I should first come right out with it: I paid to go on this boat ride. It was actually a tour of Jokulsarlon and the boat’s top speed was 5 mph, so it wasn’t life threatening or anything. It was however, the coldest day of my life.
Despite the cold, this was also the coolest (and not temperature) boat ride ever. 220 miles from Reykjavik, Bob and I had driven to the south-eastern side of Iceland. After only seeing two other people the entire drive, hundreds of sheep and some wild horses, spotting the duck boats from the highway was a very pleasant sight. We missed the first boat tour of the day, but used that time to go through our clothes in our luggage and bundle up. Once properly clothed, we walked down to the ocean to see how the glacier water and sea water ran together. Watching the icebergs break off into the ocean was pretty surreal and it didn’t make sense in my mind that there were sea gulls and icebergs!
It was the coldest day we faced in Iceland, and yes, we decided to brave the wind and our fingers for a ride around Jokulsarlon. We huddled together on the duck boat and, as you can see, there was no where to seek shelter from the blistering wind. The ride is about 40 minutes and luckily, they sell hot chocolate and coffee once back on land. The hot chocolate was probably the most delicious hot chocolate I’ve ever tasted, but then again, I would have gushed about hot salt water at that point.
Blue Ice! Our guides told us that blue ice is the freshest since it just broke off from a glacier. (Brr… Why am I thinking that is the coldest, too?!) I liked how you could really see the difference from the blue ice to white to clear, some of it even looked turquoise and dark blue!
Just a quick outline of what I’m wearing: three coats, two pairs of gloves, two leggings underneath my pants, a scarf and a hat. (Hat, not pictured.)
Body shaking, teeth chattering, even Bob’s mustache was starting to freeze!
This ice was over one thousand years old- old and cold. I’m smiling, but that was only because my face was frozen in that position!
All joking aside, this was a really fun and informative tour of Jokulsarlon. And, hey, now you can watch our Jokulsarlon tour or find our more about our Iceland adventures.
