Iceland VII: the Ice Cave and a few more lights

Life has been both busy and tough recently- thus the several month pause in writing blogs.

But it’s also not really surprising to me that the blog that got me stuck is the one about the ice cave.

Because overall, the ice cave was just a bit… meh??

Only about a month before we went to Iceland, there was an accident that made international news, in which an ice cave in Iceland collapsed, killing one tourist and injuring another. At the time we left, we were unsure if the caving part of the adventure would go forward, and also whether or not it was actually safe.

It turned out that the (perhaps slightly dodgy) company (not ours) involved had taken people into an unsafe cave during too-warm weather, instead of waiting until later in the season when things properly firm up.

So for our tour, things carried on more or less as usual.

Most of the day involved just getting to the ice cave, which was slowed by the fact that we had to drive a bit, wait a bit, drive a bit more, and then effectively wait our turn to go in (followed by more waiting once inside).

There were some pretty lovely views on the way:

… as well as some Crowberries.

Can humans eat raw crowberries?, is the first question that comes up when you google ‘crowberry’.

And the answer is ‘yes, but they taste like you shouldn’t’.

Kind of bitter, or ‘acrid’ according to the internets. Maybe nice in a jam. Not my favourite of the berries.

In any case, at a certain point in time and space, we reached the cave:

Kind of tiny eh?

Each year the tour groups have to go and find new caves, looking for what’s accessible, beautiful, and safe.

We were pretty early in the season, which meant there weren’t so many options.

We waited, then we entered, and waited a whole lot more…

Spending some of the time smearing soot on our faces and staring at the pretty speckled ceiling.

Finally, it was our turn, to shuffle forward in groups of five, and see the true beauty of the cave, where ice met light and water:

You get closer and closer, and start to see galaxies….

.. until at one point you’ve zoomed too much, and everything is bubbles and soot!

After the cave (which involved a whole lot more waiting by the time our whole group got through), we had a bit more time to walk around Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon, which is upstream of the Diamond beach.

Very pretty stuff!

And, speaking of pretty, that evening we got a SHOW:

I realise none of these is particularly amazing, from a photographic point of view. But sometimes, a kinda crappy photo can still show something really really cool: