There are an awful lot of waterfalls in Iceland. Some estimates reach 10,000. Truly a fabulous place for a cascade connoisseur. We are strictly amateur in our appreciation of waterfalls. However, we did discover that our increasingly bold offroad excursions were often rewarded by some terrific cataracts in places that were a little more remote and a little less crowded. From Húsavík we continued west, via several lovely waterfalls, round the coast to the Hofssadir Guesthouse. This was another lovely place to stay where we had our own little shed complete with large French windows and a little patio.
Next day was quite a long drive. Obviously we stopped at a few waterfalls but eventually we ended up right out on the Snæfellsnes Peninsula. This is a very dramatic landscape in the far west of Iceland dominated by the glacier capped, Snæfellsjökull volcano, a 700,000 year old stratovolcano. Our knowledge of volcanoes increases by the day, so I can tell you that a stratovolcano is one that keeps erupting. Snæfellsjökull last erupted about 2,000 years ago. The volcano has many pyroclastic cones on its upper slopes while lower down are craters that produced basaltic lava flows. The whole area is dominated by the multiple lava flows of many eruptions. Volcano fans would not be at all surprised to learn that Jules Verne’s famous novel Journey to the Center of the Earth was set here. The general rule in Iceland appears to be that if it looks like a volcano then it probably is. If it does not have a crater then it erupted under the ice during the last ice age. Easy. In the morning we walked up a little volcanic cone right next to road. A steel staircase had been thoughtfully constructed to help us and we did not have to pay to park there. We were very impressed.
We drove directly inland for a couple of hours to visit a volcanic cave, a lava tube Víðgelmir. I had cheerfully assured Diane that it was not a real cave because they only occur in limestone and are caused by the action of water dissolving the rock. However, I had to back-track on this a bit because, much to my surprise, the tube did contain many cave-like features. It was formed as the lava cooled. The low viscosity surface flow cooled enough to create a solid crust forming a roof above the more fluid lava below. The crust is good thermal insulation and so hot lava continued to flow underneath until eventually draining out downhill and emptying the tube. That was in 900 AD so it has had a chance to cool off. You can clearly see how the flow has filled the glacial U shaped valley giving it a flat bottom. We were kitted out with helmets and lamps before being taken down a wooden access ladder that descends through a hole in the surface crust. The tube is long, 1½ km, so we were underground for the best part of an hour. Lighting and walkways have been installed making it a very easy trip. The first cave-like feature I noticed was some stalagmites. Admittedly these were made of ice but even so they were caused by water seeping into the tunnel through cracks just like a real cave. Then I spotted real stalagmites on the ceiling. There were two main types. The first were small, rounded drips which I imagined were formed just after the tube had drained but while it was still very hot and the walls were “wet” with molten rock. The second type we longer and more delicate caused by minerals separating out into liquids with a slightly lower melting point so that they dripped through into the main tube. We saw several other features which reminded me of calcite flows but were actually molten rock running down the walls in different ways.
That was it. We were done with Iceland for now. I dropped Diane off at the hotel in Reykjavik, took the car back to the hire company and enjoyed a pleasant walk back to the hotel. We had a ship to meet the next afternoon, which left us just enough time in the morning to meet up with a correspondent friend called Jón who lives in Iceland. He is building his own expedition truck so we had plenty to talk about. He gave us a brief tour of Reykjavik in his car and his wife prepared a light lunch. It was delightful, thank you.