Iceland Day 4: Ice,Ice, Baby

In summer, most of Iceland doesn't live up to its name. It's actually quite a green island in places (albeit with shades of green that seem subtly off to those who haven't spent time in Arctic environments.

But it is still called, well, Iceland. We took a multi-hour bus ride along the country's ring road, passing through Iceland's horse country (where the best horses are bred - Iceland's Kentucky, as it were), mountains and the wasteland of the black sands to the Skaftafell National Park, which is dominated by the Vatnajokull glacier.

There, we donned crampons, grabbed ice picks and went for a stroll...

...brr! Well, actually, it wasn't that cold. It just looked cold. That is the Solheimajokull (Falling Ice) glacier.

Don't worry. It looks far more dangerous than it is...as long as you don't step on your own crampons and pull your shoe off, as one unfortunate person did. (She wasn't hurt).

Then we headed for the Jokulsarlon lagoon - which many of you have seen, as the lagoon was used for scenes in two Bond movies (A View to a Kill and Die Another Die), Batman Begins, Beowulf and Grendel and the Tomb Raider video games.

We headed out onto the lagoon in, believe it or not, a mildly ice-rated...amphibian, and hung out with the seals for a while before the long bus trip back.

(It was so damp at the lagoon in the rain that my camera was fogging up faster than I could clean it!)