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.

Iceland Day 3 - 5

Day 3

It rained a bit last night, although it wasn’t much to write about. The morning weather was crisp beneath a few lingering dull clouds, but the sun stayed out almost continuously. Once Steve had woken up and gotten himself ready (by ready I mean he ate a cake) we went to explore Reykjavik.

The open boulevard-style streets of the city were open and exposed to the brisk wind, which never really died down and bit into any uncovered skin. Every time we walked up to the side of a road to cross it, any cars driving along it would stop and wave us across. Coming from the cut-throat roads of England, this was bizarre at best, and dangerous at worst as we hesitated every time and managed to nearly get run over.

We reached the seafront with its arty longboat monument, and looked out over the bay to the mountains on the other side. According to the last taxi driver, we would be lucky to see these mountains clearly from the city, so we made the most of it and took at least one picture of the scenery.

Following a guidebook map, we entered the centre of the city to find the Travel Market. The map had it on the wrong side of the road, but as I’d seen a picture of it in another (more reliable) guidebook, I recognised it just as we went past so we went in – and quickly started arguing about who was going to go and talk to the people behind the desks. Eventually Steve booked a 4x4 tour and a snowmobile tour for later in the week – so at least we wouldn’t spend the entire 10 days in one place.

Next we walked down the main shopping street of Reykjavik, Laugavegur, and made a token attempt at being interested. Cars drove slowly down its narrow one way street, and people walked around at a relaxed pace (the ones who didn’t were clearly tourists (like us - Steve was nearly running)). I bought a woollen fleece like base layer top with a 10% discount token from a guidebook and made sure I had my tax free receipt to claim back another 15% at the airport. If you do this, remember that if the shop fills in the receipt incorrectly, you won’t get your money back at the airport.

As we existed the shopping district, and with Steve looking as bored as if he’d just sat through a Girls Aloud concert, we headed for the BSI bus terminal so we could sort out a 2 day trip to Akureyri – Iceland’s second city. Second town really, what with a population of 15,000. The walk was only 10 minutes, but Mr. Lawton wasn’t liking it. Luckily we got there before he punched me and made a break for a taxi rank. It was my turn to be less than happy when we found out the road to Akureyri was still closed – this was only a few days from July – because of snow. Yet again our transport plans lay in ruins. Steve suggested thinking about alternatives over lunch, which was a good idea, but he rejected all of my ideas and decided to just go back to the campsite. We did end up doing one of them anyway, but not after Steve had gone outside and straight into a waiting taxi. I tried to argue that it was only a short walk away, but I found myself talking to the cloud of dust that was all that was left of him.

We got back and Steve went inside his tent. I didn’t see him again until late that evening when he went to go on the internet in the hostel building. The wind suddenly picked up and started to howl through the campsite, causing the tents to flap around – and our tarp to throw away its pegs. That was down to my rubbish pegging. Not really wanting to be outside in that wind, I wrote this.

When things died down, I went to watch Germany beat Austria 1-0 in Euro 2008 courtesy of a thundering Michael Ballack free kick. After that I went to the local shop and bought a couple of tubs of skyr (Icelandic yoghurt, a bit like fromage frais), some traditional dried fish and some fresh salmon. The salmon I fried lightly with butter, and was the juiciest, flavoursome fish I’d ever tasted. It cost about £3 for 150 grams. One thing to remember about some shops is that you’re likely to be charged for plastic bags. The Keflavik duty free plastic bags are quite thick and are good to use as shopping bags.

Just before midnight, and with the sun nearly dipping below some trees, I went for a walk to try to use up some energy. The light was fading gently, but it was good enough to take pictures in even with my fairly cheap camera. The parkland behind the campsite used to be a hot spring where washer woman would go, and boards are up telling their story. Beyond this is Reykjavik’s botanical garden. There was no one around so I let myself in. No plants were in bloom and all the ducks were asleep, and basically it was boring. Until I walked straight into a security guard anyway, but that’s another story.

Day 4

I woke up cold. The sunlight on my tent at about 1am had made it a warm night to begin with, but that had changed. During the night, the sun had crept behind some trees and cast a lingering shadow of ice over me. Saying that, it was 11 degrees that night, so I’m probably just a soft wimp. Anyway, however much of a wuss I am, I still woke up cold. And this meant I woke up with a cold. Sniff. Sneeze. Sniff. 2 lessons:
1. Bring cold medicine
2. Don’t assume the warm nights turn into warm mornings.

Steve crawled out of his tent just after I’d had my lunch, complaining that he hadn’t slept at all and that his back hurt. So he went back to bed.

As he didn’t answer me when I tried to talk to him, I realised we weren’t going anywhere today and decided to move my whole tent 3m away to where the arctic shadows couldn’t reach it.

There isn’t more than one wisp of white fluffy cloud in the sky this afternoon, and in the shade today’s 15 degrees feels like 25. To remind me that I was actually within 5 hours drive of the Arctic Circle, the wind started to blow a 30 mile an hour windstorm. Not willing to spend a whole day in my tent, I rigged my tarp up as a lean-to windbreak and started to sunbathe. Sunbathing in Iceland. And having to use a lot of sun cream.

Anyway, Italy v France soon, so while I’m in the hostel building I’ll go and book 2 more day trips so we actually do something this holiday.

Day 5

Last night wasn’t cold, so my tent move was a success. I also used my tarp to extend my tent porch about 5 five feet, which makes a large area to leave things and be out of the wind – which today is again fairly strong. I did book 2 trips yesterday, and the first starts at 12:30 today, with a coach picking us up at 12:00.

Trip: Gullfoss and Geysir Direct, Golden Circle Tour (Reykjavik Excursions)
Price per person: 5800 Kr (£42)
Duration: 12:30 – 18:00

The coach turned up at the Youth Hostel at about 12:05, and ferried us to the BSI terminal where half a dozen other small coaches were doing the same thing. Everybody gets off here and then jumps onto whichever coach has your tour name in the window. We got the same coach we’d arrived in, and were only joined by an elderly English couple and a nice French girl.

We zipped off through the city at break neck speed, passing a tipped over rubbish lorry, and having to listen to our female tour guide singing a song in Old Norse. I don’t think those two events were related but you never know.

Finally we got into the countryside and mountains immediately loomed up from the horizon under the clear blue sky. Between them and us were endless lava fields of rocks covered in the beige moss that seems to be Iceland’s idea of grass. There were fluorescent jacketed youngsters picking up litter everywhere, just as there’d been in Reykjavik – it looks like everyone has to do some kind of community service. Either that, or the younger generation is full of criminals. They didn’t really look like they were enjoying themselves, one girl was sitting down grumpily on a roundabout stabbing the grass with her trowel.

The rocky ground opened up to greener areas as we drove east, eventually leading to a massive valley that was the seabed during the last ice age (we’re actually in the back end of one now if you didn’t know). We reached the Selfoss area, where a 6.3 Richter earthquake had struck a week earlier. Me and Steve both wished we hadn’t missed it. No one had died and only 25 people had needed to go to hospital. We drove through the quake zone and reached the coast. The coastal plain was grazing ground for thousands of the famous Iceland horses, and there seemed to be a couple in every field, regardless of what other animals shared it.

The only raised land you can see when looking right from the main ring road are the Westmann islands, lumps of lava that are home to plenty of people.

We turned inland to get to our first destination, but not before we’d driven past some elf houses – either little doors painted on rocks, or full sized wooden lodges with huge deer antlers hanging ominously over the front doors. You could also see the fresh earth on the tall cliff faces churned up by loosened boulders after the earthquake, and the aforementioned boulders sitting in the middle of otherwise empty fields.

We stopped briefly at the Kerið (Kerith) crater, a beautiful fissure in the ground that contains a small lake. I would have tried to climb around it, but seeing as we were on a crappy tourist tour, we only had ten minutes before we were off again.

We saw the spray from the waterfall of Gullfoss (Golden Fall) before we got to the car park. By the time we stopped, the spray was showering onto the bus windows – time for the waterproof coat. Gullfoss is a powerful and overwhelming example of nature at its most destructive. It’s carved out the very ground to form a two stage waterfall of huge impact. With snow topped mountains and even a glacier in the background, the scenery is spectacular, and there were more cameras than people. You can get close enough to touch the water if you want to, and it’s not hard to climb over the rope and stand next to the torrent of the first stage of the fall.

A short trip later and we reached the second destination in the tourists ‘Golden Circle’ – the ultra-famous geysir that gave its name to all others. The Geysir (pronounced GAYZER) no longer fires after decades of people dropping things down it to speed it up, so it had to be Strokkur that we had to watch erupt every 3-5 minutes. An ever rotating group of about twenty people permanently aimed cameras in silence at the square of rock jutting out of the pool, waiting. And waiting. Then boom, the water bulges up in a bright blue bubble before spraying up a good 30 feet – coming down on anyone daft enough to stand in the wrong place. Then the curses of those who missed their shot. Then the waiting begins again. This sequence repeats all day, with the occasional accidental photo taken when the pool gurgled a bit, and the spatter of laughter that follows. The brooding, smoky pools are very nice, but you have to wonder how many of the people here are just there for the photo and to say they’ve been.

Probably because we were such a small group, we had time for an extra stop (or we were told it was extra) to see what is missed off the full tour to make the Direct tour we were on. Þingvellir (Thingvellear) is two sights in one. Firstly, it is where two tectonic plates meet and rip the ground apart, and secondly, the sight of the world’s first parliamentary democracy, the Althing. You can look down into the tear in the ground the plates has caused, and you can see the stone ruins of where the Althing’s booths were built. The booths were basically just stone walls – the attendees brought their own roofs. On top of all this, you can look out over a colossal valley/plain that is shared between sweeping flatland and a lake larger than Reykjavik. Words, and probably most pictures, can’t do the view justice, even if the wind was now so sharp that we were pretty much blown back to the bus for the journey home.

Iceland Day 6 - 7

Steve’s, ‘cheese doesn’t go off’ policy backfired this morning as he held up a squidgy lump of orange goo from the inside of his tent. It was probably going to have been his lunch, and he ended up having to buy a fish sandwich later on… big mistake.

Today’s trip: ‘South Shore Adventure’ with Reykjavik Excursions again.
Cost: 10,600 Kr = £77
Duration: 9:00 to 18:30

Another sunny day, and another quick delivery to the BSI. We boarded a nearly full 22 seat coach and stormed off through the city again on the same route we took yesterday. The guide talked about everything from who built Reykjavik’s domestic airport (the British army) to the gloomy(ish) economic situation in the country. I actually have most of it written down, as to avoid falling asleep on the bus – which I will do on anything that moves – I listened to everything he said. Luckily for you, I’m not going to pass it on.

The first stop was the giant waterfall of Skógarfoss, placed conveniently right by the ring road. This 62m monster flies off a cliff face that turns and then runs parallel with its resulting river right out to sea. The sea has been within sight for most of this trip since getting out of the capital, and it is supremely visible from the top of the fall. I got to within 20m of the bottom before the spray got too much for my non-waterproof trousers, and then decided to see what was at the top. Railings and a stepped path lead you right to the highest point, and there are well worn paths leading off it that are great picture taking spots. Looking out over a waterfall, an ancient seabed and the sea itself is quite a sight, and the 20 minutes of the stop wasn’t really enough to spend for that 3 minutes at the top. That was probably why one Canadian couple were about 10 minutes late back to the bus and got a severe telling off by the guide. I did sympathise with them, especially when we were told that the neighbouring museum was our next stop - for an hour and a half. You could hear Steve groan.

The Skógarfoss museum was well put together, and the slightly… actually, very, camp German guide did know what he was talking about, but it was still just a few large rooms full of old things. Had the things been Viking artefacts it might have been more interesting, but as it was full of 18th and 19th century rubbish it wasn’t. Then we got a tour around some restored houses by the 87 year old founder of the museum. We ended up in the very small chapel where he played the piano and tried to get us all to sing hymns. Steve, me, and the other people under 50 mostly kept straight faces. I should say that the museum is brilliant for people who like museums.

The communication and transport museum behind the boring one was at least interesting to Steve, who found at least eleven different types of Landrover in it before we finally left and headed for the village of Vik.

On the way we drove through the rolling green valleys where Icelanders like to put their holiday homes. They mostly look like North American hunting lodges, and are never less than three hundred metres from each other – Icelanders like their privacy. We also saw never-ending fields of a purple bracken like plant that turned out to be the Alaskan Lupine. Apparently this is being planted everywhere because it’s hardier than other native plants and collects fertile soil that can later be used to plant trees. Planting trees is something Icelanders like doing, as trees don’t tend to survive well under suffocating layers of volcanic ash and lava.

During the drive around the ring road to Vik, the geography of Iceland’s south coast became clear. If you spread out one hand and draw a line from finger tip to finger tip, you will have a map. The drawn line is the ring road and the coastline it usually follows. Your fingers are the mountains and cliffs that dart out towards the sea in huge high formations, and the space in between them is where farms are situated in fertile grassy fields. Your hand itself is the mass of immense mountains and glaciers that form the backdrop of every eyeful of Iceland you get.

These glaciers used to be much bigger during the middle of the current ice age, and made the island sit lower in the water like a heavily laden ship. When the ice got tired of waiting around in the cold, it retreated inland and carved out Iceland’s unique geology. Along with thousands of lava flows and blankets of ash, that is.

Which brings us to Vik. Without the retreating ice, the 300 inhabitants of this ‘town’ would be living in shark hunting grounds. And they wouldn’t have black beaches. Black, sandy beaches. You can see the first Viking explorers going home to talk of these beaches, and being laughed away and accused of being retards. Unless of course, you can find black beaches in Scandinavia, in which case I’m the retard. These beaches should be visited once in a lifetime, and that’s all that I need to say.

Although, one French woman came here to see them once before she died, and ended up dying much sooner than she’d probably expected. Apart from the temperature of the water (you get under 4 minutes) there are freak waves along these shores. Last year, the French woman and 2 blokes were walking along the waterline when a wave reared up and swept her away. Had her companions tried to go in after her, the death count would have been more than 1 on that tragic day. Do not swim in the water. Unless the weather is clear, do not go down to the water’s edge. If the wind is strong, just don’t. I sound like a Dr Who episode there. Watch the waves, never take your eyes off them. There’s a good reason why Iceland looses more fisherman than anyone else. Right, got all that? Visit, but don’t die.

Of course, we went down to the water’s edge and stood in it. I should say it was a clear, bright day with only a token wind and we did keep an eye out for mini tsunamis.

After watching Steve try to jump a glacier stream that snaked down the beach into the sea (I say try, he did make it… well most of him did) we left for the return journey and a few more stops.

We turned off the highway and bumped up and down along a rough track in the bus, fording a few streams as we went. It made me fall asleep, and people must have thought I was either a narcoleptic or really off my head on something. Screeching to a halt in a cloud of black dust and flying gravel, we arrived at the Solheimajokull (Sol-highm-ya-koll) glacier. The name translates into, ‘Glacier in the fen valley’. For anyone who doesn’t know what a glacier is, it’s basically a humungous lump of ice with bits of rock in it. In all its glory, this glacier is easily accessible to even normal road cars (don’t bother with a fully load 1 litre car though, you won’t get up one hill on the way back). However, in all its glory in 1993, the glacier was 200m closer to the car park. Don’t blame global warming for this though, it’s been retreating for thousands of years. It is visibly melting, and you can walk right up to it and onto it – if you’re not scared of crevasses that is. It’s not often that you can see the very landscape changing before your eyes, but here you can see the ice dripping into streams below Solheimajokull as it grinds a path behind it. However, it isn’t that big, sitting inside the rocky valley, and Iceland has some much bigger glaciers, so I won’t bore you with this one.

After this short stop, we carried on to our last stop of the day at the Seljalandsfoss waterfall. I’m not even going to try to write how to pronounce that tongue-twister. It is over 60m high, and boasts one feature that makes it different from your stereotypical run-of-the-mill waterfall. You can go behind it. This brings in the crowds. Of course, here ‘crowds’ means ‘more than one tour bus’. A path leads up and behind the fall into a small hollow area behind it, were some idiots can go right down to the very edge of the pool of icy water and get drenched by the freezing glacial water. There’s probably one idiot per bus who goes and stands where the water laps at their feet, and as no one else looked willing to do it, I jumped down onto the shingle bank and immediately got a face full of hail-like spray smashed into the instantly raw skin of my face. Standing a couple of feet from the bottom of a waterfall, I was quite grateful for my raincoat, which I suddenly realised had never in fact been wet before. It was very wet now. It was like standing in the shower in your raincoat, looking straight up at the showerhead, and blasting the water down on its most powerful and coldest setting. I had to gasp for breath such was the ferocity of the wind and spray, and actually had to turn around to gulp down some air. Watching sheets of water cascade off the cliff above down into the pool around me, I felt like a police riot cannon was trained on me, and then realised how wet my legs were. I was not wearing my waterproof trousers. Struggling to get my camera out, I was thankful that the RNLI use it and therefore that it must be 100% waterproof – and luckily it was. A few rubbish snaps later and I thought I should leave before the fourth layer of skin on my face was blasted off along with the three that were already gone. I could feel the backs of my legs dripping with sub-zero drops of water, and knew that the impending two hour bus journey wasn’t going to be great fun. So I climbed clumsily back up the slope, not regretting a thing. Until Steve saw me and started laughing, anyway. I should say that he came down for a brief look too, but wasn’t stupid enough to stay for as long as I did. As we walked away from the fall, I realised just how drenched I actually was – the stares of everyone I passed sort of gave it away. The raincoat had worked perfectly, and I can’t think of a better test for something that claims to be waterproof. As my trousers made no such claim, I wasn’t surprised to find them now being 50% water. I squelched back to the coach almost dreading a very damp journey and the prospect of getting trench-leg. Not to mention the cold I caught 2 days ago, which I’d nearly got over. Such a wimp. I left wet footprints behind as I boarded the bus, and couldn’t help smiling at the gormless tourists sitting obediently on their little chairs as I covered them in water while sitting down. I knew I should really take of trousers this wet, but as that sort of thing would probably get you arrested even in Iceland, I had to settle for rolling them up to the knees. This at least stopped half of my legs from losing all their heat. I also tried to keep my legs moving, which worked quite well up to about fifteen minutes into the drive, when I fell asleep.

Day 7

Tour: Mount Hekla Landrover Tour (http://www.superjeep.is/) (Watch the video on it. That was our driver, Ragnar.)
Cost: 22 000 Kr – now advertised at 23 000 = £170
Duration: 09:00 – 18:00

We stood waiting for a either a coach or some sort of 4x4 to pick us up outside of the Youth Hostel, when a beast of a white Landrover swung into view. It flew past us and crashed up over the curb and into what is probably the hostel’s front garden. A few people were looking at it with bewilderment, and it was quite an entrance. It was a 7 seater, with a Dutch couple and a German woman and her daughter already in it. Saying that it was more comfortable and smoother than Steve’s Landrover would be a small understatement. We cruised out along Route 1, the ring road, that we’d been on the last two days, and then took a minor but still paved road into the interior. After a while, the driver/guide spun the wheel around and we shot off the road at 90 degrees at around 50 miles an hour onto a dusty black ash layer. This was probably a proper road, but it got the 3 females in the vehicle screaming like, well like girls. As we raced along this uneven terrain there were plenty of bumps and jolts (and gasps and yelps), but so far Steve and me were unfazed.

We stopped at the double waterfall of Hjálparfoss I Þjórsárdal. It looks like two rivers hit each other at a 90 degree angle, and just happen to do it over a cliff to form a very unusual waterfall.

Back on the road, the Landrover sped up some manmade steepish piles of dirt to make us feel like we were doing serious off-roading, which was amusing. Another relaxed stop at the winding river valley of Þjórsárdalur was another highlight. We were driving along what looked like a barren, unending desert, when the driver screeches to a halt at the edge of a cliff edge that hadn’t been visible only seconds before to reveal a sprawling valley cut down into the ground. The river flowing through it is the Þjórsa, and Þjórsárdalur is its kingdom. You would never be lucky enough to stumble across this kind of thing in Iceland without a guide, and it made paying the £170 feel slightly less painful (although at this point, we hadn’t bothered to work out the cost in pounds). The Germans had been on the same tour a couple of years ago in the pouring rain, and kept mentioning how much better everything looked when it was baked in the sun.

We then drove past Iceland’s power plants, all buried nearly entirely underground as not to ruin the scenery, and we saw the massive rivers and canals whose flow they control. They were clearing some of the bore holes used to generate power as we drove past, by chucking water down them. This makes the ground shake, and every now and again a giant splash of water comes flying out of them – some of the bore holes are 5km deep. We reached 50 mph through this area, on earth where you’d have to stick to about 15 in a normal little car. We were far out of civilization now, and into lava fields and endless layers of ash from Hekla’s eruptions. The common black ash was in places covered with a lighter ash that can also float on water, and this created patches of yellow alongside the track. In the wide expanse of the ashen plain, we could see 3 of Iceland’s large glaciers along with the domineering Mt. Hekla – perhaps a 10th of Iceland could be seen stretching off into the distance. That’s a lot of ash and lava. As with much of the rest of the country, the Alaskan Lupine has been planted everywhere here to add some colour and to try to introduce some bigger pants. Lemon grass is planted in strips 50m from each other by aeroplanes, for the same reason, although it looks like it’s taking over in some parts. Over the last 8 years, these tufts of grass have held enough soil in place to allow a few small rows of trees to be planted, so I suppose it is working. Although the next eruption will probably kill the lot, and the next eruption is very due.

We then entered the more mountainous areas and drove between towering cliffs and low valleys and craters. The flat land here is not grassy at all, as the ash kills it, but the ash is blown quickly off the hills, and so many of these are covered in grass. The result is a sort of opposite world where the ground and mountains are coloured in the wrong way around. Some of them are also yellow, some are red and others are green, but because of rocks and not grass. Incidentally, this is Europe’s biggest desert. It looks like one too, barren and deserted, but still hauntingly fascinating as glaciers on 3 sides slip in and out of view behind soaring peaks. Lava fields are not flat areas of shiny black hardened lava, but millions of man sized contorted shapes of boulder-like lava which look like grotesque sculptures. Their twisting, lumpy forms stretch off into the horizon, although each field was born during a separate eruption, each of which is known and recorded. Driving through this apocalyptic landscape is an unforgettable experience, but you’ll see so much you’re bound to forget something. It doesn’t help when you fall asleep, if you somehow manage it during vaguely bumpy off-road driving. I hit my head on almost every part of the Landrover, which at least woke me up. Taking plenty of pictures at the many photo stops is a good way of making sure you don’t forget too much, although you’ll need a good camera to get the scale of it all.

As I write this I just ate a pot of coffee flavoured skyr gannet style, and if you like coffee and yoghurt you’ll love it. Flavour is called Með Cappuccino.

Back to the volcanoes. Some hours into the trip now, and we got to lunch time when we rolled into the open plain of Landamannalaugar. This is a big destination in the interior, although not accessible for much of the year (its 100 metres under the snow). A 4 day hike winds its way here from Reykjavik, and Iceland’s off-road buses can make it here too. Landamannalaugar sits at the base of a mountain range and has always been a fertile oasis in the black and lifeless desert. Although here fertile just means grass can grow. Before Hekla’s cataclysmic eruption in 1104, all the land we’d driven through had been prime farming land, but now only Landamannalaugar is even vaguely habitable.

A group of gap year student type people were painting and helping to rebuild the hut and facilities – there are jobs with worse views. There is a hot spring, at bath temperature, curling out into the plain amidst a swampy grassland, which is popular to swim in. The blue, green, red and yellow algae were a bit strange though, and might have been the inspiration for Lord of the Ring’s marshes. More on this later.

There are numerous 4-5 hour hiking trails leading off in all directions from Landamannalaugar’s huts and 4x4 park, and these would’ve probably been amazing if we’d been there for a whole day. In the 1.5 hours we were there I still managed to walk over, under and through some ice, up a lava field cliff and across a green rocked canyon with a glacial stream trickling through it. Steve didn’t fancy the walk. Landamannalaugar is well worth visiting if you can get there – in good weather in the summer normal cars can get to within half a mile of it and you can walk the rest.

We eventually left and started to head for Hekla. We charged through a series of small rivers a few metres apart from each other, at high speed and with Bohemian Rhapsody blasting out at full volume (there was some Wayne’s world style head banging going on) out of specially made speakers. That was something else. We then stopped to take pictures as Ragnar turned around and went through again. All I got was a wave with a Landrover somewhere behind it. Steve would have got a better picture, but he’d stayed in the Landrover. Ragnar played rock music throughout the tour, and his catchphrase is, ‘Time for some rock and roll,’ which could equally apply to the driving as the music. He kicked off with Jailhouse Rock, went through Money for Nothing, American Pie, We are the Champions (plus many more), and finished off with Stairway to Heaven. That guy’s a legend.

Talking of legends, Tolkien travelled extensively through Iceland, and spoke the language – Old Norse. Peter Jackson wanted to film here, as it’s the real setting, but as the summers are too short, they had to go to New Zealand. Once you’ve seen the original sunken earth houses of the Viking era people here (their beds are less than 4 and a half feet long) the inspiration for hobbits becomes clearer. Also interesting to know is that 80% of Icelanders really do believe in elves. In other words, if you can’t afford to fly to New Zealand but want to see Middle Earth, the original is only 3 hours and under two hundred quid away.

Hekla. It couldn’t be more of a Mt Doom if it tried. It has erupted every ten years in the last few hundred years, and is over 8 years due now. Its ash has reached as far as Moscow and Cairo, and its legacy covers huge chunks of Iceland. The only recent fatality it has caused was a photographer in 1947 who got too close, which is surprising considering the damage it can cause. Hekla has long since been known as being the gateway to hell, which was why no one dared to climb it until 200 years ago. When two locals did, they reported back to the Danish governor, who asked them,
‘Is Hekla really the entrance to hell?’ One of the climbers nodded grimly,
‘I am afraid it is, when we looked down into its heart we heard Danish voices.’

If you don’t get the joke, the Icelanders have never appreciated being under the Danish crown. Hekla is also the origin of the English phrase, ‘What the heck?’ which shows how widely people knew of what it supposedly was.

Although after all these stories of terrible destruction and fiery underworlds, Ragnar then told us that you can in fact drive two thirds of the way up it in August. A bit of an anticlimax that. Add to that the fact that the small eruptions every ten years are called Tourist Eruptions because they bring in tourists and don’t do any harm, and the mountain loses a bit of its mystique. As we neared its base, we drove up to the forward limit of the buses and normal traffic. An area in the black dust is marked out to make a makeshift car park, and one bus was parked up within in, people milling around taking pictures of the distant monster.
‘Ha,’ Ragnar snorts, ‘this is why 4x4 tours are better.’ He slams his foot even closer to the floor and the Landrover rears up and charges straight at the bus. We cut across the ‘road’ and have to hang on as the Landrover picks up speed. We just about skim the protruding wing mirrors of the bus and zoom off in the direction of the volcano, leaving a dense cloud of choking dust coating the unfortunate tourists who are staring wide-eyed at the wheeled missile that’s just burst their ear drums and made them see just how crap their tour really is. We fly by, laughing along with a seriously cool guitar riff from some band I don’t know, and leave the beaten track well and truly behind.

After a fair climb we got as far as we could go – snow was still blocking the road up – so we stopped for a look. Looking up at a mountain is much better than just looking at it. There is a guestbook which now has an entry reading:

‘Attempting final ascent of mountain. Food low. Water low. Equipment lost. So cold. So very cold. Snow falling again. Lost another toe this morning. Hope tha’

Very mature I know, but it had to be done. The rock beneath our feet resembled aero chocolate, it was green, bubbly and crunchy, although there were reds and yellows all over the place too.

We left Hekla in peace and cruised back towards Reykjavik, after re-inflating the tyres when we hit the tarmac roads again. We got out while Ragnar did this, and were quickly set upon by a swarm of midges. They don’t bite you, but the living cloud of them gets everywhere. In hair, ears, nose, clothing. Showering that night was essential.

We returned to the hostel by crashing over the pavement again, and got out with huge grins as a group of penniless hikers looked on, open-mouthed. This tour is serious fun, and if you have the money, you won’t find many better things to spend it on. Hiring the 4x4 yourself (if you know what you’re doing (really know)) of course, is one thing better.

Iceland Day 8-10

I got up in time for this morning’s tour, but I was actually late and we missed the bus… Steve’s alarm clock wasn’t set, but he was ready in 37 seconds. All he had to do was stand up. The lesson here is that in Iceland, a bus might actually be early. Yes, you did just read that right, an early bus. Luckily for us though, there was a taxi across the road that got us to the BSI before our early coach. The taxi driver had lived in Cambridge, and knew it better than either of us, which was funny, as our other 2 taxi drivers had both visited it too. We met the Dutch couple from the 4x4 tour yesterday, and it turned out they were going on the same bus as us – small country. They’d also had puffin the night before for dinner – they’d needed a couple each to get full.

Tour: Snowmobiles… Reykjavik Excursions again
Duration: 0830 – 18:30
Cost: 19,000 - £138

Our guide was Leifur, or Leif, a.k.a ‘the Encyclopaedia Icelandica’. He knew everything, and talked to us nearly non stop for about 8 hours. Again, I’ve got a lot of it down but, if you’ve read this far, you’re probably bordering on getting bored anyway.

One funny story though, an MP called Arni Johnsen flew in a small plane with a pilot friend of his through a small rock archway over the sea, and nearly got sacked because of it. He was then convicted of embezzlement and sent to a country club jail, where he was allowed out to sing at Iceland’s most raucous music festival. Then his friends secured his release while the prime minister was out of the country, and then he got himself elected the MP for the Westmann Islands. He looks a bit like Boris Johnson too.

Talking of voting, Icelandic farmers were given a vote to decide whether to keep the smaller Icelandic cow or to replace it with more productive foreign breeds. The Icelandic cow won, and to date is still the only cow to have ever won an election.

What isn’t so funny is that until 1918, alcohol was banned from Iceland! Beer over 2% was only allowed after 1989, and wine was only let in after Spain and Portugal said, ‘If you don’t buy our wine, we’ll stop buying your dried fish and wool.’ Money, even in Iceland, comes before morals.

The tour went along the ring road and passed the same things we’d seen every day for the past 4 now. The same guide spiel too was wearing a bit thin by now, but at least Liefur was funny. He explained that married 35 year old men were now 5Kg fatter than their unmarried counterparts. This was because, apparently, that an unmarried man comes home from work, finds nothing in the fridge, and so goes to bed. The married man comes home, finds nothing in bed, and so goes to the fridge. Cue the usual chuckles and polite laughter on the bus. Another quote, ‘the only army in Iceland is the Salvation army,’ got less polite laughter. Apparently there’s also so much salmon in the south that even the cats get sick of it, which probably explains the rising popularity of KFC.

Horse meat is commonly eaten in Iceland, as the horses that can’t be taught to ride are deemed to be useful only for eating. Attempts were made to export it to the UK during WWII by the national slaughter company. Apart from the initials of the name of the company being SS, its translation into English, ‘The South Shore Killing Company’ probably was the reason why it didn’t catch on.

Have a look at this picture I didn't take - could you eat these guys? Note that they're small enough to look in without bending down.

The coach plodded onto Solheimajokull, where we’d visited a few days ago, and dropped off half the people on the coach who were going to do an ice walk across the glacier. We went further south to the glacier of Mỳrdalsjökull (Murders-ya-koll) to suit up for the snowmobile ride. I fell asleep on the bumpy track up to the glacier, which Steve found funny, but I missed the view. For the first time in this holiday, we got some proper weather – it began to snow. As we reached the log cabin where the snowmobiles were, it started flying down in flurries, but it seemed to fit the backdrop.

We got into a set of overalls, and then clambered into a huge waterproof covering layer, before being given thin balaclavas, boots and a helmet. No goggles. I was waiting for some, but they never came. The gloves we got were thin little cotton black things, probably £0.50 from Tesco, which wasn’t reassuring as hail started to smack into the wooden hut. We then walked over to the snowmobiles, sinking into a foot of snow with each step, and were told how they work. The nice touch was the handle heaters, and even the accelerator handle heater – which might give you an idea of how cold it gets when going at speed. The snowmobiles are big hulks of engine, and looked like they meant business. Me and Steve tried to get one each, even though we’d only paid to share, but unfortunately we didn’t get away with it. As it turned out, very unfortunately.

This picture is courtesy of Reykjavik Excursions.

I drove first and we headed out in a convoy of mobiles in a line along a track, that was quickly being covered by the falling snow. They skid around a bit, but as long as you don’t try to treat them like a car, they are simple to use. Saying that, one fat old guy couldn’t take any more after about 3 minutes, and had to turn back. My tactic of lagging behind and then speeding up was paying off – we were told if we went off the track we wouldn’t continue – and I found the top speed downhill was only about 35 miles an hour. Although saying that, going that fast down a slippery hill when you can’t see because of the snow, isn’t probably that safe. Bloody fun though (I think there was some maniacal laughter) and we did manage to overtake two slow wimps when the guides were occupied elsewhere. We stopped at one photo stop, with everyone pulling up neatly in a line. Except me anyway, as I came in far too fast, did a turning stop and lifted the whole snowmobile up onto one ski before slamming down to a perfect stop only a foot ahead of the rest of the nice neat line. Probably sounds more dramatic than it was. The guide who was waiting for us did give me a wide grin though, I think he approved.

We soon set off again, and the hail and snow mixture intensified into a full on blizzard – at least when your flying around at 30 mph it feels like a blizzard. We were going straight into it, and it was tearing my face apart. It was hitting my eyeballs, and all I wanted to do was close them, except when I blinked my eyelids froze shut. Driving beside a hundred foot drop and only barely being able to see the mobile 5 metres in front, I though that closing my eyes for longer than a blink wasn’t a great plan. So I bit my balaclava and dragged it over my face so it was covering half of one eye, and managed to stay on track by using it as an eye shield. When we stopped at the half way point, Steve kindly pointed out that I looked like a twat.

We stopped at the top of the glacier, to admire an astonishing view. However, as there was a blizzard blowing, we could only just about see the other end of the line of parked snowmobiles, let alone other mountains. So the guide made a picture map out of snow to show us what we could have been seeing. It was in the shape of a woman, and you can guess the jokes he made. For the return ride, Steve took over the controls. I’m not going to comment on the driving skills displayed, except that as we went down dangerously on one slope away from the track, he pointed the snowmobile down hill and floored it. Apparently this is what you do in a Landrover to stop it rolling. However, on a snowmobile, what happens is that it tips over, and that is exactly what happened. Remembering what we’d been told to do in this situation, I gripped tightly with knees and hands, and as the heavy machine thudded into the ground, all I got was the smallest of bumps as it sank a bit into the deep snow with me safely still on it. Steve on the other hand, jumped off it in midair and barrel rolled down the glacier in case the mobile followed him. He only had five or six bruises, and we were up and running again within 2 minutes. We did laugh. A quote from Steve, ‘I think it was just a lack of experience, personally.’ Parking it was no easier, as Steve put it on a slope and after I’d gone, it started to fall down it... which could have ended in tears. My gloves were completely useless by now, and after our little accident, my boots were now full of little puddles of icy water. I had been clever enough to bring my waterproof socks with me, but not clever enough to put them on, so I couldn’t actually feel my toes. If you go snowmobiling, bring changes of everything, and drive as fast as you can. Also, all the rides on this glacier at one hour only. This is because there is a spectacularly big volcano under it that is about twenty years overdue for an eruption. It will take one hour for it to melt the glacier when it finally does, so the snowmobiles need time to get off and get out of the way of the melt water. 350 cubic metres a second will flood down the valley then, and the farmhouses that lie in the way must have some sleepless nights.

The return journey was via Skógarfoss again, and Steve still didn’t climb up to the top as he is, ‘leaving something to do for next time.’ There is some twisted logic in there somewhere. The weather down from the glacier was bright sunshine again, but the ice walkers had been rained on so much they looked like I did when I’d come out of the waterfall a few days ago. The waterfall I said one day I’d go back to with full waterproofs, Seljalandsfoss. I was expecting to wait at least a year, but then the guide said it was our next stop. And I’d brought my waterproof trousers. Coooool.

I went in again, and this time didn’t get half as wet due to the waterproofs, even though the fall was stronger due to the recent inland rain. The effect of being under the fall wasn’t as good second time around though, so my advice is to do it right once. Of course, I now know that my waterproofs work under more extreme situations than they’re really likely to face, so it was worth doing again.

A dry trip back to Reykjavik was much better than the earlier wet one, even if the guide kept talking to me in Danish. I don’t know why.

I am writing this drunk out of my skull at 11:05 pm on the longest day of the year, with the sun still just about in the sky. It is dull, and as always at night, feels like about 6:30pm in the UK. There are a few clouds around, but none are over us, and I’m still amazed that we’ve had no rain to speak of - away from the glacier today. Anyway, going to look around town now.

Day 9
Today is our penultimate day in Iceland, the sun is up, and it was 12 degrees all night. This place is great. Down by the thermal swimming pool, U2’s ‘Beautiful Day’ is blasting out across this part of the city, and people are out and about (except Steve, obviously). A few are sunbathing in the hazy morning – and I’ve spent more time wearing sun cream than waterproofs on this holiday – not exactly as we’d expected. I don’t want anyone to read this though and to think this is in any way normal weather. It’s not. Expect more rain and wind – the wind never really died down during the ‘day’ even on the sunniest of afternoons. The weather was unusual enough on Friday to get nearly every Icelander in Reykjavik leaving their city to create a hundred mile convoy of 4x4s heading out to holiday homes for the weekend, which meant that hardly anyone was out that night. Ragnar from Superjeep.is was going to go horse riding from the city up to Þingvellir for the weekend, and this is typical of what the locals do. We however, are doing nothing today except eating more Icelandic food from the local shop, and I’m going to watch some football after seeing Holland go out yesterday.

Day 10

0220 am. Sun’s up, Steve’s in bed and I’m about to go down to the harbour to see the sunrise from behind the Esja mountain across the bay.

***

Back now, and sitting in Keflavik airport waiting to board the flight.

I left to walk through Reykjavik a bit late last night, and realised that I was probably going to miss the sunrise. As I passed a certain building I’m not going to mention, I saw a pile of pedal bikes leaning up against the wall. A thought struck me, the 45 minutes walk would be cut down to about 10 if I had a bike. So I hauled up an old bike with a flat back tyre and gingerly rode down the bright streets. I wasn’t stealing by the way, I was borrowing without the explicit permission of the owner… Pitch black would have been more appropriate than sunlight for my bike ‘hire’ though, and I couldn’t help ducking into a side street when I saw a police car, lights flashing, turning into the road in front of me. I wobbled noisily down to the seafront, after having to make some running repairs, and reached the Viking ship monument in time to take a picture to prove where I’d been. I also saw that clouds had finally started to build up, and were going to completely obscure the sunrise. So basically, I’d wasted my time and ruined a perfectly good bike for nothing. If you are reading this as a member of the Icelandic police force, I made this story up to bulk out this entry, and none of it’s in any way true.

This is probably the best sunrise picture I got... and its rubbish. Can you spot the bike wheel?

I went back to the campsite at about 4am and left the bike were I’d ‘found’ it. Then I slept under my tarp (see picture) and in my bivi bag, deciding that I should spend one night in Iceland outside of my tent. Surprisingly, I was warm when I got up, although I had to rush to pack everything in time to catch our bus to the airport.
Of course, there was one place in Iceland we hadn’t yet been that is probably the most famous tourist spot in the whole island, and we were going there on the way to the airport. The Blue Lagoon. A convenient bus trip (‘The Blue Lagoon Bus’ by Netbus, http://www.bustravel.is/ for 4,000kr - £30 inc entry to Lagoon(£17 on its own)) would take us to the Lagoon, keep our big bags on the coach, and then take us to the airport afterwards.

The Blue Lagoon is an ultra-modern health spa that made me and Steve feel very out of place. There are wristbands for lockers and towel hire and everything else you can think of. The lagoon itself is more turquoise than blue, as steam gently lifts off its surface into the chilly air. Unless the cloud cover is total, sunglasses are a must, and without them I was squinting constantly. The water is body temperature, but there are cooler and warmer bits depending on where you go. There’s some pretty disgusting gunk at the bottom of holes in the rock, mostly human skin and hair, but as long as you keep your fingers away from the bottom you’ll be fine. Lying in the water is actually quite relaxing, and it’s no wonder than some people go twice in a stay. It really is just what you need either before or after a flight.

Then we drove to Keflavik airport, where Steve set off more detectors and was searched again. I loaded up on handmade Nicaraguan cigars, and then we flew back to England to end the holiday, where the weather was bad.

Go to Iceland.

Iceland 2008 Photos

I'm still working on my write up, Clive is still working on his write up. Until then Some Photos

Germany & Switzerland

Awww man what a story. It was awesome, the plan, go to Switzerland to see the Matterhorn. Sounds simple right? How hard could it be? I think the fact that a 6 hour drive that turned into a 11 hour drive kind of explains that question.

I guess I should start at the begging. A mate has spent the last 3 weeks "working" in Germany, he MSNs me saying:

Nick: come to Switzerland
Nick: iv found a mountain pass I'm going to take a journey through the alps
Steve: when
Steve: iv got most Fridays and Mondays off from now until Christmas
Nick: this weekend I'm flying home, I'm thinking the weekend after
Steve: tell me where to be and when and ill be there
Nick: lol right your on, I live 10 minutes from Frankfurt airport. if you can make a flight out ill pick you up
Steve: you want me to do any driving ?
Nick: erm I should be fine, it won't be very driving intense
Nick: I have a plan, were going to Tasch. its less than 2 hours from Bern and its 6km away from Zermatt (we can walk it)
Nick: which is where the Matterhorn is....

Fast Forward to Friday 7am, I'm at Stansted airport waiting in the departure lounge for my 1 hour flight to Frankfurt Hanh. As I was sitting there reading my magazine, surrounded by loads of people, none of whom where speaking English. I started to think about what was going to happen;

• Fly to Frarankfurt Hanh airport,
• Get picked up from airport,
• Hang around Frankfurt till about 5pm,
• Drive south into Switzerland, then round some mountains, to get to Tasch at about 2-3am,
• Walk/Train/Taxi the 6km from Tasch to Zermatt,
• Find some where to sleep
  
• Sun, Sea & Sand Snow, Glaciers & Mountains,
• Matterhorn,
  
• Drive back to Frankfurt,
• Fly Home to the UK.

A nice simple plan yeah ?? Ok so having a plan is nice. Having a plan that can be changed easily is WAY more use. If you have a plan that goes perfectly your either a blatant liar, pretty dam awesome, or just making it up as you go along. Having a plan is good - your going to know when things aren’t going so right & also your going to know what you want to go do.

The flight to Germany was nothing special, so I didn't end up going crazy from the boredom, I didn't even have to sit next to some annoying kid. My bag was unloaded and waiting for me in the airport, before I'd even got through passport control; good old German efficiency. Once I was out of the airport, I turned my phone on and called Nick.

Nicks job consists of been on call in Frankfurt; he has to be in or around Frankfurt on the off chance that that something goes wrong - when it does he springs into action and sorts it. When he’s not fixing stuff he hangs around his hotel. Picking me up wasn't going to be a problem - except - nick was on the fist call he had out there, and he had been out there 3 weeks.

Frankfurt Hanh is about one and a half hours from Frankfurt, as always at airports there are taxi / minibuses / coaches that will take you from the airport to the cities / touristy type stuff. BOHR do a coach from Hanh to Frankfurt for €18. Once in the centre of Frankfurt I got Nick to txt me the address of his hotel, showed this to a taxi driver who spoke minimal English. He said that he knows the street, but not the hotel. Me, I say "ok, take me there".

Shortly after, I'm standing outside the hotel back on the phone to Nick, he tells me that he has stashed his room key-card out side his door. I knew this bit was going to be tricky - getting past hotel reception. A few phone calls later & a bit of blagging I had a new key to nicks room. I dump my stuff and finish my magazine from the airport off.

Still no nick, so I grabbed a few hours sleep, as I had been up since 3am. When I woke up and it was dark out side and still no nick. We were planning on leaving the hotel for Switzerland at 5pm on the dot no matter what. The time was now 4:30, or seen as I'm in Europe 16:30. Nick was still at work on his call; I went back to sleep, read some more book, watched some German TV. 20:30(8:30pm for us Brits) Nick arrives. Once he's packed we grab some food, and are in the car ready to roll at 10:30pm.

Nicks SatNav was set to take us to Tasch, about 550km or about 6 hours. Once we were out of Frankfurt on the main "E Roads", it was pretty dam sweet rolling along at 120mph. SatNav got up to some weird stuff, sending us on nice little trips threw some random towns, we even got to see a McDonalds twice from different directions. Germany was most uneventful, which is good when you’re on a 6 hour driving mission.

The border of Germany-Switzerland is a bit more than your average EU border, but seen as Switzerland isn’t in the EU. We got the normal "how long are you staying", "where are you from" etc. Paid the 40 Frank "Road Toll" and got a nice little green sticker for our troubles.

This is the point where things started "to go bad". I say bad, but it wasn't really bad, its just where they started to "Deviate" from the plan, and just some totally unexpected stuff. Stuff that you could never plan for, never in 1,000,000 years, it was "The Perfect Storm" of random, unfortunate, funny as hell stuff.

Switzerland is less than friendly to car drivers. They have crazy slow speed limits and speed cameras hidden all over the place. We were in the country for all of 15 min and then *FLASH* 10 min later *FLASH*. After this we just trundled along hoping that we were under the speed limits. As soon as another car went by we kept pace with them so we at least made some progress.

Address:On the "WTF Meter" this is about a 1 maybe a 2. Getting caught on a speed camera is crap; getting caught twice is lame, a bit careless. But still it’s not unheard of. Then things go to a 2-3. Road works, "Road works?" I hear you say, but these were no ordinary road works, these were Swiss road works. They had closed the road that we needed, they had diversions up though. The diversion signs were tiny, the arrows were pointing in opposite directions. "Berne Left" "Berne Right". In need of a little direction I got my SatNav out, Dual SatNav is the way to go, it is the future, it is the ultimate in road trip navigation. We kept driving, using the new two SatNav systems, and then as we have just past an exit, a diversion sign saying take that exit! It took us 2 more attempts to get round all the diversions in the end.

The next few hours were pretty uneventful, except maybe the both the SatNavs arguing with each other:
SatNav one "in 100 yards turn left"
SatNav two "in 200 yards turn right"
This wasn't really a problem - they both knew where we were heading. They must have been plotting what was about to happen for ages, together, in secret.

Ok, so it’s about 2:30 am, we have been driving for a good few hours, its still pitch black. I could start to make out the scenery now. Slowly seeing mountains appearing at the sides of the roads, then seeing outlines of mountains covered in snow, and then we started driving threw these mountains. It was awesome, totally dark - no lights. You could just make out that you were surrounded by snow covered mountains. The temperature gauge was slowly dropping; it said the temperature was now -2 degrees C. We were defiantly getting in to the mountains.

The roads were becoming more adventurous now; they didn't just go up and down a few little hills. These were proper roads that wound their way up one side of a mountain then down the other side. We are talking 180 degree bends, and 6-7 of them in a row. Basically awesome driving roads, so long as you ignore the 500 meter drop down the mountain if you screw up.

All this scenery and the fun roads started to distract us, if we had been paying more attention, we would have seen what happened next coming much sooner; We would have seen what the SatNavs had planned for us. Nick's SatNav gave up the game 1st, a weird looking icon turned up right in the place you would expect to see the next direction; for example, for a right hand turn you would see a arrow pointing right. The icon kind of, almost, looked like a train ... it was 3am ... and the SatNav, was expecting us to board a train. Thinking this was just another game of Nick's SatNav we just ignored it and used mine. That was until it asked us to board a ferry, half way up a mountain, at 3:30 in the morning. When you have two angry SatNav ladies telling you to keep driving & in 150 yards jump on a train, you have to just go and see if its a big joke.

As funny as it was, it wasn't a joke. We looked at each other, and we both said, ok!

We were in Switzerland, it was 3:30am, and the road thought the mountains turned out to be a car train, which unfortunately doesn't run at 3 in the morning. Faced with this we decided the best bet was to reroute. The best the 2 SatNavs came up with was a 90 mile detour back the way we came and round the mountains to the north-east. The Black Parade started playing for the 4th or 5th time, and we were off again. We were not about to be beaten by Tom-Tom, we were in Switzerland.

If the point where things started to go "bad" was back by the border, this is the bit where things went double "bad". We had planned to be in a hotel by now; lucky we didn't bother with booking anything. Instead we driving back to go round the mountain. Leaving the smaller, camera-free, 1 lane roads to get back to the 3 lane motorways.

The problem with driving in Switzerland at god knows what time in the morning, in a country that hates cars and anyone who drives them, are the speed limits. Or more importantly knowing what the speed limits are - which we didn't. The previous plan of tailing someone else and using them as a pacemaker was some what screwed. It seems that Swiss people tend to sleep at 4am and not do so much driving. So we plodded along at a "safe" speed until we left the big roads and headed back to the little towns.

Right here is where things kicked up a gear, and the gods started to REALLY try to stop us from completing our mission. So far we had had border police with guns asking us loads of questions. lucky they didn't want to see in the boot, as explaining thousands of pounds of IT equipment left in Nicks car from the job might have been a bit interesting. Then we had the speed cameras. Then Swiss road works, then the SatNav trying to get us on a train. What more could possibly go wrong? Surly something had to start going right? Ha-ha yeah right! ... we were still hours from Tasch, plenty of time for stuff to go wrong.

it was decision time, as far as wee could see we had two options.

1. Pull over get a few hours sleep in the car in the mountains in sub zero temps.
2. Pull over, dial up Google on a mobile phone, use Google maps on a mobile phone, work out if there was any other possible way round. Drive on and arrive who knows when with no sleep.

Obviously we were hardly likely to pull over and sleep, so we drove on. Using two SatNavs, a XDA connected with GPRS to the internet we came up with something that resembled a plan. a 4-5 hour drive back the way we came round the other end of the mountain, it wasn't good, but we were going end up there 1 way or another.

the next few hours were amazingly uneventful, I even managed to grab 30 min of sleep. Probably one of the best moments, EVER, waking up just as the sun was beginning to rise, and with the first light of the day seeing all around me snow covered mountains. we were at this moment in a valley somewhere very near to Tasch. The closer we got, the lighter it became, and the more we could see. After the night we had just had - it was about time we started getting some thing back, and we did. It was amazing, SNOW, mountains and snow.

I snapped a few pictures on the camera, it was to dark, and we were in the car. The quality was not that great. Most were blurry or under exposed, but some were fine. Looking back I just wish I had taken more. If I had taken 50 pictures and only 10 were usable id have been happy. Oh well at least I have a couple of shots.

According to the sign we were now in Tasch. Against all the odds we had just made it to our destination. We had arrived at the perfect time; it was 8:23am. Just in time for everything to start opening up.

In the last 24 hours I had about 3 hours sleep, and had just been in a car for 11 of them. It was -5°C, in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by big fuck off mountains. The odd little wooden house dotted around, and a big 6 story car park. This giant concrete building was the best sight you could imagine.

We managed to find a parking space next to some posh cars. Seen as we wouldn't be coming back to the car till we were ready to leave, I got changed and added a few more layers (3 more to be exact). we got to the platform/ticket office just a little bit to late, the next train was leaving in 3 min. by the time the tickets had been bought the train had left. The station was empty except some snowboarders; a return ticket was about 15 Euros. The next train would be in 15 min, not bad eh?

The town of Zermatt is at elevation of 1,608 M (5,276 FT), to put that into perspective.
The peak of Ben Nevis is 1,344 M (4,409 FT), the peak of Snowdon is 1,085 M (3,560 FT).
We had to take the train as there are no cars aloud up to or in Zermatt. The only vehicles that are aloud in Zermatt are little electric buggies.

The cold fresh air had woken me up, the fact that we had spent all night driving round most of Switzerland didn't seem to matter any more, we were here! We were expecting to have to wonder about for ages at this point looking for some where to stay. But no, the Swiss had thought about this, Zermatt is designed, from the ground up to be a place for winter sports. In the Zermatt station there is a notice board, which has every hotel, the rates, and the facilities, and the code. Next to the notice board is a phone, dial the 3 digit code (for free) and you’re connected to the hotel, sweet eh? The second hotel we tried on the list (a 4 star hotel) had spaces, and sent a little electric buggy to come pick us up from the station (again for free). it worked out at about 30 quid for the night. We checked in, but they said the room would not be ready till 12:00.