Reykjavík Grapevine - des. 2020, Blaðsíða 31

“Are you underwater!?” my mum’s
Whatsapp pings through on the last
wisp of 3G available in the Sapphire
Ice Cave.
I’m not—but she’s right, I could be.
Carved into dimples by the wind, the
intensely blue ceiling looks more like
the ripples of a lake than any form of
ice I’ve ever known or seen before. Jess,
Art and Tinna, our guide from tour
company Local Guide of Vatnajökull,
have all disappeared around the cor-
ner. I hold back, unwilling to dip my
not-particularly-waterproof shoes into
the glacial stream that twists into nar-
row tunnels somewhere beyond them.
Race from Reykjavík
Sitting in the Grapevine offices just
over a week ago, wrapped in a blanket
and gazing passive-aggressively at the
broken radiator in the corner, I asked
myself the question any sane intern
would eventually ask themselves: I may
have spent two and a half months in
Iceland, but have I really seen enough
ice? And without a visit to the ice caves
of the Vatnajökull National Park, the
answer would of course have been no.
This was the existential gripe our
resident photographer Art sought to
fix when he drove us interns 400km
east to the Vatnajökull glacier. He
spared no horses, fuelled by the bare
essentials of Route 1 travel: black cof-
fee and sheer, steely determination.
Plus a mild to moderate amount of
Taylor Swift playing on the bluetooth
speaker, intermittently drowned out
by the sound of studded tyres skidding
through the snow. To be fair, he said he
didn’t mind.
Now I am, for all intents and pur-
poses, alone in an ice cave. It’s probably
not where I expected to be on a Satur-
day afternoon in November. A hole in
the ceiling surrounded by icicles lets
the outside light through like a chan-
delier, the walls are glowing a deep
blue, and the wind which made it dif-
ficult to walk down by Jökulsárlón has
disappeared completely. There is only
silence, and the faint trickle of water.
Gals on tour
These caves, Tinna explained, change
every year, formed by the meltwater
canals that run off the glacier in the
summer. This is the second year the
Sapphire Ice Cave has been accessible,
but it has changed shape since last
year, shifting one hundred metres or
so further back into the glacier.
Eventually the torchlights return
and Jess and Tinna reappear. They are
shortly followed by Art, who frantically
asks me to shine my torch against the
ice to help him get a photo, then puts
his foot in a stream of glacial meltwa-
ter. For some reason, all I can think of
is The Tundra Rap from The Mighty
Boosh: Ice flow, nowhere to go, Lost in
the blinding whiteness of the tundra...
The sun has almost disappeared
when we return to Local Guide’s gigan-
tic Ford—they call her Kata—us thud-
ding back over the rocks towards the
glacier lagoon. Jess and I sit in the back
eating Haribo Peaches and wonder
aloud whether we think the hotel will
have cocktails. By the time we reach
Art’s rental car it has started snowing.
The wind blows the flakes towards the
windscreen and in the headlights they
look like fireworks.
The hotel, thank goodness, had
cocktails—and more importantly a
two for one happy hour deal on prosec-
co (It was Jess’s birthday). With a glass
in each hand, we headed to our hotel
room, put on our hotel-issue dressing
gowns and had both passed out from
ice-cave-prosecco induced exhaustion
by 10 p.m.
Travel distance
from Reykjavík:
380 km, Route 1
Tour provider:
localguide.is
Accomodation:
fosshotel.is
Car provided by:
gocarrental.is
Ice Flow,
Nowhere To Go
Explorin! the ice caves of the Vatnajökull !lacier
Words: Iona Rangeley-Wilson Photos: Art Bicnick
Travel
A cold day at the o!ce for Jess & Iona
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31The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 10— 2020
One ring to cool them all...