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Published: September 7th 2008
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I am a Viking. My hands of those of Thor god of Thunder. My wit is srpy like that Loki. My blood pulses through my veins by decree of Oden. When I leave this earth, I will spend eternity in the glorious forever of epic feast and never-ending battle that is Valhalla. Unfortunately, i was born in the wrong century (and with the wrong physique, i could be helmet horn polisher at best). Current international law prevents the psychotic Berzerker rampage of bloodshed that my ancestors made famous. Nowadays it's just a very quick way to get kicked out of the Walmart Sporting Goods Section. You can't travel even with the meagerest of battleaxes (not even if you check it). I just want to pillage one thing in my damn life. Is that so much to ask? I needed to be surrounded by people who get me. People descended from the mighty warriors and gods of the Viking sagas. I needed Iceland.
I knew nothing of Iceland before we bought a ticket there (that's now we travel, badass i know). My research taught me a few things: Iceland is a small island country pretty much halfway between England and Nova
Scotia. It sits on the meeting point of two major tectonic plates. These plates are gradually separating, leaving a rift in the earth that makes Iceland's landscape the single most seismically violent stretch of earth on the planet. Floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and other mayhem are par for the course here. It is a land that defies definition. Icelanders will tell you they don't live in Europe, but belong to the "European Economic Area". While its nearest neighbors are the Brits and Canucks, the country could not be more Scandanavian in nature. In fact, the Danes still claim that Iceland is a part of Denmark (don't mention this to the Icelanders, who've been independent for a century). Also, like other Scandi's, they even use the Kroner as their currency (it's like the peso for white people in sweaters).
Icelanders enjoy the fruits of their land. Through harnessing the wind, water and thermal energies that their volatile landscape, they are 100% energy independent using completely sustainable means. They have an energy SURPLUS. They sell power to other countries because they just can't use all they create. It's amazing, even if your shower smells like sulfur. Also, the Icelandic language is
the biggest bunch of gibberish-talk and nicumpoopery ever conceived by man.
There's a common mantra: Iceland is green and Greenland has ice. People who say this have never been to Iceland. Iceland is only green compared to Greenland which is literally a giant block of ice. Oprah looks svelt next to a Minke Whale. In reality, the small portion of Iceland that isn't completely covered in ice for most the year is more reminiscent of the surface of Mars than any grassy meadow I've ever seen. On the drive into Reykjavik (Rayk-Ya-Vik) from the airport, we half expected to creatures from another planet (though Icelanders are close). Let me give you perspective: Iceland's top scientists (both of them) are still struggling with the task of getting trees to grow in the country. No joke, one of their main national concerns is trying to sprout some spruces. This place is unyielding. If trees from Siberia can't live here, how are two pampered middle-class southern Californians gonna survive? Of the 300,000 or so people in Iceland, roughly 8o% live in Reykjavik. The rest of the country is just too harsh. Guidebooks will tell you that Reykjavik is a cosmopolitan treasure trove.
In reality, it's cool but nothing special. R-town's real appeal is as base camp for exploring the environmental oddities that lie on the outer reaches of the island. Unfortunately, Jenny and I chose the perfectly wrong time to be there. We were too late for the Northern Lights, too early for puffin season. Most of the really cool stuff was unreachable until the ice melted and we were just an hour and a half away from witnessing Iceland's legendary midnight sun (sun set at 10:30 pm for us). We also chose to visit at the back end of a very long trip that had left us strapped for cash.
I had heard that Iceland was expensive, but was not prepared for what we found. Some of the prices were absolutely staggering. But you've heard me bitch about cost so much on this blog that i won't bore you any more with my complaining (WAAA! my dream trip of a lifetime wasn't free! WAAA! Even I'm getting sick of hearing it). The one change here was that we knew we were at the end of our trip and we were aware of exactly how much cash we had left. We
I'll have the BBQ
Hold the Kjuklingaborgari decided that we had enough cash to do a few things as long as we were very frugal the rest of the time (If you're gonna be broke. Go Big). The result was a week of lounging and watching our hostels surprisigly robust DVD collection intersperrsed with a handful of truly once in a lifetime experiences.
While we weren't able to get everything out of Iceland I'd hoped, the country treated us to some amazing adventures that were completely unique to the island. We took a pair of day trips out into the wild that took us across the most diverse geographical sites on the planet. In a pair of guided tours we saw crater lakes, bubbling thermal pools, incredible waterfalls, a geyser that erupted every 5 minutes, puffins (ok, a puffin), an ancient viking gallows, and the continental divide where you could read the earth as two continents separated from each other. We also got to go ice climbing on a glacier. No shit, clamp ons, ice axe, the whole 9. Where else can you go that would supply me with so many sharp instruments at one time?
Our final day in Iceland really served as a
Stained Glass
In a church outside Rek-burg wonderful way to end this little adventure of ours. We bought a ticket to the Blue Lagoon, the world's preeminent thermal spa. This place was one massive hot tub, naturally heated of course, surrounded by saunas, steam-rooms and showers. Looking from the pool out into the jagged molten crags of the surrounding area, you feel like you've found the one spot of pleasure in a landscape of pain. We had ample soaking time to melt away all our scars from 7 months of travel. Concussions in Peru, nausea in Argentina, twisted knees in Brazil, sunburns in Mozambique, blisters in Botswana, hunger in Egypt, and the cumulative cold of ill-prepared months in Europe all melted from our bodies into the bubbling water.
It felt weird to drop those packs for the last time. To lose 50 pounds in a few seconds. To wake up today in the same bed as the day before. When the unknown becomes familiar, the familiar becomes strange. To walk off a plane back into the arms of the people you love is almost as shocking as leaving that grip in the first place. We came home knowing that this was not the end. Knowing that
there will never be an end. We'll always keep working for that next step into the darkness, trying to make the unknown become the norm.
(P.S. I'm being a little sappy because this writing is being done on the eve of our next big adventure. This time tomorrow I'll be on a plane to Tokyo. The adventure continues. Also included are some photos from our one day stopover in Boston with my great friend Anna. Please forgive me not waxing sarcastic on Beantown, but i gotta pack)
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