I vaguely recall mention of “a few tight squeezes” in the synopsis for our evening excursion of Reykjavik day one – the so-called “Caving and Midnight Sun Tour” – but what I had in mind when making the booking was childhood ‘caving’ experiences in Wales, Devon & Cornwall: wandering through dripping tunnels – occasionally in single-file – and ducking from time to time.
So, shining our torches into the gloom as we clambered down into the entranceway of a very dark and impossibly tight-looking underground tunnel, I realised I’d got us into something quite unlike those sanitised childhood experiences…
But it was a lot of fun. In total, we navigated 800m of tunnels in 90 minutes, standing for almost none of it.
I had assumed the answer to the question posed by our guide – “how do you think we’ll be getting through there?” – had been a binary one: crawl on your belly, or somehow squeeze through on your back. But no… the only viable technique was in fact to roll through the less-than-12” ‘opening’ (“like kindergartners do”!). I admit (if it wasn’t already obvious) that the photo accompanying this post was staged, but in fact it makes the ‘roll space’ look considerably more spacious than it actually was!
Near the end of our caving experience we got as close as the geology would allow to seeing stalactites and stalagmites. Now these really weren’t as impressive as the Wales, Devon & Cornwall variety, but we did find one that look strangely like a wizard. “Guntha The Grey” our guide suggested… though I think he meant Gandalf!
Talking of guides, I thought he did pretty well, considering that he sometimes goes into that cave three times on the same day! As well as the caving experience, we hiked to the rim of a long-since-dormant volcano crater – complete with a surprisingly-interesting explanation for how the land around it had been sculpted the by the eruption that occurred there two millennia ago. And later, we were treated to an arial view of Iceland’s capital from the outside deck of a rotating restaurant known locally as the “tit of Reykjavik” (after the apparent likeness of the building to a breast!).
En route to the restaurant, we made a brief stop to experience – in the words of our guide – the “real smell of Reykjavik”. We assumed we were to sample the whiff of sulphur courtesy of some bubbling Icelandic mud… but instead, we were introduced to the local wildlife:
This was just one of a few million fish carcasses left out to dry before being crushed and shipped off to Africa for use as a food supplement!
I am lingering more on our evening excursion than the 3 hour bike tour that kicked off our first day in Reykjavik because there isn’t – in all honesty – a whole lot to say about that. It was fun, but we didn’t see anything that spectacular or that interesting, and our guide had the most dry sense of humour which took longer than 180 minutes to get used to!!
We did learn an Icelandic joke though…:
“What do you do if you get lost in an Icelandic forest?”
“Stand up!”
Which doesn’t need explaining after you’re spent a few hours in this country! The trees really are mostly waist-high… and those which aren’t are imports.
As it was a 4km walk each way from the cruise ship to the starting point of the bike tour, we were – needless to say – a little bushed by the time we got back to the ship just before midnight. Good job the bars stay open late, as there was time for a little night cap before retiring. Well.. we are on holiday.
