Any day that starts with an ice cave…
...is bound to be a good day. Of course, it didn't start with coffee, which was suboptimal. Nothing in Vik was open at 7 AM. Nothing. We went to the parking lot for the meetup, and I had the great idea to make coffee. We had coffee, cups, and a camp stove. Yep, we had everything except water. I hadn't thought to fill the water carboy. Oh well.
We climbed aboard large van and headed out. We were on the Ring Road for maybe 10 miles, then off road for another 20-30 minutes. The guide made sure we all had our seatbelts on. This was a very good thing, since, without them, we probably would have bounced right into the van ceiling. From the parking lot, we hiked to the foot of the cave. This wasn't a long hike, but we did have to cross a couple of streams. There were rough wooden bridges across them, a sign of things to come. Our guide warned us that we would be crossing many plank bridges in the cave, and that they were pretty basic.
One thing that I noticed at both locations (glacier hike and ice cave) is the people doing maintenance at the sites. At the glacier, it was people from different companies that use the glacier for their expeditions. Here at the Katla Volcano ice cave, it was just Troll people, as they are the only ones who offer this particular trip.
When we got near the entrance, we suited up with helmets and crampons. These crampons were more like Yaktrax, in that they were elasticized and stretched over your boots, but they were spiked on the bottom for good footing (not coils, like Yaktrax).
The whole thing was amazing. The bridges were rough, and we had to wait for one of them to be put in place before we could cross, but it was so cool! (There was glacial melt flowing under these bridges.) The cave was large, but open at both ends so there was plenty of light. One of the most interesting things to me was being able to see the layers of ash in the walls, knowing that each represented another volcanic eruption.
I just realized that all of these pictures look like they were in black and white, but you can see color in the ice in the last image (and, of course, the plank bridges). Anyway, it was amazing and absolutely worth doing!
After we got back to Vik, we finally got our caffeine fix (actually, this may have been when we went to Skool Beans, not on Friday). Regardless, caffeine was welcome! Then we jumped in the campervan and headed east to Glacier Lagoon and Diamond Beach. I'd tried to book a zodiac ride in the lagoon, but they were all booked. We even checked into a duck boat ride when we got there, but we would have had to wait for several hours and it wasn't worth that much time to us. So we wandered along the lagoon, then headed over to Diamond Beach. This time, all of the ice bergs were on the south side beach, so we drove there. There were grey seals in the river, which was fun to see.
From there, we headed back to Vik. Oh, I almost forgot my experience with the death terns! On the drive east, I saw a lot of terns in a field by the road, and it turned out to be a nesting colony of Arctic terns. I pulled off the road and got out to look, and the birds were clearly not happy with me. I got some pictures of a few nestlings and a bunch of adults, then we drove across the street to a coffee shop. There was another colony in the field by the coffee shop. I got out and stood by the van, just looking at the birds from the parking lot. This, apparently, broke Arctic tern laws.
I later learned that these guys are known to be very agressive. Some colonies have warning signs. Now I know.
From there, it was back to Vik for our last night at the campground there. I know we must have eaten dinner somewhere, but I have no memory of what we ate.
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