Iceland - June 2008

This is a series of entries describing our recent holiday to Iceland. There will be plenty of pictures, taken by me ( and maybe 1 of Steve's).

Day 1

The plan was for me and Steve to hire a car in Iceland and drive around the ring road for ten nights in June 2008. What actually happened wasn’t anywhere close to this. Hopefully this is a slightly useful tourist guide to south western Iceland.

Things started well enough as we arrived at Stansted on time with our 18Kg rucksacks full of camping equipment. Steve’s was searched straight away, although after having a laugh at his supply of pot noddles, the guard found that it was only his cooking pots that had set of the alarm. At customs Steve was pulled up again and searched, although this time one of the staff spotted his tiny Linux laptop and spent 20 minutes talking to him about it. Luckily we weren’t running late…

Iceland is a three hour flight away, and using Iceland Express, the journey was smooth and comfortable. The plan left on time and landed on time, and I’m fairly sure that one of the stewardesses on the plane was one inside one of the booklets you get stuffed in the back of the seats. As we sighted land, we spotted snow covered mountains and glaciers straight away, beneath only a few wisps of white cloud. The weather looked good, and we hoped that it would last, as most stories of Iceland’s weather contain gale force winds and driving rain.

It was after the brief bump of the landing at Keflavik airport that things started to go wrong. One thing to note about Keflavik airport is that there is a duty free shop in the same area as the baggage collection, so you can load up on affordable alcohol before you start your holiday. The car hire area comprised of six small desks of different companies in a corner. The first, promisingly called, ‘Budget,’ had no cars available, so we went to the next. It should be mentioned that before we left we knew that all car hire companies in Iceland say they only accept credit cards and not debit cards. This is important, because even though we knew this, and had no credit cards, we still thought we’d be able to somehow get a car. The second company got as far as quoting a price before asking for a credit card, which was a shame. As I leaned on the baggage trolley while Steve went to the third desk, I had a vision of the future and started remembering all the googling I’d done in case we couldn’t get a car. It was then that I realised I hadn’t done nearly enough, and had been gullible enough to believe Steve when he’d said everything would work out. Steve was turning a bit red, and looking a bit flustered as he returned from the desk. He shook his head at me and went to the next. Bugger. Same result. The last two were no better, and Steve walked back,
‘Looks like we aren’t getting a car.’ Crap. Although Steve’s next contribution was,
‘We could just go home,’ I couldn’t help finding the situation quite funny, and I tried not to smile too much.

Standing at the airport at 16:40 with no car, accommodation or clue about either, it was crisis time. Deciding we’d need somewhere to spend the night that wasn’t the floor of the airport, I found a leaflet stand and raided it. We looked for a hotel or B&B in Reykjavik, as we’d be needed somewhere to figure out what to do for the rest of the holiday. Steve wanted to go outside because it would be cooler, so I thrust a leaflet into his hand and got him to call the number on it. There was no answer from this particular hotel, which was a shame as it had free internet, so Steve tried the next one. This hotel, the Smari, http://www.hotelsmari.is/en_default3.asp?strAction=getPublication&intPublId=69
had a room and so we took it – it also offered free internet access, something we’d probably need to plot our next move. Relieved to have somewhere to go, some of the tension went and we moved on to the problem of travelling the 45km from Keflavik to Reykjavik. Steve wanted to take a taxi because it was the method of transport that would involve him having to do the least, but 45km in a taxi was such a daft idea I laughed it off in case he was too serious about it. Instead we boarded the Flybus, which leaves from the airport regularly to take passengers to the capital. It only cost 1300Kr, or about £11 one way. This might not seem overly cheap, but this was Iceland, and a taxi would have been a little bit more…

We bought our tickets from the kiosk – you don’t buy tickets on the bus – and entered the melee around the coach door. Steve went straight on, leaving me behind to worry about getting our massively heavy bags onto the coach before it got full and I got left behind. I pushed people out of the way with the trolley and threw the bags into the coach myself, not waiting for the lethargic bag handler to do it. I looked around quickly for somewhere to leave the trolley, but the coach was filling up and I really needed to get in. I just pushed the trolley away and jumped onto the coach, my plastic bag of vodka and cigars held protectively to my chest. Steve had taken the first empty seat he’d seen (he probably couldn’t be bothered to walk further down the aisle), ignoring the last remaining two seats next to each other, so I sat in them by myself.

The coach journey was through some beautiful rocky landscapes, often likened to the moon, but I was too busy thinking to really notice it. There was a bit of pressure with a nine day holiday left to rescue, so not the best bus trip ever.

The best thing about the trip was driving through Hafnarfjordur and seeing part of the Viking festival that takes place in June every year. Stopping at a bus stop, I looked out of the window and saw a small park. Fifteen 8-12 year olds were lined up in two ranks facing another group of kids of the same size. Both groups were armed with an assortment of wooden swords, axes and shields, and on a command from a nearby adult, they charged at each other with bloodlust. It looked like an outtake from Lord of the Rings, as thirty children beat the hell out of each other with sturdy wooden weapons. I used to get told off for doing things like that – and that was probably the best fun the 10 year old boys there could ever have. If you have a hyperactive kid who likes a good fight, take him here to work off a lot of steam. Just bring bandages and plasters.

We arrived at the bus terminal, the BSI, which is next to the domestic airport in the heart of Reykjavik, sometime after 5pm. The coach driver told us we’d need to get a taxi to our hotel, but we spotted a Budget car rental building at the BSI and Steve went to try his luck. I had to stay with the bags as they were a bit heavy to carry in their airplane travel bags (mine) or wire nets (Steve’s). I’d thought about using a bus to get around the ring road, but Steve wasn’t going to want to carry his bag around 24/7, as we’d have had to with the bus, and I wasn’t too keen on that myself. Yes, I know people hike with more, but we both had 4-6Kg hand luggage bags as well, and Steve can’t climb up Ben Nevis without a bag, let alone with 25Kg on his back.
I saw a Yaris pull up and for a second thought Steve had managed to get a car – but the woman who got out wasn’t Steve. I waited for a while before he did return, on foot. A taxi to the hotel then (after I’d pillaged the BSI of one of every leaflet they had).

The hotel was back along the route we’d taken into the city, but there wasn’t a lot we could do about that, and had to pay the £25 taxi fee for the 7 minute ride. Just think about what the fare from the airport would have been…

As we checked in, the Macedonian handball team walked in, looking exactly like the Macedonian football team (who I thought they were for a while). Collapsing onto the hotel bed was a welcome feeling.

Using leaflets, and the list of campsites I’d brought along from England, we found the only campsite in Reykjavik and rang them up. Luckily they said space wasn’t a problem, so it looked like we might have somewhere that wasn’t £100 a night to stay for the rest of the holiday.

Day 2

I woke up at 7:30, as the curtains weren’t really thick enough to keep out the sunlight, but Steve didn’t get up for another 2 hours. Not bad for him… The breakfast buffet was a European affair, lots of meat and cheese in freshly baked rolls, but as I’d been up long enough for it to feel like lunchtime by the time we got there, I stuffed my face happily. I also walked out with a couple of rolls for later on that day, in case we didn’t manage to find a shop. That morning felt like a good one, there wasn’t any of the stress from the previous day, and the sun was out in a nearly clear sky. The high for the day was 12 C, but it felt warmer.

We arrived via taxi at the Youth Hostel that had the campsite as its back garden. The taxi driver, as with yesterdays, had been to Cambridge and knew more about it than we did. He also suggested that we might want to visit a certain waterfall on the south coast as you could walk behind it – which sounded worth doing. The campsite was about £98 per person for eight nights – a slightly better deal than the hotel had been. The facilities were good and clean, and the camping area was large (probably 2 acres) with plenty of empty space. We pitched our tents at the back where no one else was (as we don’t like people) and raised my tarp up between the doors of our tents to keep a dry area clear if it rained.

Steve, as soon as his tent was up, went to sleep after telling me that he hadn’t slept for 36 hours, and had a sleeping pattern of 3 days on, 3 days off. That meant he was going to sleep for the next 3 days! At least it gave me time to look at the wad of leaflets I’d collected from the airport and youth hostel.

Down the gentle hill of the campsite, and beyond a hedgerow, there was a football stadium and a smaller pitch. In the afternoon we found out that Icelanders like their football as much as anyone else. Thumping drums pounded along without respite for the next 2 hours, with bouts of singing and chanting accompanying what must have been an important game. Except that it wasn’t being played in the stadium, but on the smaller pitch beside it. There was a 200 seat stand, and this was full-ish, but the noise they made wasn’t far off that of an England friendly. I couldn’t get in because of some large steel gates, so I wondered off to have a look at the city. The first thing I stumbled into was what turned out to be a place where woman used to come and do their washing. There was still a little geothermal pool where they once would have done this – steam rising slowly up into the wind. It was all a little spooky though, as a statue of a washerwoman who fell in and drowned looms over the area broodingly.

Even though it was only 12 C, I was able to walk around in nothing more than a t-shirt until about 7pm, as the clear sky let the sun beat down all day – and night. It’s 10pm as I write the notes for this, and it is just as bright as it was at 6:30pm – which is the time that it feels like. A little duller than the midday sun, and a bit cooler, but still light.

We just tried out Steve’s duty free alcohol, a pitch black spirit called Opal, a 27% ‘VodkaSkot’. As I poured the liquid into my cup – or frying pan – I could see not so tiny bits of black stuff floating around, the grit in the picture is not from a dodgy photo.

The smell hits you at the instant the bottle is opened – it smells of Tunes. Then you taste it, and it tastes like cough mixture, with an aftertaste of Tunes. It’s really not nice. But then again, 4 shots worth cleared by blocked nose for the next few hours, so I guess you could drink it for medicinal reasons. I think the vapours from it are some sort of laughing gas though, and we were both sent into a fit of laughter after drinking it. The bottle probably warned of side effects, but as we couldn’t read Icelandic, we had to hope that the flashing blue and yellow lights weren’t too unusual. With tomorrow being Iceland’s National, or Independence, day there will be more drinking to come. Let’s hope we survive.