Day 2: Ceara Sutton-Jones

Today is our second day in Iceland, after a comfortable night’s sleep we were all refreshed and raring to go. We had an early start to the day as our schedule was jam packed; we had breakfast at 7:30am and made our packed lunches. First of all we had a short tour of the capital city Reykjavik. Our first stop was a statue of a Viking ship with the calm sea directly behind it; this was interesting because Iceland has strong Viking history. Next we headed to the Harpa which is a modern arts centre that has a beautiful hexagonal structure; it’s like the Sage in Gateshead in terms of the arts. The building has 5 floors, and the people that weren’t scared of heights managed to go to the top to peer down and look at the view. Then we headed to a rift valley called Thingvellir where the North American and Eurasian plate are pulling apart creating a dip, we were able to walk and view the volcanic rocks and clear waters. The next thing was lava tubing! We arrived at our destination, pulled our overalls over our boots and put our helmets on. After being introduced to our guide for the day (Orri) we headed into the rocky cave which was once upon a time filled with a flow of hot lava, when the lava cooled it solidified to create rocks, some of which collapsed from the ceiling. Now it is one of the hundreds of discovered lava caves out of the potential thousands. While we were in the cave we had a minute of complete darkness where our guide told us an ancient myth about trolls which were very exciting. Thankfully we all managed to get out of the cave and we went to the bus to eat our well deserved packed lunches. After a short stop at the gas station we went to Geysir to see the geysers, there was one particular one that exploded every 3-7 minutes which was called the Strokkur which means the churn, and it was amazing to see even though it smelt of boiled eggs because of the sulphur. Our last stop was Gullfoss which is a waterfall that falls in layers because of the different kinds of rock that erode at different speeds. We walked to this waterfall and took lots of pictures with everyone along the way. When we arrived I was breath taken, the view was so pretty and the sound of the water was a perfect finish to our activities. As this was our last stop we headed to our hotel and after settling in we headed for a yummy dinner and relaxing time to round off our adventurous and memorable day.