Lava Caves

Destination: Surtshellir














This past weekend we decided to pack up our car and go explore some lava caves. As one of the most popular tourist and local attractions in Iceland, we had high expectations. I should explain up front that these caves were formed by lava and don't actually contain flowing magma. I know...I was disappointed too.

There are a cluster of such caves about 3 hours away from Reykjavik and the one we chose is called Surtshellir. Its name comes up a lot in guide books as it's the longest in Iceland at a length of about 2000 meters.

As we were driving, we quickly realized our luck to have gotten our hands on a 4 wheel drive truck because of the rough terrain. I had previously read how NASA trains their astronauts in Iceland because of its harsh terrain which resembles Mars or the Moon. If you've been looking at the pictures of the past posts, you're probably a bit confused (as I was) because there are rolling green hills everywhere you look. Turns out that's not the case everywhere...

Here's a good shot of the terrain we were around - although there was a beautiful geothermal river running through the rest was pretty desolate.
Once we parked and started hiking towards the entrance, we were shocked by the number of people we saw. Keep in mind that we were going 20 minutes without seeing another car on our shared one lane dirt road, but when we arrived there were at least 10 cars parked at the path entrance.

We walked for a bit until we saw our first cave entrance, which turned out to be bigger than I anticipated. Here's a shot looking down at it.
Once we found one that we could climb down without rappelling gear, we started walking around. We also quickly discovered that having one flashlight for the 3 of us was not the most efficient way of navigating caves. And we were a bit under dressed, since it was around 20 degrees colder inside.

While we were mostly under very tall ceilings (at least 20 feet high), here's a picture of one corridor where we had to duck down for awhile. Unfortunately the pictures taken with people inside the caves did not turn out so well.
And here's a pic taken after we climbed back out. It felt great to be back in the warm sun!

More pictures are available here.