The theme of the day was probably “lava”! We started the day under, let’s say, challenging weather conditions (light rain, significant wind, gloomy atmosphere), so we were quite happy to start the day with an indoor activity, namely the Lava Show in Vík. Their spiel is “you get to see real lava!” and, indeed, you do. It’s a 1h show with an introduction, a small movie about volcano eruptions in general and Katla in particular, and then we get to the core of the show: they pour melting lava in the room, and demonstrate how it cools down. Is it gimmicky? Absolutely. Is it very cool? Well, not really because lava is really hot, but y’know, conceptually, yes, it’s very cool.

We also got to see the furnace where they melt the lava, which was also pretty neat. Overall, the general memory is that my cheeks still feel kind of flushed from the heat! (They’re probably not. The memory is there.)

After the show, the weather was still gloomy; we still made way to the “more dangerous” black sand beach.

That beach is known for very dangerous waves, and there’s been a few accidents recently. There’s a set of lights that indicates where it should be safe to go, and here it was okay to go at the beginning of the beach (there was a map with the area to avoid), so we did that.

There’s actually less sand and more pebbles than on the other side of the mountain, but the waves are indeed more impressive (although we didn’t see anything awe-inspiring – probably for the best!). And we saw more puffins!

We do expect to have significant weather tomorrow, so our plan was to go to the Lava Center a bit after our next hotel (our planned road was much smaller today) and not get tired of the weather just yet. But there was a neat waterfall on the way, so we stopped, and the weather was significantly better by then, so we hiked 😛 The hike started with a 500-step stair (ow), but apart from that it was reasonable. And we did get not one, not two, but three waterfalls for the price of one!

We still made plans with the objective of being able to visit the Lava Centre in Hvolsvöllur, and we did manage to do that. It’s a small but well-made museum on the various ways Iceland tends to emit ash and lava; I missed a bit of more technical information on actual lava rather than volcanoes, but it was still a nice visit. There was also a series of video interviews from people who got recently evacuated from Grindavík after the recent eruptions, and it was moving.

After the museum, we had a bit of time to kill before our restaurant reservation. We ended up popping by Efra-Hvolshellar, a place where there’s a few old (settlement time or earlier, apparently) man-made caves. It was kind of creepy-weird, but it was fun to see.

Finally, we went for dinner and went back to our lodging (this night and the next we’re in a kind of studio in a group of cabins, and there’s no restaurant there). We ended the day by preparing the bags for tomorrow: we’re going to Landmannalaugar (where we kind of expect challenging weather), by bus because the road to there is not one we can drive on (especially with the car we rented!).

Oh, and today I finished my first 64G memory card in my camera. Good thing I had planned for that eventuality. Future me is wincing at the idea of sorting all this 🙂

The photo album for this day is here: Iceland – 2025-08-23.