Lava bread. Rye and whole wheat flour, milk, water, salt and baking powder. Cooked in a hole in the ground thanks to the insane geothermal layer underlying north central Ísland. Served with butter and smoked tuna and sold for a good price in Akureyri.

Anyone can dig a hole and tap into a geothermal source on public or private land, though the owner of the private land may have a word or two to say about location. This is just what our local contact, who owns a restaurant, did. And we got to have a little taste this morning.

Our restaurant-owning expert makes the dough for the bread in his kitchen, then packs it into large and small plastic containers made specially without PVCs in China. He lowers the containers into the hole for anywhere between 18 and 24 hours, depending on the weather, and covers his “oven” with a couple of steel plates weighed down with heavy rocks. Rain or snow and a lot of wind cool the “oven” lengthening average cooking times.

The dough is left overnight and then retrieved in the morning. The lava bread is dark and soft and has a cake-like texture. The bread we had was tasty, but did not come with the aforementioned butter and smoked tuna. And the restaurant owner did not have to pay an electrical bill for cooking his bread.

From using the geothermal below-ground heat to cook bread, we walked around the surface geothermal pools at Námafjall. Steam rises from mudpots and releases fumaroles consisting of extremely stinky hydrogen sulfide. This area reminded me of Yellowstone Park. It was very otherworldly and I fel like I was on the set of a sci-fi movie.

The area where people can walk is roped off. It’s not clear whether the crust above the bubbling mud pots is solid enough to hold people and I can tell you I wouldn’t want to fall into one!

Hlynur issued us with blue booties so we wouldn’t track the mucky surface area in to the bus.

As an antidote to this weird landscape with its stinky odour, we visited Godafoss Waterfall. The river water has a slight blue tinge, having come from a glacier.

We dined tonight withi Kolla who lives in Akureyri with her two daughters. OAT always arranges a home hosted visit on its trips. OAT travellers get a chance to see how the residents of the country live, and the home host often welcomes a chance to converse in English. We dined on salad, rice, potatoes and a delicious cod casserole, with cake for dessert made by her 8-year-old daughter! I am impressed! Kolla’s niece joined us for dinner, and the girls entertained us with songs and some dancing after dinner. I will leave you with one of the charming performances from this evening.