Tom, surfing on the wave on Good News Canyon, Skafta

Kayaking on the Skafta

First day here we have not woken up in a terrible sweat. Cloud is at 10/10 and it just started to rain as we broke camp. This is south east Iceland though, where annual rainfall almost keeps up with Cherrapunji.

There is a promising section of the Skafta we planned to run, and set off for the put-in. I ran the shuttle down to Kirkjubæjarklaustur and managed to get a lift back up the road with a local.  The river is a mix of some small canyons with great waves, and long open stretches of flat shallow water. The canyons almost make up for the long flat sections and we find the perfect surfing wave.

The Landrover at Skogafoss, a compulsory tourist stop on Route 1

Lunch in  Kirkjubæjarklaustur is spent in the Landrover in the pissing rain and everything inside is getting wet. The Skafta looks promising for a mutli-day descent though and we go off and explore further up the river. We found out that the Skafta is the river down which the lava from the 1783 Laki eruption flowed. The river bed is only 200 years old and the river has a very unusual and large delta. We had only paddled on one arm of the delta this morning and the main river has much larger flow.

Still raining as we put the tent up and cook tea. I knew the good weather would not last.