Búri Cave and a visit from my brother

Last week I had the chance to leave Reykjavik several times which made for a nice change. My oldest brother, Thomas, had been back from China in the UK for a few weeks and took the opportunity to visit me for a few days. I've visited him in China four times now so it was great to have the chance to see him in Iceland and show him all the beautiful things I've seen.

Last monday, we took a trip to the Golden Circle. This was my fourth visit and I have to say I would be happy to never see it again (it's fantastic, but four times is enough!). However, this time was more exciting because Gullfoss, the waterfall, and Kerið, the crater lake, were frozen and looked very beautiful.  

For our second trip, we travelled to the South of Iceland. I've also been here before but we managed to do a few things I hadn't already done. We saw the waterfalls Seljalandsfoss and Skógarfoss and stopped at the exhibition about Eyjafjallajoküll, the volcano which erupted in 2010.

Eyjafjallajoküll

The most exciting thing we saw, and a new thing for me, was an old US Navy plane wreck on a black sand beach. The plane is a little difficult to find and involves driving along a rocky beach for quite a way. I'm sure we could have got there a lot quicker but it was incredibly windy and snowing and I had no idea what the tyres of our tiny hire car could handle so I crawled along the beach at almost walking pace to avoid destroying the car. Annoyingly there were a few other tourists coming and going whilst we were there but it didn't take away from the eery atmosphere too much. From what I can find on the internet, the plane had to make an emergency landing on the beach after running out of fuel and nobody was killed. The plane used to be fully intact but the weather has eroded much of it and apparently the farmer, whose land it is on, sold the tail of the plane.

Creating a car advert for Toyota?

Next we went to the town of Vík in the South but it was getting dark and the weather was so bad by this point that we couldn't walk far along the beach.

In fact, the weather was awful all day and maybe this picture (taken by Thomas) shows the conditions I had to drive in all day!

As well as travelling with Thomas, last week I also visited Búri, a lava cave on Reykjanes peninsula, with a group of other students. The cave was around an hour's drive outside of Reykjavik, then we had an easy hike for around 45 minutes. To enter the cave involved sliding down a small ice slope then lowering ourselves through a very narrow gap. The entrance to the cave was beautiful with icicles hanging from the ceiling. Unfortunately my camera does not do it justice!

The next few hours were tough work scrambling over icy and jagged rocks. It was a little difficult to take photos due to constantly watching my footing and not wanting to hold up the other forty people in the cave. By the end I had cuts on my knees and my legs were black and blue; I may have fallen over a few times but I certainly wasn't the only one! After a kilometre the cave came to a sudden end with a huge drop at the end so it was time to turn back.

I was a bit scared to get too much closer...

Last week was fantastic. It was great to see Thomas and get out of Reykjavik, and then the week was ended by the amazing Sónar Festival (more on that in my last post!). Hopefully I will be doing some more trips around Iceland soon... although I may have to wait for my next student loan to come through first!