Iceland: Day 7 (Part I)

07 January 2016

Morning

Around 08:00, Joey shook me from a sleep that was just as deep as the glacier about which I was dreaming. My feet stumbled to the bathroom at the end of the hallway, where I found that I was not the first one to use the shower that morning. Those before me had left the floor uncomfortably cold and wet. Suffering pruning feet, the sour smell of sulphur, and the freezing sting of unfiltered Arctic water demanded that I hurry up and get on with the day. Nothing wakes me up better than an ice-cold shower, not even a bottomless cup of coffee.

Still shivering—still wondering if the hostel owner had turned down the heat at night—I slipped fresh socks over my still wet feet and quietly made my way towards the kitchen. We had our usual breakfast of oatmeal and coffee in the quiet of early morning before clambering into our boots at the front door. Icelanders take seriously the courtesy of not wearing shoes inside, so guests were required to leave them on a wooden rack just inside the entryway. However, Mama Dearduff always demanded that Joey and I leave our shoes at the door, and so engrained was this tradition that I found this nicety all the more reminiscent of home.

We left our key at the desk, waded through a fresh foot of snow to the Hyundai, and quickly loaded up our bags in the back and blasted the heat before we lost all the feeling in our fingers. The temperature this morning was the worst yet; it could have been my still-drying hair, but the snow-brushed wind burned as it slapped against my face. It wasn’t until 09:20 that we backed out of our spot, wheels spinning as they desperately attempted to cling to the underlying gravel that was now buried beneath even more snow and ice. Fortunately, the winter tires were put to good use, and in no time we were flying away from Höfn and down H1.

The sky was still eerily dark. Scattered flurries of snowflakes indicated that within the blanket of black lingered heavy clouds wanting to dump a blanket of white. It was a foreboding start to a long day behind the wheel. But we drove on, praying that Oðin and Thor would keep us safe on our journey through Iceland’s inimitable eastern fjords. Nothing seemed more apropos that to listen to the ineffable harmonies of Sigur Rós as we weaved deeper and deeper in the unknown. The hairs on the back of my neck rose as Glósóli echoed through the car, amalgamating us into “the other” of this little island.

As we approached a mountain range that stretched from Vatnajökull to the sea, I began to wonder where the road was taking us. I couldn’t see a bridge extending along the coast, and I didn’t think we would wrap back around and through an opening more inland; but the mountains ahead were too dense to provide a feasible winter pass. Soon enough, my question was answered. Just as the clouds above began to give way under their own weight, a warm yellow glow appeared across a delta as we ascended out of the crags. “That must be where we’re headed,” I said to nobody at all. Joey, as if he had been wrestling with the same curiosity replied without missing a beat, “Looks like a tunnel.” As we blundered our way across the wicked winds of the open delta, it became more and more obvious that Joey was right: the glow was coming from a single light that illuminated a barely-visible aperture at the foundation of a mighty mountain. I sped along with hope that we would make it into the deep before the snow carried us off the road and into the hungry estuary that kept clawing at the pavement with foaming whitewater.

We passed under the halcyon light, and the environment immediately changed: the darkness was painted a peaceful flaxen; the violence was stilled; the heavy clouds became an even heavier cordillera. Jagged, haphazardly-cut walls stretched for a kilometre as we zoomed from one side of the mountain to the other. The underpass was marked as having two lanes, but I doubted that two cars could fit side-by-side in this narrowest of tunnels. Fortunately, we made it through without having to test this. We were the only ones on the road, and we would soon find out why.

Birthed back into a world of chaos, snow spilled out from caesarean clouds and covered the road in a tumultuous white flood that was coupled by a penetratingly keen wind. The Hyundai was tossed back and forth from shoulder to shoulder, but no guardrail was present to keep us from the depths of whatever we were crossing. Ever so slowly, we followed what little of the pavement we could see, inching our way forward through the first of many fjords.

But we were little surprised when we wrapped around the tail of the fjord to find that the weather was clear. It was as though we had traveled not from west to east, but from winter to summer. Green grass fluttered in a gentle breeze; snow was a distant memory; the sun teased us with the subtle glow of her imminent sunrise through the thinning billows of an overcast sky. We parked on the shoulder of the road to watch Morgunsól (The Morning Sun) climb out over the great grey ocean. She brought to light the waters below that crashed against the fjord with ten-metre crests and such power that I wondered whether or not the entire mountain might break away and drift out into the expanse.

And in typical Icelandic fashion, the back-and-forth of fiercely diverse environments continued. At the third fjord, we were submerged in a blizzardy pandemonium as the car shook down a rocky road against the waters and under a fateful grey. The fourth fjord was cold and rainy, like a miserable Christmas; we watched reindeer graze between mounds of melting snow with stilled hearts and a desire to hear stories of Yuletide. The fifth demanded caution as the highway died away and all that was left was a gravel path around the foot of a mountain and a one-lane bridge over a river outlet with waves that inundated the ford. But through it all, the drive was both archangelic and abysmal: no two inlets—neither the winters nor the summers—were the same; there was no repetition. Everything was new.

Along the journey, we stopped at the gravel parking lot for a dock and a belvedere. Joey had to empty his bladder. He hopped out of the passenger’s seat and waddled his way about 4 metres from the still-running car. But as soon as he had assumed the position, the first vehicle we had seen in about two hours pulled into the lot and parked at the end that Joey was facing. He quickly turned around and scurried back, where he squirmed around for what must have felt like an eternity while the very slow-moving travelers snapped photos of the wild winds and waves. Though his patience had run thin, the passengers took their time loading back into their van, where they sat and scrolled through their pictures. Joey just couldn’t hold it any longer.

He danced to the other side of our car and resumed the position. But his luck had long since run out. A strong gust and a well-placed gull covered Joey in a nice splattering of green and white bird poo. It dripped from his hair, rolled down his coat, and rested on his pants. Although Ryan and I found this to be one of the most uproarious events of the new year, the victimized Joey frustratingly held back a smile and wiped himself clean with napkins that he grabbed from the McDonald’s at Midway International Airport in Chicago. Once he had gotten over himself, the three of us laughed hysterically until the ever-present travelers on the other side of the lot had finally left.

Joey hurriedly shuffled far enough from the car. Finally, with the wind to his back, the van now gone, and the blasted gull sitting on a rock some ways away—probably smirking to itself in victorious delight—nothing could interrupt him now. The third time’s the charm, right? Well… as soon as Joey began empty his now-bursting bladder, a second car came zooming around a crag, directly in front of where Joey was…uh, relieving himself. He had to make a decision: should he tinkle towards some Icelandic strangers or turn to face his brother and friend? Instinct took over, and he chose those whom he loved and turned towards Ryan and me.

Fortunately, the two of us were busy talking and looking out over the fjord. Fortunately, Joey kept his privates private. But oh so ever unfortunately, the wind that was to his back was now blowing into his face and carrying with it the warmth and wetness of fresh, yellow pee. But once you start, you can’t stop. So he stood there, peeing all over himself until the car had zoomed down into another crag and he could turn back around.

With all our napkins used up on the bird bombing, we let Joey air out his clothes in the wind and clean his hands and his face with a heap of hand sanitizer. Ryan and I had no other choice than to get out of the car and sidesplittingly laugh until we cried. In the midst of the violence of the day, this episode was nothing short of necessary. When all the laughs had been had and all the pee had dried, we pulled back out onto H1, passed the belvedere but kept the incident fresh in our minds and recurrent in our conversations.