Iceland Day 5 – June 12

Today’s leg is about 416 km and according to Google maps, about a 5 h 35 min drive. It involved a bit of backtracking in order to see 2 waterfalls: Dettifoss & Selfoss. The weather has turned sunny but a bit cooler by 4-5 degrees compared to southern Iceland.
There were a few neat mountains on the way to the waterfalls.
When I arrived at the parking lot for the waterfalls, there were 2 campers and 2 pup tents in the parking lot. As I was gearing up to walk to Dettifoss, I heard someone saying “Hello”. I turned around thinking someone was being nice to me only to find an Icelandic Ranger was shaking one of the pup tents beside me. She got a lot more aggressive until a groggy voice answered her from inside the tent. She then lambasted the tent owners telling them that it was illegal to camp overnight in a national part and that they had to leave immediately. She then went to the other campers to do the same. You do not want to mess with the rangers!
Dettifoss is the largest waterfall in Europe in terms of volume of water flowing. This is the view from the eastern side. You can also view it from the western side but that was a 50 km detour for me and did not have time to do this. The ground was actually shaking when you were standing beside these falls. The opening scene of the movie Prometheus was actually filmed from this place. Can’t you see the alien on the cliff ledge or is that an elf?
After viewing Dettifoss, there was about a 2 km hike over some pretty rocky terrain to the next waterfall upstream called Selfoss. During the hike, it snowed, hailed, rained and occasionally the sun popped out. Once I arrived and started taking pictures I went to open up my bag full of filters. What, no bag? Where the hell did I leave it? So I had to double time it back 2 km to Dettifoss to find my bag, then 2 km back to Selfoss and then a final 2 km back to the car, all with about 25 kg of photo equipment on my back. A 4 km hike turned into a 8 km hike. Good thing I am in superb shape. No Karen, this was not training for a hike.
Selfoss waterfall was worth it. One of my favorite waterfalls.
Stopped at a place called Hverir. It had mud pots, hot springs, and fumaroles along with a beautiful rotten egg sulfur smell.



Next stop was Godafoss which is nicked named Waterfalls of the Gods. Again another beautiful waterfall. Not the best time of day for photographing it but you have to make do.
It was now about 17:00. I could take the direct route to my hotel of about 1.5 hrs or the scenic winding long route of 3 hrs. Guess which one I took.
I love your pictures Barry, they are beautiful. How do you do the video”s or are they someone else who took them!
Videos are done using my camera then uploaded to YouTube. Most of the videos have good video quality but terrible sound due to the wind noise on most of them.