Iceland Day 2, waterfall cave!

The main and only reason we are in Iceland this year is to go to the waterfall cave. We went the first year we came to the northern lights cave and crystal cave, but not to this one. This was a private guided tour to the cave. We had a quick breakfast at our hotel, yogurt and granola for me, wrapped up some bread for later snacks and off we went to the ice lagoon to meet our guide and our other photographer friends who had actually made it to the lagoon after the roads had reopened. A quick exploring around and a few photos of sunrise were nice to get our fingers warm since it's the first time I've taken out my camera since we've been here. The biggest difference that I have noticed is the extreme number of people and tourists who are now here. It is crazy and makes it not as pristine and quiet. It's unfortunate because there is so much beauty here and wonderful for people to be able to see and explore but respectfully. One of my biggest pet peeves is rude tourists. Ok, rant over. Still beautiful, just not as pristinely quiet. We found our guide, Stephan, in a huge 4x4 red monster truck and the three of us plus our three photo friends, jumped in to the truck. And when I say jump in, I literally mean jump. At one point during the journey out to the cave, I had to jump out of the truck, at least 5 feet to get out. Well the journey was an adventure in itself. Iceland is having the warmest winter in a very long time. The blizzard we drove in yesterday was their first big winter storm. There was a lot of snow on the ground and to get out to the caves, we had to let air pressure out of our tires, about 6lbs, and go on a dirt, snow, sort of road up and down hills, over rivers, if there were woods, I would write that right now too, and on lots of ice. We ended up getting stuck multiple times. The first time was at the bottom of a steep hill at a river crossing and we just sunk in. Everyone got out except for me to take photos and Stephan got the shovel to dig out the front tires. My hiking boots are not waterproof (and I had already gotten them soaked earlier taking some photos so my socks and feet were wet and cold to begin the day). As everyone jumped out of the truck a few of the guys sunk in so far they got their boots wet. Everyone else had waterproof boots and crampons, except for me. After about 15 minutes and several tries, we finally got loose. We all thought it would be a good idea for the guys outside still to walk across the ice above the river to take some photos of the truck driving through, so Joe started to walk across and within a matter of seconds, he had stepped right through the ice and his next step totally in the water, almost waist deep and he tried clambering and crawling to get to the other side without getting his camera wet. He was successful and we all laughed but felt really badly for him because now he was soaked! We made it past that point and got stuck again in super deep awkward snow on our side so at this point, I jumped out to take some photos. All was good and a few minutes later of shoveling, we were unstuck! It took us about 2.5 hours to get out to the sign where we parked the truck. Stephan gave us harnesses and rope lines with carabiners, ice climbing crampons, and helmets with headlights. We were ready. The hike began in a rocky snow field and continued out towards the glacier gaining a little bit of elevation. When we made it to the glacier, we flew the drone for a bit over it as the light was better then rather than later in the day. Then the hike uphill began and we needed to put our helmet on and our crampons (though everyone else had been wearing their smaller crampons). Stephan taught us the trick for clicking our carabiners onto the rope line (so we didn't fall off the icy cliff), using one hand only to switch carabiners from one rope to another and putting our carabiners on right side and backwards to catch us correctly. I think we were all a bit nervous and excited at this point. Up we went until we got to the top of the hill just before descent into the cave, where we had to stop as the line was so buried in snow we couldn't continue. Stephan decided to take us down one by one because it would have taken him too long to dig out the line. After the first person went down he decided that we were all outdoorsy and could make it down without help. Down we went. The snow helped make nice steps down. The cave beckoned us and there were two caves this year there which made it really neat.
It took us 3.5 hours to get out there. We had about 1.5 hours to explore the cave and take some photos. The blue ice is magical and I love the detail shots from inside the cave. Water rushing through the cave was loud but nice. Of course, I would have liked to get some photos from the water, but no water shots for me without my snow boots! The time went by quickly and soon it was time to head back. We were in the cave all by ourselves the entire time. We didn't see anyone else the whole day. A long hike out and a fun drive out where at the end we had to blow the tires back up and that took 15 minutes so I got out and took some photos! By the time we got back to the lagoon, it was almost 5! We thought we would be back at 1! It was a great day! We said goodbye to our friends and drove back to Vik to spend the night as we would be three hours closer to the airport. It started snowing just as we left and more snowy, windy roads were in store for us for the next few hours. We made it safely around 8:30 and we knew that restaurants stop serving at 9, so we checked in and quickly went in search of some food. Aarons cousin was doing a photo workshop here and he happened to be at a restaurant nearby so we went there to say hi and see if we could eat. We said hi, but the place was so busy they couldn't accommodate us! We quickly googled if there was anything else in the town and luckily there was one more restaurant. We went there and had pizza and grill chicken pasta. Pretty good! Then it was shower in the shared bathroom, which is gross, and bedtime.