The drive over was amazing. Picturesque sweeping plains. Villages at the foot of the mountains overlooking the ocean. Incredible rock formations. You get the idea.
The entry to the national park was through a large lava field at the base of a volcano capped by a glacier. You could also see two large rocks near the sea at the edge of the lava field. Kaylea speculated that the stones were the top of of the mountain that had been blown off by a prehistoric eruption. Well, she was wrong. The stones were apparently formed in center of a mountain by tubes of lava pushing upward. Over time, the mountain was eventually eroded by the sea, revealing the 74 meter, and 64 meter towers of volcanic rock. Pretty neat.
The instructions for our tour were to meet in the car park, and we were the first to arrive at 1:30. Plenty of time to spare, so we left to look at the big rocks and a light house and got back just in time. After the guide gave us helmets and flashlights, we began our descent.
We carefully made our way down a tight spiral staircase into the first section of the cave. Now, this is Iceland, so of course these caves were made with lava, which gives them pretty unique characteristics. The tour guide, Thor, showed us one end of the cave, but asked us not to get to close to him. He stomped his foot, and you could hear that the ground beneath him was hollow. "These cave systems are like swiss cheese. We know there's a cave down there, but we can't get to it. We don't want any of you to discover it for yourselves, because you won't be able to share the story." We started making our way to the next part of the cave in a single file line, with us at the back. It was pitch black behind Kaylea, so we scooted our way past the slow pokes keeping us at the back of the line. A few weeks ago we had developed a fascination with spelunking videos and the movie The Decent. We were not about to be left behind.
To get to the next section, it was a much taller spiral staircase down. Once we were at the bottom, the tour guide had us turn off all of our flashlights. We were all silent. The only thing you could here was the dripping of water from the top of the cave. You couldn't see your hand in front of your face. You couldn't see your eyelids when you blinked. It was darker than you could imagine.
We've added a photo for reference:
After a minute of silence the tour guide said "Don't worry. I'm still here," and we turned all our lights back on and made our way back up the spiral staircase. At the end of the tour, Kaylea asked the guide about a small entrance into a lower cave that she had spotted earlier in the tour. The guide explained how he had not been able to fit, so he'd sent his son, who was 12 at the time, down to explore it. Apparently his son had disappeared for half an hour. Earlier in the tour, Thor had briefly mentioned that people had been lost, like disappeared and never seen again, in this cave system. When his son reappeared, well after his Dad had started panicking, the little boy simply stated his Dad had sent down to explore it, so he did.
With that chilling conversation complete, we loaded up and headed to our next destination. Shortly into the drive, we spotted some cars parked in a small gravel lot up toward a cliff face with people hiking up higher. Kaylea had Aaron turn in to check it out. A quick google search revealed a scenic hike up to a gorge cut by a water fall. After a short hike, we reached the entrance to the gorge and made our way inside. About 5 yards in, the gorge became significantly more narrow with water from the falls spanning from wall to wall. Two young women emerged with their pants rolled up. When Kaylea asked, one of the women explained that it goes back another 30 or so meters, but some climbing was required and our shoes were likely to get pretty wet. Luckily for us, our boots are waterproof and we love to climb.
As we made our way farther in, we realized that it would be a tad more than just hopping and scrambling up rocks. We actually had to climb up the walls and traverse whenever the next level was too high and the water too strong to step over rocks. It was so cool. At certain points, water was cascading down the walls and soaked our sleeves. Mind you, this water is snow melt from the tops of the cliffs, so it was VERY cold. We made it to the back wall where we found a 10 foot waterfall hidden back in a natural alcove. There was a knotted climbing rope tied off to a rock to keep climbing, but it was in the path of the falls and we weren't equipped to climb directly through falling water so we turned to make our way back down. Traversing down wet walls was a little sketchy, but still lots of fun. Also, there was a wall of ice in the cave!
We hiked back down and loaded up the car but, when Aaron tried to reverse out the the gravel spot, the car didn't move. He tried again and we moved a few feet, but it felt like we were pretty stuck in the gravel. Just as we started to panic, another hiker waved us down to tell us our break was still on. Good job Aaron.
We continued on to our next hotel in a small seaside town with approximately 1,200 people. We stopped at a few more sights, like a giant lava field from a nearby volcano. We made it to the hotel in time for happy hour before taking a nap. Our dinner reservation was for 9:00 PM, because the town had all of 5 restaurants and a good amount of tourists. It was also the Eurovision finale so all of everyone on the island was out to watch the song competition. Sadly, Iceland came in 4th place. We finished up dinner around 10:30 when it was still bright outside. The bartender, who admitted to not knowing much about spirits and cocktails, made a pretty good London Mule.
Tomorrow will be mostly driving and sight seeing as we make our way around the Ring Road.
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