Saturday, May 16, 2026 — Eric left for the conference at 0930. Since Christi and Keith’s tour wasn’t until 1230, we had a leisurely morning in the hotel room. We were still feeling tired from jet lag, and relished having some down time.

We headed out at 1100. The first item on the to-do list was to scope out the bus stop where we were being picked up. It was in front of the Maritime Museum. We decided to go back to the Food Hall for lunch. Inside the Food Hall, we opted to eat at the same restaurant since the food had been so good. Christi ordered a lamb kebab, which wasn’t all that different from the salad she’d gotten the other day, though she liked the bacon more than the lamb. Keith got a lamb burger with lamb bacon and he said it was wonderful. 

We finished eating a little before noon. The bus pickup wasn’t until 1230. On our way to the Lava Show, we’d passed a grocery store. We knew was only a block away, so we went to the grocery store to find some dessert.

The packaging on all the foods in the bakery section were in Icelandic, so we weren’t exactly sure what the choices were. We picked out a cheerful package of yellow and pink circles. They turned out to be mini-cupcakes with strawberry frosting and were delicious.

The bus that picked us up apparently did a regularly scheduled loop around the city, picking up people from various locations and delivering them to a bus terminal called BSI. We passed by several sites that we hadn’t seen before, so it was an interesting drive for us.

There were a slew of tour busses parked in the BSI lot. We were directed to board a bus with a small sign in the window that said Lava Tunnel. We’d been hoping that the driver would give a narration like the drivers on the previous tours had done, but the only words he said on the entire trip were that we were required to fasten our seatbelts. On our way out of town, we passed some of the same terrain that we’d passed yesterday before veering off on a different road. It was notably greener than it had been yesterday.

As we got farther from the city, we could clearly see the lava rocks under the grass. 

We arrived at the Lava Tunnel’s visitor center at 1345.

The bus driver used hand gestures to indicate we should exit the bus and wordlessly escorted us inside. He went up to a window, where we presume he checked us in, then he went back out to the bus without a single word to us. The person at the window had vanished and we had no idea what was going on. Someone found an employee and asked. We were told to wait in the center until 1400 for the next tour. A few others joined us that probably came in rental cars. 

The guide came into the building and introduced himself as a Greek man named Dimitris. He pointed out a rack of helmets and instructed us to each put one on.

Then we marched down a path to the tunnel’s entrance.

Looking back at the entrance from the inside.

We followed Dimitris down some stone steps and across a stone path for a short way. This was Christi turning around and taking a photo of Keith behind her as we descended down.

Then he stopped under the first hole in the ceiling and encouraged us to gather around him.

Dimitris explained how lava tunnels formed. He said this was the second largest lava tunnel in Iceland – most lava tunnels were so small they had be crawled through. He was hilariously funny — so funny he could be a stand up comedian. He did a good job of explaining how lava tunnels formed. That said, we were glad we’d seen the Lava Show because visually seeing a lava tunnel form helped a lot with our comprehension of what Dimitris was explaining.

He went on to explain that the hole in the ceiling was called a skylight, and usually most lava tunnels were found when a person or animal stepped on what they thought was solid ground that gave way, and then they fell into the tunnel below. This tunnel had three skylights close to the front that let in natural light, along with precipitation — hence the pile of snow under the skylights. We continued deeper in the cave. Dimitri pointed out a couple of casks of liquor aging near the third skylight.

Beyond the skylights, it was naturally pitch black. However, the cave owners had installed artificial lighting. We continued forward to a staircase made of metal slats, the kind of staircases that they had at ski resorts.

We came to a walkway. Sections of it were the metal made of the same metal, in other sections, the ground was stone. On both sides of the walkway were stalagmites made of ice.

Dimitri said that in the winter, there were thousands of these stalagmites and they were huge and it was really beautiful. But it was also icy and treacherous in the cave. He said that we’d come at a great time because by next week, they’d all be melted away and the cave wouldn’t be as pretty. Here was a closer in shot of each of the sides.

We came to another staircase, this one leading up… to be continued…