The actual stairway to heaven has over 3,000 steps. Since there are only 527 steps to get to the top of the Skógafoss, where the Skóga River plunges over a cliff before flowing south into the North Atlantic Ocean, I guess I still have a few more to go. Assuming that’s my final destination, of course.

The Skógafoss is one of the biggest waterfalls in Iceland. It’s also one of the most popular for filmmakers. The movies Thor: The Dark World and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty both had scenes filmed here, as did the TV series, Vikings and Game of Thrones.

Here’s a look at the top of the falls from the observation platform.

And here’s a view looking south at the Skóga River’s outfall into the North Atlantic.

We continued hiking about a half mile further up the river to a smaller waterfall. There are supposedly 18 more further upriver.

We continued our drive east along the southern coast, stopping briefly to hike out to a small glacier, then had lunch at the black beach of Reynisfjara. My next post will be about the black beach area and we’ll see lots of prettier glaciers as we travel east, so I’m going to save my comments on those stops for later.

But I did take this photo as we left the overlook of Reynisfjara. It’s typical of the small settlements we’ve seen along the coast. We’re staying less than a mile from here, on the way to Vík (pronounced “Veek”).

Here’s a photo of our lodging for the next two nights, the Volcano Hotel. The word “Hotel” apparently does not mean the same here as it does in the USA. There, we would call this type of lodging a “motel.” At any rate, it was a nice place to stay. Remote, but quiet and scenic. The room rate included breakfast. You can also make reservations for dinner. We had Atlantic Char. It’s a cross between salmon and trout.

Here’s the view from our room (the furthest on the right in the photo, above). We could see the ocean. Because we’re traveling during the shoulder season, we had the place pretty much to ourselves. We understand that many hotels have been fully booked for the main tourist season, Mid-May through August, since last October.

We noticed that the service workers in the hotels and restaurants along the coast have all been Polish, so I looked up the demographics for Iceland and discovered that about 5% of the resident population of Iceland is from Poland.

I asked our server at the Volcano Hotel about this and she said that the correct figure is probably closer to 20% when you include seasonal workers. Then she added that in the nearby town of Vík, about 50% of the residents are Poles. She came to Iceland to work and to practice speaking English, only to discover that half the locals speak Polish, instead. And almost none of them know any Icelandic.

We drove into Vík for dinner and ordered pizza. They asked if we wanted light or dark crust. We opted for dark. It turns out that they use volcanic ash for the coloring.

I’ve been checking my teeth ever since to make sure I don’t end up like Eva’s dairy cows with ground down stumps for teeth.