárlón Lagoon taken before we returned to our hotel.
We returned to our hotel and enjoyed a soak in one of several of the outdoor hot tubs, despite the cold temperature and strong winds. It was just early enough that we had the tub to ourselves. We noted that yesterday, in the rain, the tubs were much more popular than today in the (windy) semi-sunshine. We preferred the solitude.
Here again is the map showing the places we visited in three days around the south coast, some of the most popular tourist locations in Iceland.
Tomorrow, we head to the far east side of the Island and hope to have one more puffin encounter.
