A Journey to the Centre of the Earth, Destination Budir

25.10.19

We woke up at first light to discover it was nearly 9am! We had waterfalls to find!

We continued hugging the coastline of the peninsula, passing through several small fishing villages.

This unassuming beauty was in the backyard of an apartment block in Olafsvik.

Nearly, but not quite completely frozen. Stunning.

The little town of Rif is a blink and you’ll miss it place, except for this isolated little chapel, high on a hill with Snaefellsjokull glacier keeping a watchful eye over her.

We were now in Snaefellsjokull National Park, dominated of course by Snaefellsjokull, standing at 1446m. Saxholl Crater was our first stop. The view from the top was spectacular. So is the staircase that gets you there. The stair is made of 3m long modules that hold 7 steps each joined by stingers and risers. Not sure what stingers and risers are, but they make the stairs act like a necklace, so the stairs wind their way around the circular crater walls. Ingenious! So much so, they won an international design award last year!

The road continued to wrap around the glacier, flanked on either side by lava fields and lava tubes.

Now this is the country of French writer Jules Verne, who used the glacier as the setting for his 1886 book Journey to the Centre of the Earth.

In his book, a German geologist and his son embark on an epic journey into the Snaefelles crater guided by a 16th century Icelandic text:

” Descend into the crater of Snaefelles, auspicious traveller, and you will reach the Centre of the Earth.”

We came across one of the lava tubes, now Cave Vatnshellir, and decided we should journey to the centre of the earth ourselves! Donning hard hats and torches, we disappeared through a magic doorway and descended a spiral staircase!

The bones were those of an arctic fox, the only sign of life found in the cave (apart from lichen). Our guide David, explained that caves in Iceland don’t have stalagtites and stalagmites because the water is so pure it doesn’t have the additives like lime, salt and calcium to form them. Any formations we saw were made of lava.

At one point, we all had to turn our torches off, and David sang an Icelandic song, softly and gently, in pure blackness. It sent a shiver up your spine.

You’ll be surprised to know we didn’t reach the centre of the earth, but had we managed to burrow our way through, a signpost on the surface told us which way was home.