Day 3: Ice Caves and Waterfalls

Most of the house slept through our first night in Iceland just dandy, when we woke up, we found that we had a dusting of snow overnight.  

On the one hand, it was beautiful.  On the other, it was just a taste of the precipitation to come.  We had a quick breakfast and were on the road by 8.15 am.  The morning drive was sleety and spitty. Our first stop was Vik, where after we stocked up on equipment and had a warm snack, we embarked on our Ice Caves tour.  It was rainy and windy when we piled into the SuperJeep for the 40 minute trek up the glacier.  These vehicles hold 12 people, require a stepladder to get into, and have real-time pumps on each tire so that the driver can adjust the air pressure to accommodate for terrain changes while driving.

Alex (our driver and host) has been leading these tours for a few years, in between gigs acting as an extra in movies that shoot in Iceland.  On the drive up the glacier, he told us stories about the geology, the people, and the history of southern Iceland.  

When we finished the drive up, we parked the SuperJeep, grabbed helmets, put on crampons (the Icelanders sometimes call them 'mini-spikes,' and started walking into the glacier.  The rain had turned to snow, and while the plateau of the glacier was very windy, once we got over the first ridge, the glacier itself blocked most of the wind.  

The ice cave tour changes rapidly, as new caves are constantly being formed and old ones are melting out.  First he took us to the remnants of an ice cave that he was using for tours just a few months ago:

After that, he walked us towards the current ice cave.  Along the way we passed raceways of water that will eventually form new ice caves, careening through corners as it sped down the hills. 

The cave was big enough for us to stand up, and it was maybe 500' deep.  We walked in along paths notched into the sides, holding onto rope handholds that had been driven into the ice walls.

Alex was a great guide, knowledgeable and payful, and along the hike, he and the kids had a snowball fight!  

After the hike, we ditched our helmets and crampons and drove back down into the rain.  We said farewell to Alex, grabbed a bite, and then headed back north.  We had been planning on going on an Aurora tour this evening, but the cloud cover led the guide to cancel on us.  So, instead of making our way to Reykavik, we stopped at four different waterfalls instead (Skógafoss, Kvernufoss, Seljalandsfoss, and Gljufrabui).  All were pretty close to the main road, and each was unique.  My favorite was Gljufrabui, the waterfall that lived inside a cave accessible by a narrow slot canyon, but they were all beautiful.

S in front of Kvernufoss.

Hiking out of Kvernufoss.

After the last waterfall, it was pushing 7pm. S and I zipped back to town to pick up some pizza dinner, and CC and his crew met us at home for late meal and then bed.  No Aurora tonight.  Bummer.