The smelly tour

Today was my volcano day. Since there aren't currently any active volcanoes in Iceland, I don't think, most of my tour today was about visiting the lava fields, old volcano craters, seeing what they had done, some still active thermal areas where there are mud pots and such, and hearing stories about them too. Today was a small tour, just two people and the guy, a gentleman who grew up and lives in Grindavik, a small fishing town.

We head out and make a stop at these makeshift racks I had seen before which are fish drying racks. According to Atines (my guide and not at all sure I have it spelled correctly), the fillets are taken off the fish and eaten locally and then the head and bones are dried and shipped to China and various places where they make soup. wow, what a use of all the parts of the fish. We didn't need to get out of the car as he drove close enough for photos. so the windows are put down and ewwww - strong fishy smell. smells like the stuff I put on my garden for fertilizer. We have to drive away with the windows open to let the breeze clear the air.

Some stops to view different lava fields and he lets us know ages of the fields and how to tell based on the vegetation, also some collapsed craters and a lake which dropped 5 meters after an earthquake but has slowly regained 3 of those meters.

We are out of the car at Seltun, an active sulfur springs, boiling water springs, and mud pots. again, phewweee. Sulfur stink. rotten egg smell. But the colors are good from the different chemicals that the boiling water and mud bring to the surface.

He tells us the story of the hot springs bird. It used to be believed that a bird lived in the hot springs water but since it was so hot, it had burned away the webbing between its toes. Then he tells us that since there was no webbing to paddle itself around in the water, it used its wings to paddle. I have this picture in my mind of a small bird doing a backstroke on top of this boiling sulfur water. In the early days, scientists actually hunted for this bird just in case it was true. I think the old ancestors who started this tale were giving out a snipe hunt.

We wander around the peninsula some more and pass a lone church sitting on a hill top. there used to be 10 farms around the area but they couldn't make a go of it so only the church is left. We pass through a massive lava flow that covered kilometers as it blew out of its volcano and flowed chunky like to the sea. This was around 1100 or so. There were Viking longhouses there at the time because the lava flow went around the houses. It burned them down, to be sure, but you can see the outline of where the house would have been. There is another tale with this lava field. Seems like a farmer with a lovely daughter wanted a path cut through the lava field but it was too hard to walk on the lava. So he offered his daughter for marriage to anyone who could make a path through the lava. (Atines accent was at times hard to understand - took me several stories to realize when he said "Puff", he was actually meaning "Path") So a willing young lad shows up and says he'll cut a Puff through the lava. He does that very thing and comes to get the daughter in marriage. Old farmer never wanted to part with his daughter so he kills the lad. Atines says that no one remembers the farmer's name or the daughter's name but the lava is named after the man who cut the path/puff. the lava field is called Olmet's field. (again, I think that was the name he gave for the young man). Atines has good stories.

We get out of the car many times for overlooks and views of the lava fields and ancient craters that have either collapsed or slowly been warn away. At one point there was a line of 18 craters that were all active at the same time. No wonder the lava fields were so extensive on this side of the island.

He explained that moss is the first thing to grow and it grows after 100 years. Another guide told me it is green when it is wet but as it dries out, it turns more gray. I was just delighted at the small flowers that were in many places. they cling to the tiniest bit of lava and slowly make dirt or food for birds or whatever. some of the lava flowers were quite beautiful but most of them were also tiny and very close to the ground for protection because there was a lot of wind from the sea.

At one overlook, Atines pronounces that there is nothing between us and Antarctica at this point!

We check out a power plant which is another very smelly place to be. Kind of nice to seem "smoke" belching out of towers into the air and know that it is only steam and not polluting anything for once except how can a steam that stinky not be meddling with something.

We overlook a beautiful black sand beach which has huge boulders on it that fell this year from an earthquake. We're standing on an old crater and looking at another old crater. Ours is older as it is shorter now and covered with moss which is quite spongy to walk across it. We can see down the coastline that there is a line of former craters. The countryside here is very, very rugged, mostly being lava fields, so very few houses as well as space would have to be leveled before you could walk on it much less build something.

We visit Grindavik which is a small fishing town like I said earlier. He has photos of early fishermen bringing in cod and stringing them onto a rope. the men are standing knee deep in the cod strung out all over the beach. We are offered home made jam from his wife's kitchen. I didn't recognize any of the berries from which she made it. We also go to the "Bridge over the continents" where FINALLY there is a sign so that I know one foot is in North America and one foot is in Europe. We also stand on the Mid-Atlantic Rift which is where the plates run through the ocean and NO we were not in the ocean to do it but pretty close.

Finally we go to a lava tube. Lava tubes were constructed by flowing lava where the outside was hardened by the wind and weather but the lava still flowed through it. By the time an eruption finished, the tube would be cleared of the lava and form a tube. I have been in lava tubes before but they were always ones where you could just walk into them and stand. Atines warns us that this tube, we will have to crawl at one point to get into it. He now provides us with coveralls. Great, I haven't had but one tour out of 4 where I wasn't given something to wear besides my own clothes.

There is a set of steps leading down to the cave/lava tube. We also have on hard hats with a light on it and gloves. I'm taking my camera in it's underwater housing to protect it.

OK, I can go up and down stairs usually but it's been a long time, No wait, it's been NEVER, that I have crawled over rough, ragged, jagged lava but that's what I had to do to get into the cave. Atines tells us later that this is a fairly new cave in spite of the fact that it already has a ladder down to it. There are no lights strung, no pathways, nothing, just the three of us in this black hole and our three hard hat lights. It is good that we have reflective tape on our coveralls because I am the last one into the cave and without the tape, I would have not seen the two men at all. We pick out way through the lava tube, over some very rough ground and I have to walk very carefully because if I fall over here, it is really going to hurt landing on some of this spiky lava. I'm not sure if Atines could understand my questions but the answers were: we are about 10 meters underground and we are about 17 meters into the cave. I'll agree on the 10 meters underground but I think we went further into it so am not sure if he said 17 or 70. Still, it wasn't a big cave. there were only two places where we could stand upright and walk for a few feet.

The kicker is that after yesterday in the narrow space where I was diving, I was worried that I might be getting claustrophobic in my old age but today certainly proved I was not! I am so thankful for that.

We didn't have to do any of the "turn off your lights to see how dark it is" because we could tell. totally black, total absence of light except for our three lamps. We spent a few minutes down there admiring the ceiling and some of the lava rocks that looked like hardened mercury in the light or silver in need of a good polishing. Then we slower picked our way back over the uneven rocky, spiky floor to the entrance which I couldn't even see until Atines knelt down to crawl out.

After I get out, I see that there is a tour group there and right across from the lava tube where we just crawled out, is a large section of lava tube and all these tourists are standing in it. How droll is that!

That was the end of our tour and I really enjoyed it. Another new experience for Iceland. I hope that the weather is good tomorrow because I am supposed to fly to Westman Island where an eruption in 1973 meant the whole island was evacuated in 2 hours as the ash and lava covered houses. I would really like to see that. and if the weather is really good, I should be able to spot Surtsey from the island too. fingers crossed please.