Thursday 1st June

Day 6

Deep inside the lava tube

 After breakfast, we went to the lava tube tour.  It was south east of Reykyavik, and the landscape was very alien – it was easy to imagine sci fi being filmed here.  We initially missed the turn off for the lava tube tours because there was no sign for it – fair enough though, an A-Frame notice board would not have lasted long at all in the strong winds we were experiencing! We tuned around and came back to a small area which looked like a construction site, probably because they were still working on the electrics and facilities, but we saw a mini bus which had “Lava Tours” written all over it.

Once in, we donned hard hats with head torches and in a group of 10 we walked across to the entrance and into the lava tube.  Once in, we could see that it was very rocky a unstable underfoot, and there were three piles of snow just underneath a hole each which exposed this part of the tube to the sky.  Further inside it became darker and we walked along looking at the marks which the lava had left behind.

Seltun

After the lava tubes, we decided to take the long way to Reykjavik, travelling around in a loop through some very nice scenery – the kind of scenery which I had been expecting to see when we first landed! We stopped off at a lake, before stumbling upon ‘Seltun’which was a highly geothermal area with a small route to take visitors through. It was, of course, very smelly with plenty of sulphur dioxide and hot bubbling pools and steaming fumeroles.

After this, we continued to Reykjavik and successfully found a free car park at what looked like a park and ride.  We walked into town and into the National Museum where we both had quiche and salad for lunch before exploring.  The museum was full of archaeology and the history of Iceland which was heavily based around its rule and religion. There was a very interesting exhibition on race and migration.

The mightly Thor!

Time to leave, we found our hotel for the night and settled in before heading out to find dinner. We came to a restaurant called 73 which was small and cosy, and the waiter convinced me to have Appelsín (Icelandic sparkling orange) instead of Fanta, and I had arctic char again which I have to say was even nicer than the one I had eaten previously!  Mathew had the cod with a beer.

We walked back to the hotel via the waterfront where we came across a sculpture of a boat. We also popped in to the local supermarket and bought some goodies for back home, as we knew we would have an early start on Saturday which meant that we may not have been able to buy anything last minute at the airport.  Finally, the sun had come out….

"Sun Voyager" - 1986