Return to Iceland - The End

After yet another failed attempt to sleep in, constantly thwarted by the daily noise of hotels and hostels, I didn’t waste much time in getting out of my accommodations. I sated my hunger with a surprisingly good lamb and egg sandwich and coffee from a gas station and some skyr from my dwindling bag of groceries. I drove around Ísafjörður for a short period of time, but it quickly became apparent that little but the dead center of town seemed familiar. I don’t think it was that so much had changed, though there was a lot more tourist traffic thanks to a cruise ship that tours the Westfjords. I think not being under a blanket of snow and mostly devoid of cars and people just made it seem like a different town. I did find the bakery, which was better than I remembered, and the hotel I stayed in…but that was about all the seemed familiar. One of my personal favorite photos from my last Iceland trip came while I was in Ísafjörður and I wanted to see if I could find the same spot to compare winter and summer. I just couldn’t seem to get my bearings. Disappointed, and unjustifiably annoyed at the retiree tourists pouring off the cruise ship that didn’t actually do anything wrong other than exist, I headed out of town. Though not before restocking on a few supplies from the local grocery store.

I continued my trek around the Westfjords, and not too far out of Ísafjörður there is a long tunnel that bores through the mountain. I get unreasonably excited about driving through tunnels, but this one was a bit surprising because just a short distance into the tunnel, after it splits off into two directions, it becomes a one-lane tunnel. I’d never been in a tunnel where you constantly had to keep an eye out for oncoming traffic and then figure out which of you is going to pull into one of the many lay-bys inside the tunnel to let the other go. These lay-bys are signified here, and on a few other roads I’ve been on in Iceland, by a blue sign with a white M. I have no idea what the M stands for even after trying to look it up. Apparently one-lane tunnels aren’t unheard of in Iceland, but none of my travels brought me to one until then.

It was another day with only a vague idea of something to aim for other than just seeing the rugged beauty of the Westfjords. Much like the previous day there was plenty to see and be awed by, but not very many places to stop and really take it in. At one point I came around the tip of a fjord and saw what looked like a massive waterfall across the water. Driving around the inlet you get a good view and it becomes obvious there is more than one fall but right when you get near it the road turns inland. I backtracked and found a road that takes you to the base of the series of falls called Dynjandi. In all there are seven falls, all of which have their own name, but Dynjand is commonly what the largest is referred to as. It’s much taller than it seemed from a distance, and it seemed pretty big, and it fans out dramatically as it cascades down a series of steps—getting wider and wider with each drop. The hike up to the main fall is steep but not as bad as most of the others I’ve been to. Despite this, I found it more exhausting than usual to go up. Maybe it was the lack of sleep, the colder temperatures of the Westfjords, the nearly constant wind that could reach 20mph (steady, not gusts)—whatever it was I ended up stopping a lot on the way up and even a time or two on the way down. It was a bit embarrassing as young people practically ran up and a few old people passed me by.

After checking out the falls I continued on, slowly making my way toward a small valley town called Selárdalur where a now deceased artist created a bunch of large concrete sculptures and just started decorating the area. It was off the main road the goes around the Westfjords and I wasn’t sure how much time it would add so I kept it tentative. When it finally came down to deciding whether to go on to Selárdalur or continue on the main road around the Westfjords I chose the main road. I pulled up to the point where the road splits and there were signs pointing out how narrow, rough, and slow the road was. Paved roads in Iceland have a speed limit of 90KMH, gravel roads 80, and this road was a sluggish 60. It was marked as an F-road that I should stay off, but I had doubts of just how well my little piece of shit would manage and turned away. Even though it was a little more than 200 miles away, at this point I was pretty much just making my way through the rest of the Westfjords and back to Reykjavik.

Now it wasn’t at this point that the thought first occurred to me, it was actually shortly after sighting the Dynjand falls, but this was the first time in the trip I had thought about no longer being on the trip. It was depressing because it was so sudden. My mind had been free of any thoughts of my normal life, the life where I’m not traveling and I’m not in Iceland, and I hadn’t realized until that moment how nice it had been to just forget. But then I forgot to keep forgetting. I eventually got over the melancholy, but the thought that the trip would be ending stuck around.

Not much else happened after giving up on Selárdalur. I saw more alien mountains, but how many times can you go on about that before you start sounding repetitive? There was a bizarrely golden-sanded beach in a land of otherwise black sand or rocky beaches. I saw a small public pool among the rocks just a few yards from the sea that was fed by the warm waters of a nearby creek. There was a sign in the gravel lot bragging about the fact that pretty much everyone in the area learned how to swim in that pool—an odd thing to feel the need to proclaim. I saw more sheep, more ducks and geese (they’re all over the place), more Icelandic ponies (they all have mane that either looks like they should be in a commercial for horse shampoo or are about to start an emo rock band), and a pair of massive ravens that may or may not have been Odin’s companions Huginn and Muninn.

With evening coming on and the weather quite gloomy it was time to start thinking about the night’s accommodations. I had no intention of driving all the way to Reykjavik so I settled on a small but very nice hostel in a tiny little village called Reykholar. There were no stores or restaurants other than a gas station that I could see, so I made dinner from my bag of groceries and settled in for the night.

The next morning I was once again deprived the luxury of sleeping in thanks to the sounds of guests clanking away in the kitchen. I tried to buy a couple hours with some earplugs, but the magic of sleep was already fading and it was all for not. I downed a grocery bag breakfast and once again hit the road. With only about 3 hours of driving to Reykjavik I was in the capital city by lunch time. The night before I had struggled with the decision of whether or not to stay in Reykjavik. It was the city I had fallen in love with on my first visit. Except for the short detours to Ísafjörður and Akureyri I had spent the entirety of that trip inside the city limits. But I was a little afraid to return. When I first drove past Reykjavik on the start of my trip around the Ring Road I could already tell even from a distance that it had changed. The skyline was littered with cranes and the traffic of tour busses had definitely shot up dramatically. Was it still the place I had built up in my mind? Yes and no. Unlike Ísafjörður there were parts instantly recognizable. Once on the main artery through the heart of town, Laugavegur, I remembered where a lot of things were, and a lot of them were still there. Much like Akureyri it had grown and is still growing. A large section of Laugavegur was sectioned off as pedestrian only and tourists strolled up and down popping in and out of shops and restaurants. A few blocks in any directions and there were chunks of streets that were closed for construction or were being redone for commercial use. Parking was in short supply as lots were full, as was most of the street parking. There were dozens of new buildings going up, many of which looked like hotels. The spike in tourism since my first visit was definitely making its changes.

But it wasn’t all bad. Quite possibly my favorite bookstore in the world, Mál og Menning, was right where I’d left it. Its second-story café that overlooked Laugavegur looked the same and still served good coffee and pie and it still made a great place to chill out. Instead of getting out of the cold, this time I was getting away from the tourists. The fabulous hotdogs from Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur were still fabulous, even if the stand had been forced to move from where it was when I visited. Walking around the center of town was still fun and brought back all the good memories. But with that said, after about three hours I was done. I was happy with my decision the night before not to stay in Reykjavik, because now to me Iceland is the whole country and not just one small city. To quote Helga, the chatty proprietor of the bed and breakfast near Mývatn, “It’s good to get out of Reykjavik.”

My last night in Iceland will be spent back at the same place I crashed after arriving. If I was able to sleep 16 hours here last time, I’m hopeful that I’ll finally succeed in sleeping in. Hopefully that’ll help me transition back to “normal time” and won’t be so tired on the flight back. I don’t go back to work immediately, luckily. I’ll have two days of downtime in Atlanta, and then I’ll be meeting friends to go to the annual nerd convention, DragonCon, over Labor Day weekend. That won’t exactly be relaxing since it’s likely to be hot as balls and lots of walking and standing, but it’ll be fun. And we’ll just have to see what the next adventure will be.