The blue ice
Airless compressed ice striped with volcanic ash.
Ulrich Latzenhofer from Perchtoldsdorf, Österreich — CC BY-SA 2.0 · Holger Uwe Schmitt — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Holger Uwe Schmitt — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Holger Uwe Schmitt — CC BY-SA 4.0
Possible but punishing: 760 km return and over ten hours of driving and stops. Better is two nights on the South Coast with Vík, the waterfalls and Skaftafell.
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Blue icebergs drifting to the sea: Jökulsárlón is Iceland's deepest lake (about 250 metres), formed in the 1930s when the Breiðamerkurjökull tongue of Vatnajökull — Europe's largest ice cap — began retreating, filling the basin with meltwater and creating a harbour for icebergs that calve off the glacier and drift slowly to the narrow outlet to the Atlantic. The ice is blue because it is compressed without air bubbles, and some of it is striped black with ash from old eruptions. Seals bask on the floes, seabirds circle, and the scene changes hourly with the tide. Across the road lies Diamond Beach: the bergs that reached the sea are washed back onto black sand, where they glitter like diamonds on the dark — Iceland's most photographed sight. Amphibious and inflatable boats tour among the bergs in summer.
Airless compressed ice striped with volcanic ash.
Glittering blocks on black sand.
Basking on the drifting floes.
Jökulsárlón, southeast Iceland