continued… We piled back in the car. It was a relatively short drive to our next stop, Raudfeldsgja Gorge. This was the view from the parking lot (and parking was free). It was hard to see in this photo, but if you look closely, you can see there was a waterfall flowing into the crack in the middle of the rock.

Per the sign, it was named after a character in a traditional folklore story. According to the legend, Raudfeldsgja pushed his cousin onto an iceberg and she floated to Greenland. Her father and his uncle, Bárður Snæfellsás (who was believed to be half-man, half-troll), murdered him here in retaliation. We were noticing a pattern that Iceland’s culture was kind of dark.

Anyway, the gorge appeared to be another hawng, like Gljufrabui at the Secret Waterfall. Neither Keith nor Eric wanted to hike up to see the waterfall, but Christi was excited to go. This was the path up. You can see the stream made by the waterfall runoff to the left.

Entrance into the hawng.

The walkway narrowed into a ledge that soon ended. In order to get inside the cave, the waterfall had to be walked up. It looked like there were stepping stones so one could make it up without getting their feet wet. But the water was probably knee deep and rapidly flowing, and the chances of falling in and getting sopping wet were good. Christi stood at the end of the ledge for a long time before she worked up the courage to navigate the stones.

She followed the ledge into the mouth of the cave.

And was incredibly disappointed that there was no magical giant waterfall. It was just a small spout coming out of the bottom of the rock face.

On her way back out, she made a misstep and one of her feet went into the icy water. Her foot was completely submerged to the calf. This was the view down from the mouth of the cave.

And a panorama shot of the view from a little farther down the path.

And another panorama from even farther down the path where you can see more of the dramatic rock formations.

When Christi returned, we piled back in the car and headed to… to be continued…