For those of you who don’t know, Icelandair offers a special deal where you can fly between the US and Europe with a stopover in Reykjavik. What makes this stopover unusual is that you can get off the plane for as many as seven days in Iceland without paying any extra for your fare. I used my airline miles to book this flight and planned a four day layover in Iceland, about all I figured my travel budget could handle.
I was fortunate to have talked to friends beforehand who continually emphasized the high cost of everything in Iceland. This is the reason I booked both my rental car and my hostels one year in advance, immediately after securing my airline reservation. I didn’t want to end up in the position of having to pay even higher costs because of a limited number of choices.
My first night was booked at a hostel about three hours from the airport. I was to arrive at 3pm so I figured I had plenty of time to get to the hostel before 7. Normally I don’t care to arrive in a town after dark, but it was May in Iceland, and dark wouldn’t come until around 10:30pm.
The plane arrived on time, and I was in my rental car within an hour. I was initially put off by the scenery outside of Reykjavik which didn’t look a whole lot different than the eastern side of the Oregon: brown grasses with towering basalt cliffs. After two hours of the same, I began to regret that I had planned three days in this overpriced destination.
At the beginning of the third hour, however, things began to change. Snow and lakes appeared in the landscape, and what can only be described as angry clouds menaced in circles overhead. I pulled over to snap some pictures as icy rain ricocheted off the ground. My spirits were lifted by this all of a sudden fantastic terrain.
My three hour drive turned to four and then five as I pulled over continuously to shoot photos of the drama taking place between land and sky. I was a little concerned about showing up too late as the hostel reception closed at nine, not yet being the high season. While I did arrive in time for check in, I was informed that the grocery store was closed and there was only one restaurant open. This was the last time I arrived in a place without a food supply.
I went to the sole purveyor of food and ordered a pizza. It wasn’t until I entered the price into my currency converter that I realized I had paid $39 for a 12 inch pizza. To justify the cost somewhat, I decided to save half of it for lunch the next day. I enjoyed my pizza with a glass of wine from the bottle I’d purchased in the duty free shop earlier.
Of course duty free is a ripoff, with any savings on taxes offset by the high cost of the product. In the case of Iceland, however, I think I made out well with a reasonably priced bottle I picked up at the Amsterdam airport. The key was to drink a quarter of the bottle a day so as to avoid having to buy anymore on this island about as distant from a vineyard as I could be and still be on earth.
I spent the rest of the evening confirming my upcoming accommodations and researching my route for the next day. It was still light outside when I went to sleep, and the sun awoke me around 4am the next morning. Given that I only had 72 hours to enjoy this island, I had no problem maximizing the daylight and hopped out of bed.
The storm clouds were still racing across the sky challenging me to snap pictures during the short intervals of sunlight. Because it had become colder overnight, the rain had turned to snow. When I picked up my rental car, I was surprised that it was still fitted with studded tires since it was May, but with snow covering the road in the morning, I was grateful for my added traction.
I wound through the hills of the Snaefellsjoekull peninsula enjoying my vistas at ever decreasing intervals until I was driving through a full blizzard. Just before the white out, I caught a glimpse of the valley below, and I decided to wait out the storm in order to get a picture from above. After 15 minutes, the snow had accumulated about an inch on the road, and I decided maybe it would be better to get down the hill while my tires could still make contact with the pavement.
It was a slow cautious decent, and I was relieved when the snow turned to rain, and I entered a lush green valley hemmed in by mist shrouded cliffs. I found an empty coffee shop staffed by a frenchman who had come to work there for the summer. We talked of highway conditions, weather, and his favorite parts of the island before I continued on. As I drove on, I observed a startling detail he had shared with me: Iceland has no trees!
I had to cover much of the same route I’d driven the day before as I was headed to the southern part of the island from this northwestern finger. On my way there, I drove through a long tunnel that crossed beneath Hvalfjordur bay, and I was surprised on the other end by a toll booth that charged me $10. I determined to remove that from my day 2 budget by driving around the edge of the bay. This also provided a way to avoid driving again through Reykjavik which was surprisingly choked with traffic as I passed through from the airport.
The bypass inadvertently dropped me onto the Golden Circle, the most frequently traveled loop out of Reykjavik by those who only limit their layover to only one day. I was disappointed, not just because it wasn’t nearly dramatic as the scenery I’d seen in the first part of the morning, but because for the first time that day I was sharing the road with other drivers.
Knowing I would return the same way the following day, I took note of places I might want to stop instead of stopping constantly. The weather had cleared up completely, however, so I felt compelled to make more stops than I planned since I didn’t know if the weather would be as good the next day.
Again the area just outside of Reykjavik was not so impressive but as I continued south, massive glaciers and waterfalls began to appear on the landscape. It had snowed there overnight as well, and the brown basalt cliffs that bored me the day before were much more stunning with their seams defined in black and white.
With 3 hours still ahead of me, I filled the tank with gas as I left the last sizable town for awhile. Because I planned to get up early, I couldn’t count on any gas stations being open by the time I needed them. As I left the town, I pulled over to pick up two hitchhikers.
I’d done this several times in Australia and New Zealand, sympathetic to the plight of people who didn’t have a car in lands with great distances between points. They were both from Israel, and it was their first trip abroad. I was impressed that Iceland was their first attempt at foreign travel and grateful for their company as my conversation with them helped to pass the time on the way to my destination. I dropped them off about 2 hours later at the mouth of a canyon they told me they planned to hike into.
My hostel turned out to be in the middle of nowhere with an excellent view of it out the large picture window from the dining room. The flat landscape expanded out until it reached the sea, punctuated only by a meandering creek dotted with large white geese foraging along the banks. In the distance you could see the whites of the waves as they crashed upon the shore.
Having learned my lesson the night before, I had picked up groceries in the afternoon. This was even more relevant given the remote nature of the hostel. The girl at the reception desk informed my that indeed all the restaurants in the closest town, 30 miles away, would be closed by now.
In a strange coincidence, I met a girl in the common room who was also from Israel. I wondered about the odds of meeting three people from such a small country so far away. She had spent the previous 3 weeks working on a cattle ranch in exchange from room and board, and she was on her way to the north side of the island where she would now work with goats, animals she thought would require a lot less effort to manage in exchange for a roof over her head.
Morning came early again, and I shared the kitchen with a French couple I hadn’t seen the night before. In an unusual exchange, she asked if I spoke French; when I said “no, I only speak English and Spanish”, she said Spanish would be easier for her. So here we were, a couple from France and a guy from the US speaking Spanish as our common tongue. They were having a traditional French breakfast which means I left the hostel before they even got all off their food on the table.
It was pouring rain, and I was beginning to regret not stopping more the day before while the weather was good, but by the time I got to my first stop the clouds had disappeared and I was able to fully absorb the glass block like nature of the chunks of ice that had calved from the glacier upstream of my location. The pullout was at the mouth of a river, and it continuously delivered ice into the sea. Many chunks of ice, however, were brought back to the shore on waves, and the black sand beach was littered with glistening white forms of ice that were shaped as intricately as if a sculptor had carved them.
For this unique experience, I stayed almost two hours photographing the different shapes, textures, and arrangements of these natural works of art against a black canvas of basalt pebbles. The variation of ice was incredible with some smooth like marble and others rough like pumice. Their textures sent light through them differently and even caused some to glow against the dark sand.
Aware of the many stops I had ahead, I continued on, stopping whenever I came across something unusual, which was frequent in this land as exotic as the surface of Mars. At one point, I sped by several cars stopped on the side of the road and looked back to see a waterfall I had noted to stop by the day before. I remembered it specifically thinking to myself it would be impossible to see when coming from the other direction. Had the other cars not been stopped there, I would have done just that.
I hopped out of the car and took some pictures before I noticed two familiar shapes along the shore above the falls. I waved, and the two Israeli guys from the day before waved back. We talked a bit about their night and how they got to this spot. While chatting, I noticed they were filling their water bottles straight out of the stream. I asked them whether they were concerned about giardia, and they said it was probably some of the purest water on the planet. I agreed and ran back to the car to get my water bottle, knowing that at least I would be home by the time any consequences of my decision hit.
Since we were going opposite directions, I bid them good luck and continued on, stopping at all the places I’d noted the day before. One spot I’d researched required getting off the main road a bit, but when I got to the end of the road, I noticed everyone else found this place in their research. It was a spot where giant basalt columns ran along the black sand beach to a point where just off shore three columns of stone stood watch like a set of lighthouses warning ships away from the point.
As in other populated places I’ve visited, getting a picture without people was relatively impossible, and I had to wait for almost 20 minutes to get a break where I could zoom in just enough to capture the geometric stone surface of these towering walls of lava frozen in time, a standoff where both land and sea refuse to give way.
My daily coffee, the only meal out I afforded myself while traveling Iceland, was enjoyed from the inside of a large glass wall overlooking the ocean. Since it is my only luxury, I try to make sure the ambience matches the experience. Fortunately, coffee is the one reasonably priced item served at cafes, restaurants, and gas stations throughout Iceland. The reason is that the distance are so great, they want to do what they can to keep people awake on these long lonely roads.
The Israeli guys had been surprised that I was planning to drive 12 hours each day, but I told them it was the only way to cover all the ground I wanted to cover, and as a professional driver, I was used to being behind the wheel all day long. At a point it’s like running or cycling where it ceases to be an effort, and you just do it automatically. I know that sounds a little dangerous, but on these sparsely driven roads, at worst, I was only a threat to myself and my rental car.
There were supposedly moose and reindeer on the island, but I can’t say I saw anything other than domesticated farm animals, which I had been informed I would have to pay for should I hit any of them. Of birds, there were plenty, but they didn’t present much of a risk to my driving other than my taking my eyes off the road as I tried to identify them while passing at 70 mph.
I returned to Reykjavik in the evening. The hostel was more like a hotel that had 4 sets of bunk beds instead of a queen size bed in each room.There was a kitchen and a common room, but the place lacked the charm of the first two hostels I’d stayed in. Still, there was a great view of the ocean out the giant picture window, and it was located across the street from the grocery store. Being in the city, it was open late, but the produce left a lot to be desired so I ended up going with pasta and sauce as my last meal abroad.
They do grow produce in Iceland. I’m even told you can get locally grown bananas, but that’s because they’re grown in giant greenhouses. It must be a laborious task because domestically grown produce is no cheaper than anything else there, and I wasn’t about to overpay for a less than average apple when I could get one from Oregon the next day.
I consumed my meal and went to sleep, pleased that I had no reason to wake up early the next day. I didn’t come to Iceland to see a city, but I did spend about an hour walking the streets of Reykjavik in weather so harsh I wondered if I would be leaving the island that day. I consoled myself with the fact that a pilot flying for Icelandair would probably be used to flying in turbulent conditions.
As the battle between winter and spring continued, I was pelted with hail that fell to the ground and immediately evaporated into steam due the sunlight that had been warming everything just minutes earlier. Next was the wind driving the little pelts horizontally so that my pictures of Reykjavik resembled more than the static screen on a television set than a charming town of colorful houses with gabled roofs.
The drive back to the airport in my rental car was as challenging as walking the town had been, but the rain stopped about the time I got there, and I was able to walk the 10 minutes from the rental car drop off to the terminal without getting wet.
My direct flight from Reykjavik to Portland would take only 8 hours, and I made arrangements to meet a friend for drinks after work. We both laughed that we were making arrangements for that evening while she was at her office in Portland and I was in an airport in Iceland. As expected, the takeoff was smooth and I looked down over the last of my Scandinavian countries with a mix of sadness that my trip was over but excitement at returning home to the first bed, in the past five months, that I would sleep in for more than two days.
>>This story is for my dad, who continues to encourage me to travel and write and recently told me he missed my travel stories.