Cozy Cave Tour

My girlfriend lives in Norway while I moved to Iceland for work and studies. She tries to come here as often as possible and we were lucky to spend new years' eve and the beginning of January together. 

Before she left, I wanted to treat her to a special experience so I got us a tour with Arctic Adventures to explore a lava cave not far from the city.

We were picked up by our guide, a super-friendly guide called Sarah who incidentally happened to be from Sweden so we could chit-chat a little bit in her native language. Sarah also picked up two more guests (a very nice couple coming from the depths of England's forest) and we were able to go. As I've understood, the number of guests varies from day to day but we were lucky and with five people we were set for a rather friendly-natured ride.

The tour we chose was rather easy. Basically we drove a bit over half-an hour from Reykjavik towards the Blue Mountains (the old skiing area for Reykjavikites). The area around there is quite stunning and well worth a gaze: semi-frozen moss-covered lava fields expanding by the base of snow-covered mountains. Not something you can get to see if you stay downtown, that's for sure!

The entrance to the cave was less impressive though: It was actually a little whole in the snow. I had imagined a Neanderthal-like cave, but Leiðarendi is a bit more, hum, `Underground` (haha) than that. We basically had to slide down the snow for a couple meters (that was fun!) before entering the cave itself.

The cave was actually the remnants of an old lava flow that happened several thousand years ago (I'm just quoting Sarah on that one) and as a result it is quite straight. We had to pass several icy patches and some rather impressive Icicles and ice creatures before entering the drier part of the cave.

We were able to see there some rather unique rock formations. At some point you could see the different layers of the lava, peeling like an old onion. At other points you can see some rather cool "Lava-cicles" that looked like a strange cross between a mushroom and a troll (but still strangely cute).

Once we reached the end of the cave (it continued a little bit further, but the ceiling went down to about thirty centimeters so the 1,92 centimeters of me did not bother) we also experienced something really cool: everyone turned their lamps off and we were engulfed by absolute darkness. I don't think I ever experienced anything quite like this before so I don't think I could put it in words, a picture taken at the spot will do it better:

After that we turned back (with lights on obviously). It was a little bit tiring to bend down at times but it felt more like an actual adventures. I am also so happy Arctic Adventures did provide helmets because my skull would have shattered 20 times otherwise. We managed to reach the entrance of the cave and climbed back up. In total, we were down in the cave for about an hour. 

Upon getting back in the van everyone was quite tired but happy. It was a real nice tour, not too long, not too short and entertaining in a fun and unique way, and, not to forget, our guide was awesome too! I will definitely book more tours with Arctic Adventures in the future!

Pictures Credits: Linnea Nordström