Up, straight onto the internet, I looked for a car to rent. Putting every page through Google translate was ponderous and hilarious. “Want not irresponsible but nice only persons,” and the like.
Reykjavík downtown looked like it had suffered an outbreak of plague. There was no one around, nothing was open, and garbage tumbled down the streets in the wind. Together we took a bus to Kringlan mall just before it opened at 1pm. All the staff there was fumbling around like hungover zombies. Amusing.
We got lots of business taken care of- a Sim card to make our phone work at Vodafone; a new backpack cover and boot waterproofing at Útilíf, a whack of CDs from Skífan and a big bag of food from the health food store (happy me), and ate at the food fair. It was an oddly generic mall, unlike everything else Icelandic. Apart from the corrugated iron on the ceiling, this could be a mall in any city. We strolled the big grocery store just marvelling at the prices: a pomegranate- $7.59 (kr, but roughly equivalent in dollars) – ONE pomegranate. Kettle Chips, $6/bag.
We sat outside and called my private car rental leads, trying to figure out insurance issues. Apparently there are none, and there’s no distinction between third-party and collision insurance, there’s just insurance. Try getting that across in a foreign country.
I tracked down the number of the Westmannaeyjar ferry and called them about my journal. They did have it; they were just about to mail it off! So I suddenly left on a solo hitchhiking mission to recover my journal, Derek skeptical that I would make it back in the same day.
It was a first-car trip. I took the same bus across town to the hitching spot, a pro now, and the first car by took me to Hveragaerdi, the next first car to Selfoss, and the next first car by was Jón Gísli, who was on his way to Hvolsvöllur, but since he “had time”, would just drive me to the ferry and back (!). Just 80 km extra or so.
After I started fuelling up our rented car, I realized the magnitude of generosity like this. It’s not just time and a little gas. Gas is $2 a litre, it costs at least 25 cents a km to go anywhere, and a “minor detour” like that has a very real price. About $20. But no problem.
He loved his country, loved hitchhikers, loved showing them stuff. We talked about the Landmannalaugar to þórsmörk hike, and he considered doing it with us, if he didn’t have to go back to Denmark too soon. On the way down the very long road (30km) to the ferry landing, we saw two wretched hikers dragging themselves the other direction. Obviously, they had missed the ferry traffic. You could almost see Jón hoping that no one else would pick them up before we were coming back the other way, so he could take them. No one did; he did.
At the terminal everyone smiled at me like they knew me (indeed they may have, they had my journal), and they had my little yellow book all packed up with my address on it, ready to be mailed at their expense, back to Canada. I was so touched, but they were like, “obviously, it’s important,” and handed it over like the precious object it was, to me.
The sky was behaving exceptionally, so I ran up the seawall to take a picture, so different from the first time we’d been here, Heimaey clearly in view on the hazy late afternoon ocean.
On the way back with the tired and grateful French hitchhikers (who had also gone to see the puffins and had not had a good time of it), Jón suggested another detour, to show us something cool.
Indeed. He took us on a thunderously speedy drive on a dirt road into Njál’s land, then parked to look at a waterfall, a little waterfall, not a showstopper from the road but unique, with its own story.
It was a very cool waterfall, one with space behind the water for us to crawl into, perch, and look out through the water. “This is where he sat,” Jón said, “and shot out arrows through the water at his attackers, but they couldn’t see him, so he lived.”
This is where I really got that the “land of the sagas” as they call it, is living memory.
The sagas aren’t a story of other people in another time. Icelanders can look at a farm and say who used to live there (in the time of the sagas), who got killed there, what took place there. There is no divide, no gap; it’s all linked to now in a continuous chain. Njál of the sagas used to live right here, this farm, this whole plain used to be his. All of Iceland’s history is known. It’s specific, it’s relatively short, and the people and gods who populated history are remembered, literally.
From Hvolsvöllur, sustained with a donut, I got a ride from an elderly lady (never in a million years in Canada), who was the first Icelander I met to really struggle with English. We didn’t talk much, but she was sweet and happy to bring me to Hella. I gathered she had been a farmer all her life. From Hella I got a ride from the Básar hut warden, to Reykjavík. He said that the Krossá had gone way down, to its usual volume, and also advised me that the Landmannalaugar to þórsmörk hike was “no problem”. 55km, 3 days, no problem. I wasn’t convinced, but hopeful, because I really wanted to do this hike, and the book called it 4 days min. I was doing my fall-asleep-like-a-baby-in-a-carseat-when-I-get-in-a-vehicle thing again, he wasn’t very talkative, and I felt bad because he eventually admitted he was trying to stay awake himself, but very kindly, he took me (well out of his way) straight to the campground. I was starting to feel like I shouldn’t hitchhike anymore, I was putting too many of the locals out!
I rolled home, happy and exhilarated, as Derek was getting up from a long nap and starting to do laundry. I started making food.
Halfway through adventures in making pasta in gale force wind, I got the call about the car, and our car renter/host came to pick me up and have me deliver him back to his house so I could take the car. We stopped off at a bank teller so I could pull out a wad of cash to give him. Not even last names exchanged, just phone numbers and a couple bits of advice. Lots of coaching on the way back to his place, he so didn’t want me to get lost on my way back to the campground. This, no problem, I said. If I manage to find your place again in two weeks, you can be impressed (I didn’t, although I tried). See ya in two weeks!
It was a little beauty of a car, a black, manual, four door Rav4. Pretty much a dream car for us, for Iceland. It was a tremendous charge driving back to the campground, by memory, on the wide, empty freeways through the city, in the dark, all lights and magic. I’m driving, in Reykjavík, I kept thinking. I’m driving on a four lane freeway in Reykjavík! And we have a car now – a car! Our car, for two weeks! “Imagine the freedom!” Oh frabjous day, now there were no limits. We were going to go everywhere. And we were definitely going to go to Keldur, and back to show my brother Jon Gisli’s waterfall, if I could find it again.
This night I also made it into a hot pool, finally, at the Laugardalslaug right next to the campground, that had friendly evening hours. I was mightily confused at first with the whole changing process, but I figured it out, fumbling around trying to follow the locals, and decided I quite liked this pool, with five different hot pots of varying temperatures. I didn’t find the hairdryers at this visit so I left wet but plenty warm, and went to sleep filled with life force energy again.
It is nice to read that you like Gluggafoss and this trip:-)