Iceland and then some: Arrival in Iceland 6/10/2010

Sleep was really hard to come by on the flight--likely because IcelandAir blesses each passenger with their own TV monitor. I watched 2 movies--Office Space (out of control), and Marley & Me. Luke watched Avatar. Our plane finally landed after 6 1/2 hours and we unloaded...oh, when the plane landed, we were pretty sure it landed on one wheel and then had to swerve to stay on the runway. Freaky.

As soon as we got off and quickly found our luggage after a long wait in the passport line and bus ride through the rain, we finally finally got to the main terminal where Luke saw a man holding a sign with his name on it. Too bad it wasn't a chauffeur for the trip--but it was the man from the rental car agency at 6:30 AM. We weren't even supposed to rent our car until 10 AM and had no idea that someone would be picking us up at the airport. He drove us to the rental place and we picked up our awesome car--a Citroen C3. Did I mention it was pouring down rain and foggy? We loaded the car and were off...to the airport again. We exchanged $300 for 37,000 Icelandic Kronur. We're rich!

We tried following the signs to the ring road--Highway 1 around the island--and to find a grocery store but got super lost. I'm pretty sure we saw all of Reykjavik. We finally got to Hwy 1 and started our epic adventure. The road is kind of scary; it's a 90 km/hr highway with no lane dividers, so you have semis flying at you about to blow you off the road and giving out free car washes. Well, we lived to tell the tale.

We drove and drove and drove and drove and found a place to get some bread and Diet Coke (they only had Coke Light--it tastes like Diet Coke loaded with cinnamon), then continued until we found a real store for groceries. We got the essentials--soup, gas, lighters, cookies, pretzels, and 2L Diet Coke. We have been really grateful that everyone here speaks English so far. I feel bad, but neither of us really bothered to learn Icelandic because the letters make crazy sounds and the words are all a mile long.

We kept driving and the rain eventually let up and the traffic (if you can call it that) thinned out so that cars were far and few between. We started to see loads of sheep on the hillsides and road and had to slow down a lot. The entire drive followed the coastline and passed some gnarly little waterfalls. We finally made it to our luxury campsite with a great ocean view in a village called Arnarnstapi, right outside of Snaefelljokull National Park.

As we set up our tent and it was uber-windy. We had a rough time setting it up; the footprint for the tent threw us off, plus the added element of excessive wind. We just wanted to sleep. We got it set up and took a 3 hour nap. After waking up, we went on a little shoreline hike and saw a zillion birds that nest along cliffs and we were attacked by flies. This place was truly beautiful though. Our campsite was in the shadow of Mt. Stapafell and right behind it was Mt. Snaefellsjokull.

For dinner we cooked up some minestrone (our new MSR stove was also really hard to figure out--and we're glad the camp only had like 3 other tents so we didn't look like idiots to a crowd), it was a delicious/paraffin wax-smoked meal. (The fuel we found was paraffin and it smoked a lot). Everything got covered in black gunk and was horrendous to clean in the freezing cold, delicious-tasting water at the sinks. I'm pretty sure we were 2 seconds away from frostbite. Apparently it gets really cold here at night even though the sun hardly sets. We wore gloves and sweatshirts and coats. I think cleaning the dishes put us over the edge. We finally got back in our tent and were going to play cards, but opted against it. We both climbed in our sleeping bags, zipped 'em up, tightened them around our heads and fell asleep soooo fast...and it was still bright outside. We slept and it was good.

-Lindsay