Lava Tubes

Before my final day in Iceland I tried numerous times to get booked in for a joint Snorkelling - Spelunking tour where you would go snorkelling at the continental ridge and then spelunking down in some caves where lava used to flow. Unfortunately, they didn't have enough people to run the tour. So I had to pick one and I decided on the lava caves.
I was picked up from the hostel and driven out towards the Blue Lagoon into the lava fields created when Reykjavik's nearest volcano last erupted about 1000 years ago. We parked on the side of a gravel road and walked about 300 yards off the road where we found part of a lava tube collapsed, so that there were two cave entrances facing eachother. We went into one and slowly adjusted our eyes to the lack of light. We had our headlamps, and they were invaluable to keep an eye on where you were stepping. The caves are slowly falling apart as water gets in cracks and breaks off chunks of the walls and roof, ensuring that the floor is strewn with large boulders and plates of rock. The texture in the cave was extremely different from the ones I've seen in America; while sandstone caves are ground away by water, the lava tubes are created by hot rivers of lava that flow along the bedrock, harden on the top, then continue flowing down a slope to the sea, leaving hollow tubes underground. On the floor, you can see hardened 'waves' where it looks like ripples in water, the sides are generally scraped away and the roof is covered with droplets of rock that splashed and hardened there before it could drip off the ceiling. The result is an amazing array of different surfaces to look at. In the ceiling, any of the broken stalactites reveal a porous rock where hot gases were trying to escape before the rock formed. Very neat! A couple spots in the cave we had to get right down on our stomachs and crawl through. At one point, we shut off all our lamps and just sat in the cave listening to the darkness. There was absolutely no light. I used my camera on its longest exposure and still got a black screen. You couldn't see a difference with your eyes closed or open, or even if you had your hand over your eyes. Very creepy. We crawled out of the cave and went back to the van and drove the half hour or so back to Reykjavik.
With my last half-day in Reykjavik, I decided to see the last thermal pool I hadn't been to, and a couple more museums. The Numismatic museum was fairly small and boring, as there's very little history of coinage and money in Iceland. Private traders issued their own currency right up until the 1800s! Then the national bank was formed. The most interesting thing is that they've found 6 roman coins dating from the 1st - 3rd century AD scattered around Iceland. They have no idea how they got there or when.
From there I went to the Viking museum, which is really just a fishing museum. It talks all about the naval history of Iceland, but that's like a small display on merchant ships and a few wings on fishing. :P That said, it was actually a pretty good display.
After the museums, I took the bus across town to the last thermal pool in Reykjavik that I hadn't been to. Luckily, it was nearby the ice cream shop I visited earlier, so I got another skor bit-rolled, caramel-dipped ice cream cone. :D mmmm. So, 5 days 5 hot springs. Good trip. :D
I got a Danish open-faced eel sandwich for dinner on the way home. Sadly, it came cold which I wasn't expecting. Stupid Danes. I figured I had to have some sort of coastal fish dish that I couldn't get back home, eel seemed to fit, but cold!? eeewww!
I went to bed shortly after, as I had to get up at 4am the next day to catch my bus to the airport to catch my flight to Amsterdam.