Southern Iceland

This was my second visit to Iceland. We booked as it would be our first foreign travel in almost 2 years due to the Covid 19 Pandemic and Iceland seemed to have the most lenient travel restrictions and procedures meaning it would be less likely to have the disappointment of cancellation. Furthermore there has been a fair bit of volcanic activity on the island over the past year – that is until I booked the trip… Pretty much the following day the active and erupting Fagradalsfjall volcano began to reduce its activity drastically meaning that we would miss any spectacular photo opportunities. Nevertheless, Iceland is always visually impressive.

Road closure on our journey from Reykjavik to Vik due to high winds

Its been so long since going on a trip, I really lacked motivation to spend time and effort taking photos and therefore when I got home I was kind of disappointed with my efforts. I also hoped to make the most of using my drone out there with some near disastrous outcomes!

The first of my drone horrors came at Fjadrargljufur canyon. We were recommended by a lady working to tidy the path to stand at one end of the gorge and fly up, filming as I went. So I took her advice. It was my first flight since getting a new phone and being that I don’t fly it much I am not so well-versed in connectivity issues that may occur. Anyway, I hastily set up my DJI drone and got it into the air, sending it off up the gorge. the footage I could see on my phone was awesome, smooth and the surroundings – stunning. The footage then started glitching and i saw the message ‘disconnected’ on my monitor. SHIT. Had I just sent £400 worth of equipment to a dramatic death? The dad of a dutch family standing next to us on the bridge seemed to think so as he gloated in my panic – not realising that Nadine could understand all of his mockery. She bit her tongue. My drone was no where to be seen and I was just about to concede its loss, knowing that they only have a flight time of about 15minutes. I took a last-ditch attempt to reconnect to the drone’s wifi and hammering the emergency ‘Return to Home’ button my camera reconnected and it appeared on the horizon making its way back to us. phew. I had further trouble getting the full definition photos from another really cool flight – probably due to not updating the drone ah well, lessons learned for the future.

The black sand beach at Vik was one of the highlights of my trip, having not visited this particular beach on my previous visit. The waves were epic and I took hundred of photos here. Apparently it’s the location for Game of Thrones…

Another surprising highlight was the ‘Icelandic Lava Show’ – not exactly the kind of thing I’d sign up for but it had been recommended by a couple of people we met on our trip so we signed up and wow – it was incredible. We both learned so much about volcanos, lava and in particular the glacier capped volcano Katla, which overshadows the small town of Vik. It is one of the world’s most active volcano and is 103years overdue a massive eruption – the impact of which has the potential to affect millions across the world and totally wipe out the town of Vik with glacial volcanic flood waters greater than the volume of the worlds 4 biggest rivers plummeting down the mountain. The founder of the show is the great grandson of a farmer who was on the mountain in 1918, when the volcano last erupted and narrowly missed the floods and devastation cause by Katla. The show involved. Julius explained, in depth the properties of lava and the effect of ice on lava, and the geology of Iceland before pouring real 1200*C lava out into the auditorium, heating the room to uncomfortable levels instantly. It was a really fascinating experience.