Iceland = ice blocks

I'm sitting in the Keflavik airport right now outside my gate, waiting for my next flight out of Iceland. I have to admit, I'm a little ready to get out of here. For the past day, my feet have been two blocks of ice! I'm very sorry for the lack of communication, especially on this my first stop, but there was really nothing I could do about it. I'm unsure, even typing this now, when I'll actually be able to post my next update.

It is 2:34am in Colorado right now. Neither my phone nor iPad have been able to connect to anything to tell them they're on the other side of the world, and I've experienced moments these last two days when it seems like my body was missing the very same update. Let's start with the flight out first, though, just to keep things in order.

The last person I talked to was Popi. My flight had been delayed by two hours, which turned out to be a good thing because I had forgotten until the very last minute to call my bank and let them know I'd be abroad for 3 months. I was able to score a window seat but it was right over the left wing, leaving my with a sore neck as I twisted to try and catch sight of something from either window beside me. There was no one in the middle seat and an old lady at the aisle; before takeoff, I introduced myself and discovered she was Siegfried from Sweden, immigrated to the states and Nw Hampshire back in the '60s, returning home on a 5-week visit. We chatted for a bit, I helped her buckle her seat belt. Later on in the flight I wish I had never said hello because as I tried to sleep she tried to keep talking, and talking, and talking!! She even moved into the seat next to me because the chair in front of her was was so far leaned back it made watching the inflight movie uncomfortable for her.

The flight itself was very amazing. I flew via Icelandair; as I walked aboard, the ladies at the doorway passed out bottles of Iceland glacier water. On each headrest, pillow, and napkin were various phrases in Icelandic. The inflight blankets were very warm and I almost stole one. Later, when I was freezing, I could have kicked myself for not! We took off right about midnight, Boston time. As we left the bright orange lights of the city behind, sailing above a ceiling of thick clouds, I was amazed by the view of the stars. There were so many to see and they were so bright that I had to convince myself we weren't just flying besides thousands of other airplanes. I managed to drift off to sleep after some time, when my Swedish friend became engrossed in the movie, and woke up about two hours later to one of the most spectacular sunrises I've ever seen. It looked like a slowly approaching brilliance, like I was in a dark music box that was cracking open and I could almost hear the music of the day-breaking world begin to play all around me.

I finally landed in Keflavik, catching a bus for the 45minute drive into the capital of Reykjavik and arriving at about 9:45am. From there, it was a 15 minute walk to my guest house right in the heart of the city. I was supposed to be staying with a woman named Sabrina, and she welcomed me in with a huge hug. She mentioned something about another boarder who'd arrived earlier and who'd rented a car, an Italian who wanted to know if I wanted to go tour the northern part of the island with him. Since he had left and she wasn't sure when he'd be back, I promised to be back by at least 4pm to meet him. Then I grabbed my bag and started touring Reykjavik.

It was bitterly cold outside but at least it was sunny. I hugged myself as I walked around, hopping from one side to another side of the street to stay in the sunlight. I stopped at the city center to put on my socks, since I'd taken them off while we walked through Boston. I was randomly interviewed by a group of schoolchildren who wanted to know if I worried about the volcano (I didn't). I saw an enormous church that was designed to look like an erupting volcano; I saw a statue of the bones of a Viking ship, sitting by the oceanfront with an ominous air; the city hall contained a 3D topographic model of the island. I stopped for lunch at a deli, grabbing an egg sandwich on flatbread that tasted smokey, like a campfire. By the time I'd walked the entire city, it was only 12:30pm. The city sights are all clustered around a large lake in the middle of the place, and it is not a very large city for being a capital. I've learned that there are about 318,000 people total living inn Iceland, with ~225,000 living in the capital, ~100,000 living in the area immediately around the city, and the remainder scattering in wide handfuls around the island itself.

I returned to the guesthouse feeling completely exhausted by the lack of sleep and fighting the wind during my walking. There were black drapes to pull down at the windows so I pulled them down, curled into bed, and fell asleep. Sabrina woke me up about 30 minutes later to tell me that the Italian had returned, ready to head to the north, and so I was introduced to Ares Lorenzin. I grabbed my bag, hopped in the car, and we took off. For the next two days, Ares and I drove the northwestern part of the island, hiking up mountains and staring at waterfalls.

Iceland is such a gorgeously wild place! The people there absolutely believe in monsters and elves; walking around at some points, I could see why. There were enormous lava fields where in between sheets of black, sponge-looking rocks were the softest moss pits I've ever walked on. Ares spotted a mountain along the road that looked as it were made of gravel; we stopped and tried to hike up it, but after an hour of effort we had only gotten halfway up and had sunk in to our knees at some points: we had taken the car mats with us and tried to slid to the bottom but, well, it didn't work that well. We hiked to the highest waterfall on the island and, along the way, took generous gulps from the cold, pure mountain stream. We drove up to Broganes, at the bottom of the peninsula directly above Reykjavik, and there stopped at a place where the ocean had receded to leave behind a lake of black mud so thick, it looked like quicksand clay. We stayed there for a long time, laughing at the sucking noise rocks made when we threw them in, trying to make a picture with the stones we tossed. It was about 10:30pm at that point, but the sun was still bright enough to make it feel like it was only 4. We talked about books, about ways of communicating, and then we decided to just camp there that night and watch the sun set above this black lake. Unfortunately, about an hour later, we were told we had to pay to camp there, so we drove off to another site near a farm of Icelandic ponies and watched the sun hide behind some distant mountains, finally setting at 11:15pm.

Except it never got dark. It was as if the sun were just hiding out of sight. The sky stayed lit up, the way it is just before sunrise. We put our car seats back and tried to sleep, but I felt like it was continually time to wake up. The temperature dropped and dropped; Ares had lent me a warm windbreaker, but my legs and my toes froze and kept me awake along with the sunlight. We had unzipped a sleeping bag to share between us, but it did nothing keep me warm. I shivered, I tried to burrow my face inside the jacket, I curled my legs up beneath me and tried to rub heat back into my toes -- nothing worked and i was miserable. At some point, though, I managed to drift to sleep. Ares woke me for the sunrise at 3am and I stared zombie-like out the window, watching the sun come back after having never really gone away. I grabbed a scarf, wrapped it over my eyes, and finally drifted back to sleep. I woke again at 6am, the sun being too bright to ignore, and after Ares woke we drove off in search of a hot breakfast only to find that everything was still closed. So we continued north.

The sky, which the day before had been perfectly clear, was now completely overcast. It stayed cold and the wind howled. I shivered constantly. The car did not have hot air and so the windows continually fogged up. We drove for an hour and I told him I was still exhausted, so we pulled over and slept some more. At this point, my body pretty much shut down and I slept soundly for two hours. When I woke up and we continued driving, it was 11am (7am Denver time). We continued the road north, ending up at a town which sounds like Sticks, where there is a ferry to go to the furthest northwest peninsula on the island. We stopped and finally got a warm meal, eating burgers at a fish restaurant. The food instantly made me feel better. Ares wanted to take the ferry but I had begun to worry about getting back to Reykjavik in time to shower and actually sleep in a bed, so we headed south instead, taking a road that followed the ocean around a glacier.

The overcast storm clouds broke open and ice rain began pouring down on us. For the first few stops, I joined Ares in walking around. We walked through more lava fields, up to the top of a lighthouse hill, and through black sand lava beaches. But I was still only wearing sandals and once my feet got cold, I stayed in the car, refusing to budge outside into the icy wind and the icier rain. Ares liked to stop at every interesting thing alongside the road; he liked to stop to see if a place had doughnuts, he liked to stop if he saw a waterfall -- and there were waterfalls every other mile. We were making terribly slow time and finally, around 5pm, I asked him to start heading back. We were still 3-4 hours away from Reykjavik and warm showers. He still wanted to see all the sights but, with the terrible sleep the night before and the terrible weather all day, I was done being a tourist and only wanted to sleep in an actual bed. He started driving south and the ride was a little awkward at first, me feeling a little guilty abut cutting his sightseeing short but also feeling miserably cold, and him being quiet. Eventually, though, we resumed our good conversation.

Ares is a good person with a very nice sense of humor. He has funny pun jokes and a light sense of sarcasm that took me by surprise. For instance, the hike to the highest waterfall was very far, 10km by map; as we drove by it on the way back, he casually asked if I wanted to "take a little hike to the highest waterfall in Iceland, only a very short walk." He came from a town about 3hrs north of Venice, along the board with Austria, and works as a masseuse. He had decided to fly to Iceland only 4 days before, actually flying there 2 days before I got there. He has a love of the water and would have spent hours watching waterfalls if I hadn't been there to keep us moving.

We arrived at the guesthouse at 10:30pm. Sabrina had not been expecting Ares to return and had no room for him so he had to sleep again out in the car. She barely had a place for me to sleep! I curled up under a heavy down blanket and gratefully, warmly went to bed after chatting with Sabrina about DIA of all things for over an hour! My flight out was at 8am and, hearing that had planned on walking to the bus station at 4:45am to catch a bus ride to the airport, Ares volunteered to driving me there instead. He drove up at 5am and we had our last good conversation on the way to the airport. He walked me in, we hugged goodbye, and he insisted that I consider visiting him when I am in Italy. He isn't flying back until Sunday morning, but on Tuesday he has made plans with some friends to fly out to the Netherlands. It might work out that we will meet again there, to tour the flower markets and watch the windmills. Hopefully the weather will not be so rainy!

So I've come away with ice for feet and a good Italian friend. I'm glad to have come to Iceland. I didn't see the great Geysir or the great Galfoss, but I saw many other waterfalls and walked along black beaches, going to places that were much farther into Iceland than I would have imagined, paces normal tourists do not go! And I made a very good friend with a man addicted to sugary doughnuts!

This has taken a good hour to write up. I have now boarded my plane destined for Glasgow. There is a couple beside me, an older couple, and they are speaking in a mixture of English and something else I don't recognize. The plane beside us is Iron Maiden on their final 2011 World Tour. We will be taking off shortly and then, more adventure!
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