Continued… We continued across the field to the fourth cave.
This one was currently used as a smokehouse. It had previously been used as a smokehouse, but they’d stopped — we didn’t remember why. The government approved it being used as a smokehouse again, but they couldn’t have open fire. So they got a contained smoker that ran on sheep poop. He made a lot of jokes about that. They grew their own meat and smoked it here, and it was available for sale in the little store where we’d purchased our tickets.
continued… we continued back down the hill towards the park with the lake. Close to the church, it was primarily colorful row homes. We weren’t sure if they were large single family homes or multifamily homes.
Within a couple of blocks, we came to the swankier part of town, with larger single family residences on large lots with big yards.
As we neared the park, the houses became more fancy.
continued… We came to another staircase, this one leading to a much wider platform where it was easy for us to gather around Dimitri. He pulled out a flashlight and started explaining the various features of the cave. He showed us the cooling pattern of the outer crust on the ceiling. Once again, we were glad we’d seen The Lava Show so we already understood the concept.
He explained the various colors. Red was the primary, from the high iron content — the red was literally rust. There was also quite a bit of yellow from the sulphur. And, near the skylights, there was quite a bit of green from the moss that grew around the skylight.
He turned out the lights and it was pitch black. He turned the lights on after a few minutes of darkness and we saw glittering white. Dimitri explained that it was bacteria, and that would vanish quickly now that the lights were on again. He said the bacteria was thousands of years old, hydrophobic and didn’t need light. We thought it was weird how it hid in the light and reappeared in the dark.
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.
