Iceland: The South Shore

Iceland is a country with desolate lava deserts and incredible, glacier-fed waterfalls.  I took a bus tour along the south shore of the country on my second day there.  Here are a few of the highlights.
(Click on the photos to enlarge them.)

This is the majestic Skogafoss, some 200 feet high and producing a enough spray to make visitors need rain gear.
I found this awesome, in the original sense of the word.

The rock formations look like those along the Oregon Coast, but this is the black sand beach of Vik i Myrdal, with tremendous gusts of wind and dangerous waves.  Backing the beach are basalt columned cliffs and small caves.  It's no place to put down your beach towel and go for a dip, but it is very dramatic.

This is a corrugated metal bridge over what amounts to a huge arroyo from glaciers and lava.  At this point in the tour, I had been handed off to a 20-year-old employee of the tiny Hofn airport, as the tour company had made a mistake and had not put me on the correct tour.  The upside of this was that the girl let me stop wherever and take photos; the downside was that she had no college education and really didn't know much about a lot of things, including place names (even in Icelandic).  Therefore, I haven't yet been able to figure out exactly which glacier that is which we're approaching in this photo.

Here's a closer view of the glacier.  We drove right up to the base, but it didn't look as dramatic up close as it did from a distance.

Here's another waterfall by the side of the road.  I don't think this is a famous one, so I'm not sure if I'll ever learn if it even has a name.
But don't worry; I plan another post with photos of more really spiffy waterfalls from my tour into Iceland's version of Yellowstone.