My whirlwind Iceland trip, Day 2: West Iceland
Day two started with a very chilly and dewy wake up in the Chez Dacia Duster.
After blasting the heater for a few minutes, I changed clothes in the back seat like a true gypsy and took a brief drive around to take in the sights. When I say "brief" I don't mean that I was in a hurry, I just mean it doesn't take long to see all of Ísafjörður.
I found some street art I thought was funny and a nice foggy view of the mountains.
I found the one bakery that was open for a coffee and some kind of cinnamon roll thing. The cafe had a wall full of photographs that ranged from fairly recent to probably 40 years old, all of old folks and cars. I have no idea who these people were, but I didn’t dare ask, lest I show disrespect to the community by not recognizing their local legends. I shot this video, and then hit the road.
About an hour down the road, passing through the town of Þingeyri (thing-airy) I passed a couple of hitchhikers. Now, over the years, I have developed a type of selective blindness to hitchhikers, which I must attribute to a self preservation instinct I inherited from my great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather who once told himself: “I shall not offer that traveling minstrel a ride in my coach, for he seems unscrupulous.” Good call, Gramps.
But THEN, this girl stuck her lip out like a 5 year old who was just told they can’t stay up another 30 minutes, so I pulled over and let her and her companion in. I guess Darwin was only partly right.
They were a really courteous and funny German couple. She was living there and working with horses as some kind of post college adventure, and he was there to visit her. They were hitchhiking to the same waterfall I had been air guitaring at the previous day, and was passing by anyway, so I had some pleasant company for the next 90 minutes or so.
Here's a view of the town where I picked them up from the other end of the fjord
My next stop was the only one that disappointed me in any way during the trip. The Sea Monster museum in Bíldudalur. This modest museum was on my way to a stretch of cliffs which Lonely Planet said I HAD to see, so I figured it would be a nice leg stretching activity. I was greeted by a couple gray haired, bespectacled ladies and told proudly that I was their first customer. I enjoyed a coffee and talked to them about my trip briefly and then bought a ticket, which I think was the equivalent of about $10. One of the ladies walked me through a two room "museum" of a couple of "old maps" showing sketches sea creatures in various parts of the country. Here's the map. Now that I think about it, this was actually pretty cool. You can see that a lot of these "monsters" were just seals and whales that these sailors and fishermen had never seen before.
Then, to the main room, which looked like an old study, with lots of books, and old tools and things strewn about. There were videos playing on a couple of TVs with old Icelanders recalling their run ins with such creatures as the sea hag and some other ones whose names elude me. Here's a picture of one! The "sea man". My guide informed me that with one swipe of his razor sharp claws, the sea man could rip the skin and meat from my body and leave only the skeleton. (ooOOooHH!). Fortunately for me, this beast has not been spotted in over 100 years, and is thought to have left Iceland.
This concluded my tour. After we got back to the lobby, I bought a t-shirt. When I brought it to my guide to ring up, she informed me that she would have to get the other lady, because she in fact, did NOT work there. Wait, wait, wait, are you to tell me that I just got 10 minutes of Sea Creature information from a layperson? I feel like I now have to question whether this "sea man" is really capable of skinning me alive in one swipe or if it might actually take two or even three.
I decided, with the advice of the ladies from the museum, that I did not really need to push on to see those cliffs Lonely Planet had spoken so highly of. I backtracked to Reykjafjardarlaug (easy for you to say) and hung out in two hot pools they have there. It was pretty cool. Here's a video of me with my shirt off! Woo!
After an hour or so in the pool, I hit the road and headed back down towards the same serpentine path I drove the previous day, zig zagging around 10 different fjords on my way to Stykkishólmur, a "large" town in West Iceland, where I planned to stay for the evening. Like all the driving I'd been doing the previous 30 or so hours, this was full of view like this one:
I arrived around 7 pm and took this picture from the top of a hill, where a small lighthouse was perched.
There were, as far as I could find, 4 restaurants in town. 2 were closed, and the other two were full. I picked one called Sjavarpakkhusid and waited about 15 minutes, which was well worth it, as it would turn out to be the best meal of the trip (Icelandic Cod). But this isn't a food blog, so if you want to know what that tastes like, go watch No Reservations or something. I was seated behind 8 American girls, who invited me over right away after I used the ol "Hey, we both speak English, let's be friends" line. They were friends meeting up from all over the US (Tennessee, Alaska, Virginia, etc) A couple of beers later, they were all well versed in the nuances of competitive Air Guitar, so I left feeling accomplished. We were the last to leave, and the wait staff locked up behind us. As I started off towards my bed, I thought: "hey, didn't you just drink a lot, and shouldn't you maybe use the bathroom, since you are sleeping in a parking lot?" so I went back to the restaurant and they let me back in. The Jack Johnson soundtrack that had played the previous hour, had been replaced with gangster rap. The hostess, with her long black hair, neck tattoo and lip piercing, smiled and coyly informed me: "we changed the music". When I walked out of the bathroom I was greeted by the same woman who was standing outside the bathroom door. She stared at me blankly and said "ok, we kill you now". I laughed. Hard. Weird sense of humor, Iceland. But I liked it. End of Day Two! One more to go. Here's the route, for those of you keeping score.
