Caving and Silfra Rift

These were a few pictures from yesterday I didn't put up because we took them later when we were heading to "second dinner." We have a thing where we like to go to dinner twice here in Iceland. I jumped so high I cleared Amanda. This picture was completely coincidental and we were quite proud of it.

This was the amazing crepe I ate at second dinner with hot fudge frozen strawberries and fresh banana (so far London and Iceland crepes have surpassed the Parisian crepes I've eaten)

Today on the way to the cave adventure we stopped in the middle of nowhere on the side of the road where they had these huge drying racks with millions of fish, it smelt amazing....ha ha. It was pretty cool because apparently they send the fish heads to Nigeria and then there they grind them into fine powder and use it for soups.

This was the caving adventure we went on...I already forgot the name of the lava cave we went to but it was really fun. 2000 years ago the volcanic eruption happened and there was an air bubble that created tubes and when the lava flowed over it this formed (something close to that anyways). At the end of this cave we also saw a dead sheep that has been anazlyzed and has been there for 200 years.

Here in Iceland they believe in hidden people-or trolls or fairies-there were a few names for them we heard, I'm not sure what the exact name is. The story in summary is basically Adam and Eve had 4 children and God decided to come visit so he could see the children. This caused Eve to get all nervous because the kids were covered in dirt and grass from playing so she told them to go wash off in the river. When God showed up, Eve noticed that two of the children were just playing  in the river but were not clean so Adam went out and told them to hide behind a rock. They then told God that they only have two children. The other two children became the hidden children and people to this day still believe that hidden people live in rocks. This makes for very twisty roads in Iceland because anytime there is a rock in the middle of construction they have to call in people to talk to the rocks to make sure no hidden people are in them. If they determine that they are they have to make the roads around the rocks. This was lunch break when Sean decided to show us how well he could jump...but ended up looking like he was one of the mysterious fairies. 

Then we headed off to the Silfra Rift where the two tectonic plates of North America and Asia separated. To prepare for the 2-4 degrees celcius water we got suited with a teddy bear suit, which is a sleeping bag with arms and legs and then covered in a dry suit. The only thing that gets wet are your hands and head, which are only covered in wet suit material. By the end your hands are freezing! But it was worth it. I also made a werid movement in the water at one point and broke my dry suit seal so I got a bit of a leak and that definitely made my body a bit cold. The visibility was amazing and Krysta captured some great videos on her GoPro for us. The water is apparently so clean that it is comparable to bottled water so we gulped it up and I don't know if it was just the coldness of it or what but it tasted amazing and so fresh. I even filled up my water bottle with it after...so I will let you know if anything happens to me in the next few days ;)

 

This is my favorite picture from the whole trip, the snorkel selfie haha

This is the harbour in Reyjkavik that we walked by later that night.

-A