Iceland: Day 7 (Part II)

07 January 2016

Evening

The wild weather patterns continued all day long. A wall of rain forced us to pull over on the shoulder as we passed into another one of Iceland’s many eastern fjords. When the downpour just wouldn’t let up, we pulled back out onto the highway and inched our way to the other side. Only 100 metres later, the sun shined back down upon us and the sky recurred as grey and billowy. Looking back, we could see a partition where the torrent was and was not.

We wrapped into and around another inlet. A second partition emerged—but this one was made of snow. We pummeled our way through crags until we reached the small town of Breiðdalsvík. Here, the main highway bent inland and followed a frozen river valley all the way to Egilsstaðir, our destination. “Nearly there! Just a couple of mountains left,” I said, relaxing my tense shoulders. We let out a harmony of sighs, but celebrated with premature relief. About a kilometre down the road, an iron beam stretched across the highway. If you’ve ever driven through South Dakota, you know exactly what this means. A reflective metal sign read in both Icelandic and English “Road closed for winter. Seek alternative route.” Horror filled our hearts as we frantically pulled out the map and scanned it for another way around. There was only one alternative route, and it continued along the coast. With no other choice, we took the impromptu detour and were submerged into further torment as wildly dissimilar displays of weather endured, just when the disorder was supposed to end. We continued up and down fjords until the road brought us to the decently-sized fishing village of Fáskrúðsfjörður.

As one of the most easterly towns in Iceland, this village of six hundred was originally a French trading post and the main connection between the two European countries. They still taught French in school and printed their street signs in both French and Icelandic; the residents were even working diligently to restore the old, haunted French hospital right up the road. Because the village was along the precipitous coast, it had been built into the side of the mountain. Each street hung over the next so much that roofs from one avenue ran parallel with the driveways of the next. The three of us took a break from our winding littoral caravan and walked around the village. According to our Lonely Planet Iceland, there was a café in town and we were dying for some warm coffee and something sweet. So the three of us made our way up and down all five of the roads in town (some more than once) but found nothing other than a dozen houses, a handful of fishing fronts, the old hospital, and the school. We gave up and started to walk back towards the car, defeated that we would have to go without the revitalizing black ichor of life.

But on our return, we approached a man that was walking to the curb to fetch his mail. Joey asked in simple English, “Where is the café?” However, the man did not speak much of our tongue. He thought hard about what to say, but knew not how to respond. We tried a teacup charade to no avail. But just when we were about to say Takk and walk away, Joey remembered the name of the café: Sumarlina. “Ahh,” he understood, “Já, já… I take.” Next thing I knew, we were buckled into a Jeep Grand Cherokee with a stranger from a small French fishing village and zooming down the highway towards the edge of town. Two silent kilometres later, he pulled into the gravel parking lot of an unmarked building at the water’s edge and said, “Sumarlina,” with finality. “Takk, takk, takk,” is all we could muster.

The door squeaked as we shuffled into the quaint and quiet café. By the sound of it, an entertaining conversation was taking placing around a bend, but the six visible tables were empty. We stomped the snow off of our boots before lumbering our way to a corner table with a window that overlooked the town, which was being enveloped in a dreary fog. The two conversing, a cook and a waitress, took their time ending whatever joke they were running before the woman made her way towards us. Her Icelandic welcome was met by three distortedly lost-looking faces; she quickly switched to broken English. She handed each of us a menu, fingered the lace on a white doily that rested under an upside-down coffee cup, and then scribbled words on a white notepad as we placed an order of three lattes and two Belgian waffles—one waffle for me and one waffle for Joey and Ryan to split. We took our time sipping and savoring, reflecting on the kindness of the Icelandic Jeep driver, and laughing at Joey’s series of unfortunate events (see Part I). With plates cleared, cups emptied, stomachs half-full, and eyes half-open, the three of us knew we had to get back on the road before too long, before the sun dipped away, before the invisible things of the night came out to play.

We sprinted back to the car to fight the setting sun and the biting cold. Ryan was the winner of the race, but I cruelly left him dancing in the wind until we could jump into the car together, where we laughed until icy tears formed at the corners of our eyes. Whether it was from our camaraderie, complete exhaustion, or simply the sugar in the waffles—I do not know—but we could not stop snickering like little children. We made the strangest of sounds, cackled at the most sophomoric of jokes, burst into spontaneous song, and created nonsensical nicknames for the natural landmarks along the way (see “Snazel Nasel’s Nasel Drip” from Day 4).

The jolly journeymen that we were found no room for frantic fear in our new madness when we resumed our coastal route only to find that it had been closed for winter. From Fáskrúðsfjörður, we had to take the Route 96 tunnel straight to the mouth of the next inlet. By far the longest road tunnel in which I have even been, the Fáskrúðsfjarðargöng is nearly six kilometres from fjord to fjord. We crossed it with delight and without passing another car.

The sun cast the longest and last fingertips of light across the summits of old and grey mountains that looked down upon the winter fairyland of Reyðarfjöður. We drove through the town to continue our journey along the coast, but again, the route had been closed for winter. Instead, we took a quick break at a little harbour known as Seljateigur, where we looked out across the bay to the blip of what was the Fáskrúðsfjarðargöng tunnel—what was our last bit of safe travel.

We began to climb into the mountains and towards Egilsstaðir. The side on which we ascended had been cleared so that there was one lane that ran down the middle of the road. It was as though we had reentered a tunnel as walls of snow and ice barred us in. The banks were about two metres deep, so the Hyundai ached as ice chipped at its underside when we had to pull over to allow a winterized, road-hogging truck to pass. Other than this, the ascent was tolerable. But the more we climbed, the more it felt like we should turn around and camp in Reyðarfjöður: the drive was too undisturbed, too passable for a fjord. A foreboding calm set in—what goes up, must come down; but how intense would be our descent? We wrapped around the corner, and our short-lived blithely unconcern for the perils around us became dread.

Immediately, an insidious, torrential screen of white blinded us, the banks merged, the car slid cliff-side, and the road dived into the valley of death. We became a utilitarian machine—Joey turned off the radio and tried to watch into the whiteout for any oncoming headlights, turning his head this way and that as I hopelessly tried to keep the car straight; Ryan stared out of his window, desperate to keep an eye on the syncopated flash of yellow reflector poles that just barely stuck out of the snow, indicating where the road stopped and the cliff began. In silence, we worked together so as not to die. I let off the gas and began pumping the brakes, but it felt like we put the car on ice skates as it picked up speed without any care for the lanes that lied deep beneath the drifts of snow. A tempest tore down the side of the mountain and clawed at us, blowing us closer and closer to those little yellow reflectors. We kept barreling down the rollercoaster road as if the car had become possessed.

I had lost all control and couldn’t tell which way I was supposed to turn the wheel, not that my efforts were of any help. My heart raced with the wipers, but my focus was not on the beauty of the wild—not even about how to stay on the road—but on how to brace myself for the plummet and the impact… and if I somehow survived the unknown depths, how to live in the darkest deviance of the Arctic abandon. I had lost hope and was about to let go of the wheel and the brakes and succumb to the mountain when the car jerked into the disappearing groves left by the sixteen-wheeler that we had passed on the ascent.

We glided down the mountain pass, still too fast but at least aligned with the precipice. The groves the car had found abetted remarkably. But the storm still tore at us; the snow was still metres deep; our sight was still limited to just beyond the glass at the tips of our noses. But we went on doing as we had: watching for oncoming cars, checking for yellow reflectors, and pumping brakes. And somehow—somehow—the road leveled out at the foot of the mountain, the car slowed down, and we rounded a corner where the snow dissolved. I rediscovered a white dotted line and two lanes. We had gone through the valley of the shadow of death and emerged on the other end, where the weather was implausibly calm and quiet. And one kilometre later, we arrived at the day’s terminus, Egilsstaðir.

The town was decently sized—especially for Iceland—and definitely the largest in the East, with a whopping 2,200 residents. It sat on the longest lake in Iceland, which was home to the Lagarfljót Worm. Not to be mistaken with its much younger Scottish relative, this evil monster was first seen in 1345. The Worm, as it is endearingly called, spits poison into the air and hunts for little children, even to this day (last seen in 2012 by The Icelandic National Broadcasting Service). Having conquered death once already, Joey, Ryan, and I decided not to take our chances with the beast and opted for the tranquility of town.

I exhaled deeply as the engine cooled and the car settled into a snowy parking spot outside of Bookkoffee, a bookstore café. Withstanding two older ladies that quaffed cappuccinos and cackled with the all-in-one barista/cashier/pastry chef, we were the only people in the shadowy shoppe. I sipped on a latte and nibbled on Kriena (biscuits) while we browsed the bookshelves. In a discount bin by the door, I discovered an Icelandic copy of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime and just had to get it; after all, it is one of my all-time favourite books.

From here, we checked into Birta Guesthouse, a delightful abode with soft sheets, fresh towels, and best of all, warm showers. The host greeted us with a genuine smile, much like the one always on the face of Hawk; he warned us of an oncoming blizzard and asked that we check with him before departing the following morning. After running through the house rules, he slipped on a pair of boots and left for the night. “I live across the street. If you need anything just give me a call, or roll down a window and yell. I will hear you.” With a cold flooding into the room as he slammed the door closed behind him, the three of us ran back into our three-bed room, peeled off our wool socks, and crashed into our beds.

About an hour passed, for most of which I was asleep. But when I came to, I saw Joey wiping away sleep and Ryan journaling in bed. It wasn’t yet late enough to justify calling it a night, so I decided to take one last drive through town while Joey and Ryan hushed their way around a library across the street from the guesthouse. The car needed fuel after the day’s daring expedition, and I needed a beer. Quick stops at the gas station and the grocery store left both the car and me happy and resolved to survive the rest of the journey.

After our evening rituals, we talked with the Thai man that we had met in Höfn the night prior; he re-introduced himself as Tinn. (We booked the same hostel twice in a row!) Soon enough, the aforementioned blizzard rolled in over the mountains and settled over Egilsstaðir, distinguishing any hope of spotting Northern Lights or the Lagarfljót Worm. But this was fine, for the stillness of sleep was all too inviting after the dreadful wonder of the Reyðarfjöður pass.