Icebergs, Pandora and a box of wine

For the past week we have been traveling with our daughter Katherine.  Knowing our time was short with her and being “type A” travelers, we jam in as many experiences and places as possible.  Consequently, instead of the leisurely hiking and minimal driving trip that we initially envisioned, this has turned into a rapid fire road trip.  We have had to face the reality that we are people who are driven to see what is around the next bend in the road;  in this case not traveling deep, but traveling wide.

We awaken to a dreary day which is all too common in Iceland.  After all, you don’t get green without a lot of rain.  We had hoped for a clear day to tour the Eastern Fjords of Iceland but Mother Nature refuses to cooperate.  We leave camp under partly cloudy skies and drive  the fjords looking up at steeply sloped mountains zooming along curvy roads wedged precariously between mountain and sea.  At first the clouds only threaten.  Then light showers dampen my windshield and soon turn to steady rain.  I scrunch further into my seat, flip the wipers on, crank up  a Jackson Brown station on Pandora, and cruise through a steady downpour.   After an hour of  rocking to the radio, weaving in and out of fjords, I stop for a break and peruse the map.  I realize that we are only a few hours from a fjord with a massive glacier at its’ head; a glacier famous for calving enormous icebergs that drift out to sea…right next to Highway 1.  Since Kate only has a few more days, and there are very few places in the world that you can drive right up to an iceberg, I say, ”How about let’s go and check out some icebergs?”  Kate is excited about this proposition so I turn the wipers up another notch  and push through the rain ignoring clouds of water kicked up by oncoming semis.   The drive becomes monotonous and just as Deborah starts questioning the prospect of icebergs by the road we spot many house sized chunks of ice that seem to sprout out of the pavement ahead.

We pull into a parking lot and snake a space that fronts the fjord.  Before us lays a placid lagoon choked with giant icebergs tinged  an impossible blue.  Hulking masses of ice are stuck on the bottom of  a shallow lagoon awaiting their fate of melting, fracturing and eventually washing out to sea on the ebb tide.  We walk around in the freezing rain catching fleeting glimpses of   the head of the massive glacier through the foggy gloom. Finally, soaking wet and frozen, we return to our camper and drive out to the beach to check out  remnants of icebergs washed up by the churning waves.  Deb grabs a chunk of thousand year old ice to make gin and tonics in camp  that night.

We reach the convergence of time and space that our schedule allows and so retrace our track back to camp on the Eastern Fjords for the night.  Tired and  road weary, we relax as Deb whips up some gin and tonics with the aforementioned thousand year old glacial ice.Afterwards, we crack open a three liter box of Tuscan red wine, nosh on a pan of eggs, spinach, onions and Havarti cheese and crawl into bed dreaming of  icebergs, Pandora on the radio, and cheap Italian wine.

Reindeer spotted by the road

Misty fjord

Glacial ice on the beach

Thousand year old ice for G and T?

One of hundreds of cascades spotted along the road

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.

I share some caviar, aquavit and beer with Kate

Driftwood on the beach

Friendly local

Deb finds the giant marshmallow patch

Mushroom

Bizarre sculptures.  

Modern henge-Icelandic style

Sky reflection or white water?

Fairy grotto

They know four wheeling here

The long and winding road

Manny, Moe and Jack try to figure out what is wrong with our camper

Mountains of the Eastern Fjords

Iceland-Part 1

Iceland has hot and cold running water

Clouds of steam pour out of a towering  mountain  that plunges into Djupifjordur or the Djupi fjord.  The wind blows away the clouds of steam to reveal a plunging cascade of boiling hot water.  The thermal fall drops well over one hundred feet to feed a hot river at the base of the mountain.  I  spin around  around to the opposite bank where another equally tall mountain plunges to the sea split by a beautiful waterfall of crystal clear ice cold water that feeds a rushing stream.

Iceland is a land of contrasts.

The steaming peak of Mt Snaefelllsjökull looms over a massive glacier that clings to slopes above ropy ancient flows of lichen clad basalt. At 65 degrees north latitude, just below the Arctic Circle, even in late August the days are 19 hours long.  On the summer solstice, the sun rise at 1:30AM and sets at 12:30 AM. In the winter, there is just a few hours of daylight.

After landing in Seydisfjordur on the ferry from the Faroe Islands we made a beeline to the Northwest corner of Iceland to an area called the Western Fjords.  We wanted to beat the cold weather here where winter starts to set in in mid-September and also to meet up with our friends Bob and Pauline from Mt Shasta.  We were expecting a frigid trip with lots of rain.  So far, every day has been T-shirt weather but rain is expected in the next few days. The past few days we have hiked to a waterfall,  walked along the shore of a pristine fjords, hiked to lighthouse that looked like something from a Buck Rogers movie, stood on basalt arches 50 feet above the North Atlantic and hiked to  caves that provided a refuge for  Gisla, a character from an Icelandic saga. 

Our rented campervan continues to be problematic.  It is a cantankerous old beast that I have nicknamed Moby Dick because it is a great white whale of a camper.  Every morning Deborah prays to St Jude that it will start and about half the time it does but only with copious amounts of starter fluid, cursing, and a few kicks to the bumper.  The latter two procedures don’t really help it start, but it does provide relief for the driver.

Tomorrow, we are headed out to the western most point in Europe (if you discount the Azores according to Lonely Planet) to visit bird rookeries.  More on that later.

The sun has just set but at 9:30 but twilight will last until well after 11:00.  Fortunately, our little camper has pretty decent blackout curtains so I am ready to hit the sack  anticipating the adventures of tomorrow. Stay tuned for more of our adventures in the great white whale.

62 Degrees North

62 degrees north is the average latitude of the Faroe Islands, a small archipelago midway between Denmark and Iceland.  What it lacks in size, it more than makes  up for in scenery which is probably some of the best in the world.  Largely unspoiled, these islands continually had me saying WOW!

Fog creeps into the fjord at sunset.  Gray clouds  lined with orange reflect in the water below.  Impossibly high, green clad mountains silhouetted against the sky rise up out of  wind ruffled water.  Cascades of water pour over the edge of sharply cut basalt eroded by water and wind.  Rivulets, creeks, streams and gushing rivers plunge into the air, oftentimes blown sideways by strong winds into mists that dampen the lush green grasses, mosses and lichens that cling to impossibly steep slopes.  As the sun sets over the mountains to the west,  the full moon peaks above the mountains to the east.

Fantastic, majestic, unbelievable day driving scenic roads up one side of a fjord and down another.  Twisty  one lane roads  wind up over  mountains to the next fjord beyond.  Rocky karsts offshore thrust skyward;  the stuff of myth and legends.  Elves hide in tunnels only to be glimpsed out of the corner of the minds eye.  Waves crash into sea caves startling birds nesting on the cliffs above.  Molting sheep graze contentedly on steep mountain slopes.  Every turn in the road reveals a rugged mountain/water vista more amazing than the last.  Dramatic, incredible, amazing; astounding scenery.  I can think of few places in the world that match the Faroes for rugged natural beauty.

I dream of driving at high speed in a long dark tunnel that is just wide enough for one car.  In the distance I see headlights approaching at high speed.  My palms get sweaty and I prepare for impact.  Just when I start to get really nervous, the twin orbs disappear to my left.  I continue on hoping for the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel but much to my dismay another pair of headlights is barreling towards me.  I can feel Deb grabbing her seat but, just as before, the headlights disappear to my left.  After the fourth time this happens, I finally spot the light at the end of the tunnel and soon burst free into the sunlight.  This was no dream but only a somnolent reflection on the day’s drive.  Crazy as it may seem, there are several one lane tunnels in the Faroes with turnouts every hundred meters for the benefit of oncoming traffic; call it a polite game of chicken.  The object is to drive through the tunnel…and survive.

Elf House

Elf on a rock

As I relive the low level panic of the day  the wind swirls around the van gently rocking us to sleep.

Deb admires a cirque of waterfalls