continued... We got back into the car and made the relatively short drive to the ticket booth for the Vatnshellir Cave.

Here was a view of the parking lot and Londrangar Cliffs from the ticket booth.

They told us that the next tour started in ten minutes. We were really looking forward to the tour. We’d loved the tour at Raufarhólshellir, and the locals had told us this cave was even better.

Like at Raufarhólshellir, we donned hard hats. Unlike Raufarhólshellir, we were each given a flashlight. While we waited, we read a sign about how the Snaefellsjokull Glacier was the entrance to the Earth’s core in Jules Verne’s sci-fi classic “Journey to the Center of the Earth.” They went down to the center through lava tunnels similar to the one we were about to see.  

Our guide introduced herself. She pointed out the Londrangar Cliffs and told us that the local legend was that they were a husband and wife. The short one was the husband. We followed her over to the entrance.

The staircase leading into the cave was longer and steeper than the entrance to Raufarhólshellir.

We came to a platform, where there was a door.

The door opened to the top of a steep, spiral staircase. We wondered if this tunnel was discovered when someone broke through the thin ground and fell in. Given how far the drop was, they would have been seriously injured.

At the bottom was a pile of snow. It was unbelievable to us that snow could make it inside through the two sets of doors and long tunnel between them. The guide said that the cave’s temperature was usually 1 – 2-degrees celsius (33.8 – 35.6 degrees Fahrenheit, but could get down to 0 degrees celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit).

It was pitch black and we all needed our flashlights to see. The bottom of the staircase was in a fairly narrow area. We followed her up those little steps. We thought we’d only be peeking in through the gap, but there were actually steps on the other side that lead down into the opening. And the opening turned out to be much larger than it had initially appeared.

We followed her into an area where the cave widened out significantly.

The guide stopped at the far end of the chamber. She told us the local legends about how the trolls used to inhabit the caves. The picture below was of the troll’s chair and table.

And here were a couple of shots of the troll’s Christmas tree from different angles.

Per the legends, there was a congregation of trolls that had a meeting where they decided the rules on humans entering the cave. They said that humans could go in as long as they didn’t leave anything or take anything out. If someone broke the rules, then the trolls would eat them. The guide talked extensively about the things poking out of the ground, but now we can’t remember exactly what she’d said. If we recall correctly, it was tied to the troll folklore and was probably not a natural feature of the cave.

We followed her out of that chamber, past the staircase we’d come down, and down a short walkway.

Here was a close up of the rocks that had been pushed off to the side to create the walkway.

The path led to another staircase… to be continued…