A Play Date with the Planet

Days 8-10

Day 8

There are about 10,000 waterfalls in Iceland, and despite my father’s opinion, one can never see too many. I started my day on Tuesday with a quick walk to Seljalandfoss waterfall. The trail leads visitors behind the waterfall, and since it was a rare, gorgeous warm and sunny day, I threw on my rain jacket and enjoyed the spray.

A few hundred meters later, there’s another smaller waterfall in a cave-type thing, and you actually approach from the bottom of the waterfall. In order to see it, you have to look straight up. Because of it’s strange constructions, this place has a reputation for being an elf concert hall 🧝🏼‍♀️

After that, I took the ferry to Westman Island. I fell asleep on the boat and woke up groggy – ten days of nonstop driving and adventuring finally hit me and I realized I needed to slow down. I had originally planned on hiking somewhere but definitely was not up for it anymore. Instead, I found an ice cream shop and settled for a calmer walk around the island. A few hours later I took the ferry back and drove to Keflavík, where I’d spend my last two nights with a host I had connected to on Facebook. Eydis is a delightful woman, who lives with her four kids, ages 8-18. Naturally 8 year old Frida and I became best friends and we decided that the next day we’d hang out in the afternoon.

Day 9 – Reykjavik and Keflavík

This was the only day on my crazy itinerary that I had left totally wide open. I decided to use this day and head back over to Reykjavik one more time. I explored the shops and picked up a few souvenirs, trying to get rid of my last few kronur. I intended to go to some of the museums since I hadn’t visited any of them the first time around – but then I discovered there’s such a thing as an ELF TOUR. Obviously I booked that immediately and wow was that one of my better choices! For an hour and a half, we walked through the city with our guide Stefan, who told stories of elves and trolls and lake monsters and dead ex-boyfriends rising from the grave to haunt their unsuspecting women. We learned that a whopping 54% of Icelandic people actively believe in the mythical beasties, with the rest of the population quietly agreeing that they take care not to disturb suspected elf residencies, just in case. We learned that the government has issued *actual* policies around making sure people don’t disturb elf houses during new construction. There are hundreds of species of elves, and the stories surrounding them go back hundreds of years, impacting both Icelandic culture and pop-culture around the world. From Tolkien to J.K. Rowling, everyone loves a good mythological creature, and many of their characters originate from Icelandic folklore. Afterward I was soggy and cold, thanks to the perpetual misty-ness of the city, so I took myself out for a delicious hot meal and feasted on the freshest catch of the day there ever was.

I got back to Eydis’s house, where little Frida was anxiously awaiting my return. “Can we go to the store now?” she asked with a thick Icelandic accent. She took me by the hand, collected her older sister, and off we went. Naturally, we had a few stops to make along the way. First I was introduced to Giganta, the local friendly troll. Then we wandered over to say hi to the town giant, and finally to the store where Frida and her sister insisted on busying us some Icelandic treats.

One of Keflavik’s local giants.

We wandered home, with the girls pointing out landmarks, like the local museum and the best ice cream shop in the country, and I spent the rest of the evening hanging out and packing up my things.

Day 10 – departure!

And so my vacation comes to an end! What a whirlwind is has been. In the last ten days, I drove 1745 miles, walked and hiked about 60 more. I was on the road between 3-7 hours every day, spending more time with this car over the past ten days than I’ve spent with some of my closest friends over the past ten years.

Dirt courtesy of rural gravel roads.

I played with waterfalls, climbed on rocks, crawled under lava formations, slipped on a glacier, swam between the continents, ate local treats, explored cities and villages, giggled with elves and trolls, waved to whales, squealed with puffins, soaked in hot springs, escaped death by geyser, learned about life and law in this country, breathed the fresh mountain air, drank the purest water on the planet, and met dozens of new friends. I had glorious, unicorn Icelandic weather, with mostly sunny skies and only a few rainy days. Every single thing happened exactly as planned – not one thing went wrong. I packed perfectly; everything I needed, I had and I brought very few things that I didn’t end up needing. I sharpened my instincts for self-care, problem solving, and leveraging my resources. I practiced being alone and I practiced making new friends, pushing through exhaustion and moments of doubt and fear. I learned that traveling solo is definitely my cup of tea, and I opened up the world for myself in a whole new way. As I begin the transition back to real life and routine, I’ll borrow the ending from one of Stefan’s folktales – and the girl was never quite the same after that….who knows where I’ll end up next, now that I’ve liberated myself from the feeling of needing a friend to travel with?!

Already dreaming of my next adventure

Beyond the Wall

Day 7: Vatnajökull National Park

I have done some incredible things in this country over the past week. I came having done very little actual planning – but I did have a bucket list:

1. Soak in the Blue Lagoon – check💧

2. Snorkel between the tectonic plates – check🏊🏼‍♀️

3. Get up close and personal with a puffin colony – check 😍🐧

4. Hike on a glacier

With just one item left on my bucket list and only three days left of my trip, today was the day I’ve been waiting for. Just like Jon Snow, I couldn’t wait to go beyond the wall and see what mysteries lie in the frozen lands. Wildlings? White Walkers? Children of the Forest? Fun fact: the Wall from Game of Thrones was CGI’d using images from this glacier, and the cast and crew used spots not too far from where I was for their filming.

What I hadn’t realized is that yesterday when I was sitting in the Höffel hot pot, what I thought was a random snow capped peak was really Vatnajökull – the largest glacier on Europe. I left my hostel early so I could make a quick stop at the Jökulsárlón glacier lagoon – my first real chance to see the glaciers up close.

Just as I was getting into my car, I did the worst thing imaginable – I dropped my phone. Not a big deal since I have a screen protector, blah, blah, blah, but then as I was checking to make sure everything still worked, I realized the camera wasn’t turning on. Damn. The front camera still works and a few minutes of googling and resetting my phone told me that my flashlight was the real problem and there’s nothing I can do about it until I get back to the states. Great. Trying to look on the bright side, I decided this was a great reminder that I should be enjoying the moment, and focusing on experiencing and being present, as opposed to trying to capture and share what I’m seeing. I resigned myself to taking fuzzy pictures with my front camera. Something is better than nothing I guess?

But then I saw the glacier.

The lagoon is filled with massive icebergs that have broken off of the glacier and are working their way toward the Atlantic. The signs leading up to the water warn visitors that swimming is prohibited, trying to walk or stand on icebergs is illegal (because they move and sometimes flip over), and a person can only survive for a few minutes in water this cold.

Once you pass the ominous signage, you walk along the black sand beach, staring at a massive 2000 year old chunk of ice. The pieces that float soundlessly along the water are holding zebra striped histories of their development, layers of sediment or lava ash that tell the story of the planet. Once in a while you hear the soft clink of two icebergs gently reuniting, only to be separated again by the icy blue current. They’ll float out to sea, melt, and rejoin the water cycle, forever separated from the company they’ve kept for hundreds of years.

I stayed for a while and contemplated the color blue for the millionth time this week, and then continued to the meeting point for my hike. I met my guide, who handed me and ax and a pair of crampons, and hopped on the bus. 20 minutes later, we were at Falljökull – the Falling Glacier, an outlet of Vatnajökull. Our guide showed us where the glacier began, and pointed to a spot a few hundred feet away. “That’s where it began in the 90s” he explained, giving everyone a moment to let that sink in. It’s one thing to read or watch documentaries about climate change; it’s another thing to hike on it.

He pointed out the profile of a face along the mountain that looks like a person laying down and staring up at the sky – that’s Helga, the troll who lives in the glacier. Because of course there’s a glacier troll.

We took a moment to tie ourselves into our crampons and get a brief safety lesson. “Make sure you hold your ax this way” Simeon said in a think Eastern European as he demonstrated, “otherwise bad things will happen. We walk single file, and please don’t go away from the path, so bad things don’t happen.”

We stared walking like little ducklings, our shoes crunch crunch crunching on the ice. Lucky for me, another woman on the hike agreed to take some pictures for me and share them with me after. Three cheers for iPhone airdrop!

We hiked up, up, up, careful not to slip and fall. The crevasses have claimed many a careless hiker, so we treated them with great respect as we walked carefully along behind Simeon.

We paused once in a while for physics and geology lessons, and asked questions like “How high up can you hike here?” (Reaching the top top takes ten hours) and “What happens if you fall?” (Bad things).

At one point, Simeon left us to fend for ourselves. “I need to make sure the path is safe,” he said, “Stay RIGHT here.” He shot us the stern look of a mama duck, and disappeared behind the glacier.

Lord of the Flies jokes were made, as we tried to keep ourselves still and not accidentally fall dozens of meters into a crevasse. Eventually our guide popped up from behind the ice and showed us the path. Again, we walked single file, carefully placing one foot at a time on the slippery stairs he had carved for us. By now, we’d been hiking for 30 or so minutes, so we were getting thirsty. What to do, when you’re thirsty and surrounded by world’s freshest, most refreshing water?

We hiked on the ice a little while longer and then it was time to head back down to solid ground.

At one point, one of the other hikers lost his footing and slipped with a clang of his axe against the ice. Simeon flew across the ice and was there within seconds – luckily the man was ok, his axe had mercifully landed a few feet in front of him and hadn’t cut either himself or the hiker in front of him. The rest of our descent was smooth and snow-quiet, the quiet that comes the morning after a blizzard, with depth and frozen breath.

Having successfully completed a ranging mission beyond the Wall, and since I was already wearing black, I decided it was as good a time as any to become a crow.

Now that I was ~officially~ part of the Night’s Watch (because they still inexplicably exist?) I headed straight for East Watch By The Sea, because by God when the Lord Commander gives you an order you follow it, or “bad things will happen.” I got to the black sand beach that was another GoT filming site around 6, but it was crawling with tourists and very windy so I stayed just long enough to fill my hair with the smell of the sea and I carried on my way.

It was getting late, but no day in Iceland is complete without at least one waterfall, so I stopped at Skogafoss, which is widely accepted as one of the most beautiful waterfalls in the country because of it’s straight and even drop, and the wide river it flows into. Visitors can climb several hundred stairs to reach a gorgeous viewing point, but having just hiked for several hours and driven for a few more, I chose the path of least resistance.

Naturally, there’s also folklore about a treasure chest at the bottom of the falls, that has evaded discovery for generations. Like most other sites in Iceland, the only thing separating visitors from the waterfall is the desire to stay dry – and a lot of people did not seem to have that desire. Today was not a great day to go on a watery treasure hunt, so I decided to keep my distance from the spray and admire from afar.

45 minutes later, I was driving up a gravel path looking for the remote farmhouse that would be my home for the night. Thank goodness it doesn’t get dark this time of year – farmhouses are hard to find and I would NOT have enjoyed searching for my guesthouse in the dark. Alls well that ends well, and I eventually found my way to the quaintest country farm there ever was. Tonight I’ll dream of glaciers and with no more great adventures planned, tomorrow will be a day to slow down, catch up on sleep, and start getting ready to leave this beautiful country. I have two more days left here and I’m not quite sure what I’ll do with them yet, but as long as the weather cooperates I’ll spend as much time as I can breathing in the Iceland air and feasting my eyes on the greens and blues.