This post is gonna be so long, because our 6th day on Iceland was full of activities. We woke up early and headed off to the first spot of that day - Dakota airplane wreck. Since I had seen some pictures of it online, I wanted to see it so much, but none of our travel guides (we had two and or friends another one) had a single word about it.
The only information I found online was: "On the Saturday of Nov 24, 1973 a United States Navy airplane (C-47 SkyTrain also known as “Dakota”) was forced to land on Sólheimasandur’s black sandy beach in the south of Iceland. The crew survived the landing and the airplane’s remains are still standing at the crash site. The black sand makes the wreckage scene look very dramatic like it was taken out of some apocalyptic zombie movie. If you want to take photos yourself of the crash site, you’ll have to take a GPS with you and type in those coordinates: 63.459523,-19.364618". It is quite shocking, that there were no directing signs on the road too. We thought that it's really interesting spot for tourists and aviation lovers, but it seems totally neglected by Icelanders. So we ended up wandering around for over an hour looking for something white in endless black dunes. We were about to give up, when Peter saw a white ball far away from us. It turned out to be our plane!!
The only information I found online was: "On the Saturday of Nov 24, 1973 a United States Navy airplane (C-47 SkyTrain also known as “Dakota”) was forced to land on Sólheimasandur’s black sandy beach in the south of Iceland. The crew survived the landing and the airplane’s remains are still standing at the crash site. The black sand makes the wreckage scene look very dramatic like it was taken out of some apocalyptic zombie movie. If you want to take photos yourself of the crash site, you’ll have to take a GPS with you and type in those coordinates: 63.459523,-19.364618". It is quite shocking, that there were no directing signs on the road too. We thought that it's really interesting spot for tourists and aviation lovers, but it seems totally neglected by Icelanders. So we ended up wandering around for over an hour looking for something white in endless black dunes. We were about to give up, when Peter saw a white ball far away from us. It turned out to be our plane!!
But before that, we passed some nice hills on our way...
Lava field just next to the road. I don't remember its name, but Pieter said it was one of the biggest (if not the biggest one) lava field in Iceland and Europe.
During our journey through Iceland, we experienced all possible weather conditions - from sunshine, through downpour, winter blizzard and glacier "hurricane" to sand storm in the South. Dust was everywhere, even if the picture above looks quite clear.
Lost and found. One of unnatural attractions of Iceland, but really amazing. I love flying and I could spent long hours on board, despite my fear of heights. I always sit by the window on plane and love watching what's under me. But touching wreck of real, old plane is totally different. You feel so much respect for the machine which best days are definitely over. It is amazing, that after all these years, remainders are still in such a good condition, but you can easily notice some bullet's holes. It looked like some people used it as a training target for shooting. And of course, it is impossible to find any monument in the world without Polish signs... "Tomek + Kasia = BWMNWW" or "Poznań 2010" are just examples of what I could read on plane's body. I personally hate those useless writings everywhere I go, so childish.
Do you remeber "Lost" tv series? It was my first thought when I saw the plane. I loved that tv show, I was a huge fan of James "Sawyer", Sun and Desmond. I loved watching it, but unfortunately last episodes weren't as good as seasons I-IV.
We spent another hour looking for our car which was like a needle in haystack, but we managed to locate it and continued our way to waterfalls.
Skógafoss - my favourite waterfall ever. Breath-taking, 60 meters high, I loved it from the first sight. It is situated on the Skógá River in the south of Iceland at the cliffs of the former coastline, which is now about 5 km away from its origin place.
On sunny days, a rainbow (often double rainbow!!) is visible due to the amount of spray the waterfall consistently produces.
Skógafoss from the top with incredible views around.
Finally we saw "crowd" of tourists in Iceland ;) Most of them were Germans.
The next one was Seljalandsfoss - one of the most famous and picturesque waterfalls in Iceland. It's so famous, because tourists can go behind the waterfall and get some refreshing shower for free. We were totally soaked, but it was so worth it!!
One word - AMAZING.
We spent a lot time around waterfalls so it was high time to find our accomodation for upcoming night. And we checked one hostel next to... Eyjafjallajökull volcano (on the picture above)!! Everyone knows what this beautiful "Island mountain glacier" (the meaning of its name) did in 2010, so it was shocking for us that people normally live around its corner. We heard that if volcano erupts, the most important to rescue are... sheeps. Not people, sheeps always first!! ;) We didn't stay there, not because we were scared of potential eruption, but the hostel didn't have bathroom inside! We were already spoiled by standard of previous places, so none of us wanted to use toilet in the middle of windy orchard 20 metres from the building. But location was wonderful and I regret I didn't take more photos there.
And the second volcano of that day - Hekla, which means covered by cloak. It is really hard to take photo without those clouds covering the summit. It is a very active vulcano, and thanks to its destroying power, it was called "Gateway to Hell" in Middle Ages. Over 20 eruptions have occurred in and around the volcano since 874, and it seems that another eruption can happen anytime soon.
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