FURTHER: A TRAVEL BLOG: Backroads, aquavit and caviar

As the world becomes a smaller place, more and more people are traveling. There just aren’t that many places where you can get away from the hordes of tourists. While we appreciate the Eiffel Tower, the Parthenon, and the Roman Forum as much as anyone, we love to find those places off the beaten path. One can still find some of those off beat sights on the backroads of Iceland.

The wheels of the campervan hop and skitter on the washboard gravel road. Piled up gravel in the center and shoulders of the road throw us around. Potholes jostle us and Kate’s bag flys off the upper bunk and crashes onto the sink below. We slide around a hairpin turn and my knuckles tighten on the steering wheel as I look down the steep slope that drops a thousand feet to the fjord below. The sign says, "15% grade next 15 kilometers”. I downshift to second gear and the engine whines as we chug up the steep grade. The road switches back and switches back again and again. The wheels hop and dig for traction. The traction control on the dashboard goes berserk, flashing frantically, telling me that the wheels are more in contact with air than the rough gravel track. To make things worse, each hairpin switchback is awash in loose gravel. I grip the steering wheel still tighter, at the same time trying to stay loose and let the van drift where it wants and not overcorrect knowing that one false move and we are over the side.

I furtively glance at the snow capped peaks above, riven with cascades of white churning water. Countless water courses cut through ancient basalt lava flows. Each turn in the road reveals a new vista; glacier clad mountain, waterfall, vertigo inducing view of the sinuous road below. We reach the top of the grade and find ourselves in a cirque of impossibly lime green lichen clad mountains footed by a meadow of impossibly green lichen criss-crossed with small streams with the undercut banks of little fairy grottos.

I walk out onto the carpet of lichen, each step like stepping on a cloud. I plunge my fingers down into the lush growth. It feels like velvet. I stand and look across a canyon that is several thousand feet deep and gaze across at a massive collapsed caldera of an ancient volcano. I turn around and watch as a Toyota pickup struggles past our van and switches back a few times and then starts up what seems like an impossibly steep slope and I wonder if our campervan can make the same grade. I spring over the turf and jump in the van and take off. We make it over the top and start down the other side. Dense clouds drift up the mountain slope and envelope the peak we have just left. The downslope is just as white knuckle. Switchback after switchback of impossibly steep road finally delivers us the valley floor below.

Several hours and gnarly gravel roads later we finally arrive in our campground for the night. Out the back window of the camper, the setting sun is reflected with snow capped peaks in a glassy pond. Fluffy white clouds slowly turn pink as the light fades from the day.

We are late arriving in camp and so forgo cooking dinner. Instead we opt for a ghetto chic dinner of caviar with hardboiled eggs, thick Icelandic yoghurt, chopped onions, and avocado on dark rye bread washed down with Viking beer and aquavit.