Although we were disappointed when our South Shore Adventure was one of our three canceled tours during our January 2020 week in Iceland, its cancellation did provide us with time to visit a couple of Reykjavik's well-known museums, to see Höfði House up close, and to participate in The Lava Tunnel (Raufarhólshellir).
We arranged for this tour via Reykjavik Excursions as soon as we confirmed that the South Shore Adventure was canceled. The Reykjavik Excursions tour included a bus ride from our hotel to the Lava Tunnel and back to our hotel. Reykjavik Excursions had canceled nearly all their tours on that day due to bad weather and closed roads (including the South Shore Adventure), but was able to keep the Lava Tunnel tour because its only about a 30 minutes drive from Reykjavik and the road to it was not closed.
As is the case with most of the Reykjavik Excursions tours with hotel pickup, we were picked up at Bus Station #12 next to our Fosshotel Reykjavik and driven to their main terminal where we walked though the terminal building to the larger buses on the other side for our bus that would take us to the Raufarhólshellir lava tunnel (the buses typically drove us directly back to our hotels without the need to transfer again at the terminal).
When we got off the bus at the lava tunnel, a wind gust hit me from behind and pushed me forward several feet. We entered the small building where we were provided with helmets with lights on them and simple crampons. We then entered the tunnel as a group with a tour guide.
The short walk from the small building to the entrance to the lava tunnel was an experience in itself with the strong wind gusts and barren landscape.
The ice formations near the areas where the lava tunnel opened to the surface were interesting.
The lava tunnel was full of beautiful colors.
The narrator was interesting and mixed comedy and science facts. They also did the thing that many cavern tours we've done in the past do and had everyone turn off the lights so that we could experience the pitch black. After the tour was over, we purchased some hot chocolate in the small building before boarding the buses to return to Reykjavik. The Lava Tunnel was an interesting experience that had similarities to the many cavern tours we had done before, but also had unique attributes of being a lava tunnel. Just entering and existing the lava tunnel in the Iceland winter weather was a different experience in itself!
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