Ups and Downs in Iceland

I've put this place on maps so many times, I just had to visit. Icelandair flies directly from Minneapolis to Reykjavik so on this trip I scheduled a stopover here on my return from Italy.

I'm proud of this map showing tectonic plates of the world. It's been used and reused because it does a good job of showing the relationship between the continents and their plates. As I type I'm sitting atop the spot where the North American and Eurasian Plates converge. Or more correctly, diverge.

Iceland's landscape varies greatly from place to place. Departing the airport on an overcast late afternoon, I was struck by its starkness. The highway runs through mile after mile of volcanic rubble just barely colonized by herbs and mosses. Large areas are just fractured humps of solidified lava and scrubby vegetation. I say that the color palette of Iceland is gray and gold with accents of white and blue (if the sky happens to clear.)

Fractured mound of lava, colonized by moss, along the road from the airport to Reykjavik.

After sweating it out and swatting mosquitoes in Milano, I welcomed Iceland's chilly rain. Since Iceland in the North Atlantic, the weather changes constantly, sunny one minute and pouring rain the next. The rain can be torrential and then leave as suddenly as it showed up.

Since I was traveling alone I decided to stay at a hostel, and overall I'm happy with my choice. On the first night I ended up eating in the communal kitchen with an American woman about my age who was in town for a conference. While we ate and visited, a crew of young people from Costa Rica (who were on holiday from Ireland where they have been working and learning English) showed up. We sat around chatting and laughing in multiple languages and then went outside to see the northern lights, which the Costa Ricans said had shown up the night before. It was raining, but no problem, five minutes later the sky had cleared and I was able to see a faint green curtain to the north, even through the lights of Reykjavik.

I originally signed up for a dorm room but was in need of a little downtime so I managed to snag a private room for the first two nights. Unfortunately that wasn't an option for the last night, so I moved into a room with three other women. Reminder to self: the private room is worth the money. Random roommates show up on their own schedules, which meant that one of them appeared and had to get settled in about an hour after the other three of us had fallen asleep.

Two of the roommates were personable and quiet, but the third was grumpy and noisy, filling the room with her stuff and its associated odors. She brought a takeout meal of Kentucky Fried Chicken into the room and ate part of it at the one little shared table before taking the remainder up to her top bunk for the night. Periodically she would awaken, turn her phone on for light, and eat a few bites. I could tell by the rustling of the paper and the munching and swallowing noises, plus the chicken-y odor that permeated the room afresh when she would open the box and dig in. I like the casual vibe and the serendipity of meeting random people in the hostel's common rooms, but it's more enjoyable when I can sleep on my own schedule at my preferred temperature.

The hostel staff were unfailingly polite, personable, and helpful, but they fell a bit short with tour advice. Being in Iceland for only three days, I wanted to make the most of my time here. Friends who had visited before suggested that I schedule my visit to the Blue Lagoon for the morning before my departure, as it is located close to the airport. I now realize that my situation was different from theirs, which was key. I think they had a car, or at least quite a bit more time to work with than I did. The Lagoon is in high demand and the packaged tours to it with transportation need to be booked well in advance. I had assumed that since it was late in the season there would be ample opportunities to go there, but in fact there were none on the days I was available.

So the Tuesday afternoon that I arrived, I went to the hostel desk to set up some tours. My first priority was the "Golden Circle": important to me because it includes the Mid-Atlantic rift. I got that arranged for Wednesday. The difficulties started when we tried to arrange a Blue Lagoon for Thursday. It wasn't available, so the front desk guys tried to find other lagoon experiences for  me (the Blue Lagoon is best known, but there are several others.) It took a lot of looking, and as we searched, other patrons needed the attention of the desk personnel. They handed my booking task back and forth several times, eventually settling on an all-day trip to the South Coast that included a basalt waterfall and a soak at the Sky Lagoon just outside Reykjavik. Done! 

A problem arose at 7:50 Thursday morning when I rechecked my reservation: it had been made for Friday, the day of my departure, and pickup was scheduled for 8:00 am. Most of the tours have a 24 hr cancellation policy so I decided to cancel, but the new front desk guy, ever helpful, called the tour company and asked if there would be time for me to take a taxi to the starting point and join them anyway. They said sure, and he called me a taxi. Minutes ticked by. I said maybe I should just cancel. "No worries," he said, "they always run a little late, and Reykjavik is small. It only takes five minutes to get to the pickup point by car." When half an hour had passed, it was clear that I would not be joining the tour, and I would get a refund.

Whale watching was a success! We were able to watch two humpback whales several times as they dove and then resurfaced. One of them lay on its back and repeatedly slapped the water with its pectoral fins.

We made Plan B. Go whale-watching. And, the guy helpfully told me, if you don't mind a short walk, you can take the bus to Sky Lagoon and walk in for a simple soak that costs about $6. I would need a SIM card for my phone in order to navigate this, so I walked to the Vodaphone store and bought one. I walked back to the hostel feeling triumphant, ready for the day.

Humpback surfacing close to the boat

This dolphin showed off for us. It jumped out of the water ten or twelve times.

Whale-watching was great! I walked the three miles from the hostel to the dock, and we saw dolphins and two humpback whales. It was exhilarating but I was chilled. That soak would be nice, but I was tired. But heck, I'm in Iceland--I gotta go for the soak! I found the bus, and using the app, bought and validated my ticket. I got off at the right stop and started off on the "short walk" to Sky Lagoon...which ended up being a mile and a half. I walked in and up to the counter. "I'm sorry," the attendant told me, "now we only have the deluxe package available. It is $130 US." Gulp. Disappointed, I turned around and walked the mile and a half back to the bus, then took another 45 minutes to get back to the hostel. My big plus was that I really had a good workout. My iPhone told me I'd gotten 23,000 steps that day.

Dinner was no longer being served so I finished some Doritos I'd bought and scrounged some bread from the "Free" section of the hostel kitchen. "You should go to the pool next door," someone suggested. "It's open until 10 pm and it's inexpensive" (yeah, right, I thought.) But I checked the schedule; that was correct, and it was free to people over 67! I gathered suit and towel and walked over. It wasn't just a pool, it was a complex of lap pools, play pools for kids, and hot soaking pools, indoors and out. The air temperature was just a few degrees above freezing. It was absolutely delightful to sit up to my neck in hot water, steam rising into the atmosphere. It saved the day.

More details and photos about Iceland and my impressions of it in a later entry.