The rain from the first day gave way on day two to uninterrupted sunshine. And in Iceland that means one thing: rainbows. The waterfalls in Iceland are beautiful enough on their own, but at the right time of day and with the right weather, the sun is low enough in the sky to produce the most spectacular rainbows in the spray, and today was no exception as the giant Skógafoss afforded us a complete arc.

Much of day two was spent in wonder at the astonishing distance from which the peak at Hvannadalshnjúkur was visible. At 2119 m (6952 feet), Hvannadalshnjúkur, part of the rim of a volcanic crater called Öræfajökull, is the highest point in Iceland and is visible from as far away as Vík, approximately 150km (90 miles) distant. The road from Vík leads through Eldhraun, an enormous expanse of lava covered with moss, before passing through the small town of Kirkjubæjarklaustur, from where it crosses Skeiðarársandur, an area of gravel and rivers where water from the great Vatnajökull ice cap melts and flows towards the sea. The remains of an iron bridge, destroyed in 1996 in the jökulhlaup (glacier burst) have been left as a monument to the power of nature.

Past Hvannadalshnjúkur we drove to a place where the Vatnajökull glacier meets the sea, at Jökulsárlón. Here, icebergs calved from the glacier stretched as far as the eye can see in a wide lagoon, drifting slowly towards the sea. On the shore itself, where the sand was jet black, chunks of ice lay melting in the sunset, as clear as glass, while larger icebergs that survived the journey were pounded by the waves just offshore.

We watched the sun set over Öræfajökull, turning the mountains to the east blood-red, before heading off to the farmhouse that was to be our accommodation on the second night.