Water! Iceland is full of water! Or foss-es, which means waterfall. They are EVERYWHERE and in every shape and size. Prepare for some awesome fosses!!!

Now look at that foss! If you squint your eyes you can see people on the other side of the gorge and get a sense of the scale. (hint: IT’S ENORMOUS). I’d say this was one of the most dramatic and impressive fosses I have ever seen. And film director Ridley Scott apparently also thought so and used it in the opening shot of his sci-fi movie Prometheus :p >>

This waterfall is called Dettifoss and it’s the most powerful waterfall in Europe and I instantly believe that.

Dettifoss has milky water, because of the high concentration of sediments in the water. It makes the waterfall even more otherworldly.

When you drive through Iceland, every landscape looks like a movie set, so unreal it sometimes feels!

But the fosses in Iceland come in all shapes and sizes, and this beauty is called Skógafoss.

Legend says that Vikings buried treasure behind it! We didn’t go behind it, but we did climb all the way up to the top to see the amazing river above.

Gullfoss is another lovely foss we visited late in the evening. An earthquake broke the earth in plateaus, and the river is plunging over it with a loud roar!

Seljalandsfoss was one of my favorites though; There we DID go behind it!

And ofcourse we didn’t escape its power, the wind blew all of it over us and I was completely soaked haha

Seljalandsfoss was accompanied by a group of waterfalls. One was hidden inside a cavern, and we climbed inside to get even more drenched :p

Another gorgeous one is called Goðafoss , which means something like “waterfall of the gods”, and it sure looked like one!

I will show aaalll the volcanic stuff in the next post (fire), including the basalt rock formations, but here is a sneak peak because there was such an awesome waterfall there, called Svartifoss, which means, yes, black waterfall (zwarte foss!)

This was in the Vatnajökull park, where we also climbed the glacier! Such an amazing place. We climbed all the way up the mountain, passed Svartifoss, and ended up on the top with an amazing view of the river.

During our Ring Road, we passed many Fjords and encountered some amazing beaches.

All black sand, because of the volcanoes!

We passed many mysterious little islands, scattered around the bays. This one is supposed to be the home of the famous Puffin, a penguin-like seabird, that only nests far offshore. I tried to zoom in as far as I could!

We drove all the way to the north of Iceland, to a small town called Dalvik (Vik means bay, and Dal means valley like in Dutch!). There we prepared…

… to board this lovely boat …

… to spot some whales!!

It was amazing!!! You could hear the sounds of the whale spewing from its blowhole, than bam, that huge tail rising up from the water and slowly diving in.

So amazing!! You can recognize each whale by the white patterns on its tail, it’s unique for every whale :)

I felt like a true skipper

Ward also did some fishing!

And caught a nice cod! The boatman then started to filet it right there…

Taking out the heart that was still beating…

ehm yeah… Then we had a nice barbecue!

Later, when we drove to the northern northest, I saw that whale one more time from the car window, as it spewed water and made a final dive into the deep and cold waters of the Atlantic ocean.

And here I was standing at the most northern part I have ever been in my life, in my lopapeysa to keep me warm :p

Next time, I will show the side of Iceland that makes you feel you’re on another planet: Fire!