Back in April, Iceland said, "hey, world, if you're vaccinated, come hang with us."
Because most other countries were heading in the opposite direction, lots of people with a hankering to do some end-of-the-pandemic travel said, "sold!"
In late April or early May, I made the decision to go in late June. I know of at least five friends who were either there or were going within three weeks of the time I was there.
The requirements related to COVID were pretty unobtrusive. Show up with a vaccination card, take a rapid test after landing, and "quarantine" at your lodging while you await your results, which they send you via text within about four hours.
Our flight landed at 6 a.m. Check-in time at our hotel in Reykjavik was at 2 p.m. So we decided to "quarantine" outside by hiking to see an erupting volcano, which just happened to be about a 30 minute drive from the airport.
Technically not the type of quarantine the authorities had in mind, but we figured it was worth a shot.
My only concern about the plan was that after an overnight flight during which it was unlikely that anyone would sleep much, we would be totally gassed. But that's why coffee was invented.
On the way to the trailhead, we stopped at a gas station for coffee. The cups I saw sitting out were small, so I asked the guy behind the counter for the largest size coffee he had. He scoffed, "we have only one size. This isn't America."
Duly chastened, I ordered two.
We weren't entirely sure what the hike would entail because the lava flow had covered up some of the trails that people had been using to get the best vantage points. The estimates we heard were about 5-6 miles round-trip, which would have us finishing just in time to check into the hotel.
It was rainy and chilly, but we were prepared. I had my rain jacket and rain pants and hat and gloves and waterproof hiking boots. We parked our little Suzuki Jimmy in the extraordinarily muddy parking lot, managed not to get the car stuck in the mud within 45 minutes of picking it up, and set off.
What followed was one of the cooler experiences of my life.
First was the lava field, still smoking and smoldering and glowing orange. It was extraordinary and surreal and beautiful. I was also struck by the fact that there was no crowd control - we could get as close to the lava as we wanted. No barriers, no warnings, no waivers to sign.
I didn't have a good sense of where we were relative to the crater, so I wasn't clear on whether we would be able to see more than what we had seen. Our initial foray up the ridge gave us views of the size of the lava flow, but not the crater itself.
We saw some people who had hiked a couple of miles on to a high point on the ridge.
"Is it worth it to keep climbing?" I asked.
"Oh, yes, most definitely," they responded.
So we kept going. The hike was not super difficult, but not easy either - a relatively significant gain in elevation and a path with no switchbacks to ease the ascent. Being at sea level after coming from Denver helped.
Eventually we came to the point that was supposed to offer the best vantage point. And holy shit, was it worth it.
You know that thing where you're seeing something incredible and you keep taking pictures of the same thing over and over, as if each time you're going to catch something you didn't catch before? By the time we finished the climb, I had close to 50 photos and video shots of the lava bubbling in the crater. And when I'm looking back at my pictures, I look at each one multiple times because it's just that amazing.
All along the hike, I kept marveling at how great I felt. I expected to feel exhausted after traveling and not really sleeping, but the more we walked, the more invigorated and awake I felt. I figured I would start to crash when we got back in the car, especially if we decided to go to the Blue Lagoon (a huge pool of milky blue geothermal seawater) before heading to the hotel.
We ended up going to go the Blue Lagoon because why the hell not. We were chilled and physically tired after the climb, and it's a major attraction even though you're paying an exorbitant amount of money to lounge in a hot pool created by nature. They make it feel fancy by throwing in some goodies like alcohol and mud masks, which are essentially the silica goop that settles at the bottom of the lagoon. It's a racket, but I didn't care.
It was fabulous, which surprised me because I generally do not like sitting around in hot water. I don't like long baths or sitting in hot tubs or visiting hot springs. But between the sun coming out and the post-hike glow and the alcohol, we had a great time. We lounged around in the pool for 2 1/2 hours.
You would think that an overnight flight followed by a hard hike followed by hours of drinking alcohol while sitting in hot water would have brought on fatigue. But I felt totally awake. It was very confusing.
My travelling companion was not so fortunate. He fell asleep lying down on the floor of the lagoon (at a point where it is extremely shallow), and when we were driving to the hotel in Reykjavik, I made him pull over and let me drive because he was about to fall asleep at the wheel.
We checked in and he went to bed. But I was still very much awake. So I went for a walk to see the Hallgrimskirkja and get something to eat.
The church with a statue of Leif Erikson in front of it. The Erikson statue was a gift from the United States to the people of Iceland in 1930 to commemorate the 1000th anniversary of the Althing, Iceland's first parliament. Kinda cool. Also, these pictures were taken at 8:00 p.m.
I finally went back to the hotel at around 9:00. I went to bed, thinking that the jet lag would hit me the next day, as it generally does on day two of a big time difference.
Nope.
Over the course of the trip, I never once felt tired before bedtime. We stayed up later and later, to the point that when we got to Akureyri, we were hanging out at a bar well past midnight.
And eventually I realized that it was because it never got dark. We were there the week of the summer soltice. During the night, the sun would dip a little lower in the sky, but it was always light out. My body was like, fuck it, if the sun doesn't need to go to bed, neither do I.
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