There are a lot of volcanoes in Iceland. In fact, the entire island is made of volcanic material. When volcanoes erupt and there are lava flows, sometimes the lava cools in a funny sort of manner to create lava caves.
When I think of caves, I mostly think of huge caverns like the sort in Journey to the Centre of the Earth - like the Divača Caves in Slovenia, for example. So I didn't know what a lava cave would be like, only that I wasn't particularly expecting huge massive chambers hollowed out by rivers and water.
It turns out that a lava 'tube' would be a more appropriate word to describe lava caving - it's formed by the horizontal movement of lava, becoming tube-like. My guide was David, a native Icelander with years of snorkelling, diving and caving experience under his belt (a real outdoorsy type!) and a fantastic sense of humour. He's also possibly one of the coolest people I met in Iceland - amazingly nice, full of jokes, and just all-around awesome.
Oh, and he also took Tom Cruise out on a diving tour in Silfra once. D'oh.
We head out in a 4x4 to Leiðarendi, which is only 30 minutes out of Reykjavík - I've learned by now that the Icelandic landscape changes so quickly that you go from big city to utter wilderness in no time at all!
On the drive towards Leiðarendi, we stop by the side to check out some fish being dried. Iceland is an island, so there's a lot of fish around. Interestingly, a lot of the dried fish is exported to Nigeria. The pungent smell of fish is very pungent, but at the same time it's oddly photogenic - according to David, there are sometimes even photoshoots for fashion magazines and things like that here!
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| David holding the head of a huge monk fish. |
The landscape around Leiðarendi is what I call 'typical Icelandic' landscape, which really means gorgeous mountains and lava rock, dusted lightly with snow. "Lightly dusted" is good for Iceland, because just the week before there'd been a massive storm in the region!
Getting into the lava tube is tricky, because in late winter there's still a lot of ice around the entrance. I gave up on climbing in and decided to just slide all the way down. There's a lot of collapsed rock around - "A result of the cooling phase of lava tube formation," says David.
One of the girls asked if it was likely that more rock would fall while we were inside the cave. David said the chances were slim.
Well, at least I knew that there was only a slim chance of me being trapped inside a lava tube in Iceland! (insert nervous laughter here.)
Inside the lava tube, it goes dark very quickly. There's maybe 50 metres of light before it becomes pitch black, so the headlamps on our helmets were particularly useful. It feels like real exploration because we are so alone in the cave, and we have to climb through so many collapsed portions and over rocks. There's still moisture even inside the cave, so it's not just sharp broken lava rock but also ice that we have to watch out for.
Leiðarendi is Icelandic for end-of-the-road, and it's named so for a lamb that wandered off into this pitch-black cave and never returned home to its mother. The skeletal remains of the lamb are still there in the cave, which is just a little bit spooky.
I slipped and fell twice when I wasn't careful where I was walking. I really should be more careful about walking on ice!
At the end of the cave, we switched off all the headlamps to see how black it would be. Although completely pitch black, it was interesting that my eyes were still playing tricks on me - I almost thought I could see the edge of my sleeve, as if it were fluorescent. But still, the blackest black that it is possible to have - completely and utterly black. It could have been night or day and there would be no way of knowing.
David the storyteller told us about traditional Icelandic folk tales of elves and trolls living in these caves, and even sang us the Icelandic lullaby Sofðu unga ástin mín, which means Sleep my young love. It's very sweet, soothing, and a little bit haunting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Nfmf7PtWiI
Because by now we had all become enchanted with caves, we also took a second route through a different, more challenging section of the cave. There was a fair bit of crawling through on all fours - real cave exploration as I like to call it!
It's hard to tell at first what the difference is between the different sections of the cave, but David explained the difference between places where gases in the molten lava spurted out to form lava hands, and places where lava cooled in layers that later fell to the ground. The more features were pointed out, the more I was able to start recognising different parts of the cave and how it was shaped by flowing red-hot lava.
We left the cave and went out again into the big wide world, but it took a long while for my eyes to readjust to daylight. Perhaps I'm better suited for darkness and the interior of caves after all.
CAVE.IS, www.cave.is
Snorkeling Silfra and Lava Caving
E-mail: dive@dive.is
Phone: +354 663 2858
Hólmaslóð 2, 101 Reykjavík, Iceland
Disclaimer: I was invited to review this tour by DIVE.IS in conjunction with CAVE.IS. All thoughts are my own and I received no compensation for this review. Some pictures used in this review were provided by CAVE.IS, who had no say in the likelihood of the lava tube collapsing.
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