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.

continued... Shortly after we left Thingvellir National Park, the tour guide made a big deal about the continental divide line that we were about to cross on the road. We’d been on the North American side and we drove through a sizable stretch of road that the guide explained was technically defined as “nowhere” before we entered the European side. Who knew there were gaps of land that didn’t belong in either continental plate?

After we crossed into Europe, the guide told us he had a surprise for us — he’d squeezed in an extra itinerary item, a dairy farm where they made their own ice cream. Here was a shot of the scenery along the way.

The Efstidalur farm has been owned by the same family since 1850, and were committed to preserving Icelandic farming traditions. In addition to making ice cream, they also had an onsite hotel and restaurant, and rented horses for horseback riding. The guide said the ice cream was amazing and they didn’t it in the stores; this was the only place it could be purchased. The parking lot was packed with tour busses, which made parking tough. The left wing of the building was the dairy, the door on the first floor to the right was the entrance to the ice cream shop.