I hope it's clear from the previous post why we had this dream of visiting Iceland. Last year I didn't manage it because I tore a ligament in my knee and sat at home for several months getting around on crutches. This year wasn't any less difficult, both financially and because I lost my bike, and life in general has just gotten a bit more complicated lately.
Nevertheless, the tickets were bought in January, mostly thanks to Andrey's persistence, and our fate was sealed. The ticket was bought only because Andrey found out that the low-cost carrier Iceland Express was opening direct flights to Keflavík from Vilnius, and only thanks to that did the price end up more or less tolerable – 320 LVL ($640) round trip with a bicycle. As it turned out later, that same year another Icelandic airline opened a flight from Kaunas – WOW Air. Their prices are even more accessible – about one and a half times lower than Iceland Express.
The “66 North” brand is everywhere in Iceland. Even on the plane, as you can see
We left home on Tuesday evening to catch a 6 AM Wednesday flight out of Vilnius Airport. It wasn't without its adventures – when Andrey, true to his tradition, showed up an hour late, it turned out we didn't have the key for the roof bike rack, and we had to unscrew it with a small adjustable wrench that my dad, thankfully, keeps in the car. It also turned out Andrey had lost the gas stove – one of the few things he was responsible for. Luckily, we had some time to spare for hacking the roof rack, and having a stove wasn't critical for boarding the plane. It was obvious they'd be for sale in Reykjavík, considering the huge number of camping tourists that visit Iceland every year.
While getting to the airport, we ran into a bit of a nasty surprise: a speed camera hidden in the bushes in Daugailiai seemed to have fired off a red flash, and considering that the Lithuanians have raised their fines again, it could mean a loss of about 100-200 dollars. We weren't speeding on purpose, but the town entrance sign isn't very noticeable when you've got oncoming high beams in your face, especially at 2 AM. Basically, you could say this was the start of what could politically correctly be called the “daily grind” of our trip, although the great and mighty Russian language has a much more fitting word for such things. Fortunately, this hardcore grind was usually offset either by miracles that saved the day, or by unseen beauties, so we endured it gladly. I don't know how the speed camera saga will end, though, because the fine letter still hasn't arrived, but we'll hope for one last miracle on this expedition.
At the airport, a slightly smaller ambush was waiting for us: the parking is paid, you can only pay with coins, and we didn't have any. I was told about this, but you can't foresee everything – hiccups always happen on trips. Luckily, you have to pay upon leaving the parking lot, just like in Riga, so this minor detail didn't stop us from grabbing the bikes and bags and heading to the departures hall, and I left dealing with the fallout to my dad – the atmosphere before a flight is stressful enough as it is.
“There are many wonders in a cow's head” – that's what they say in Iceland
The advertising is so stylish and unobtrusive that it doesn't even look like advertising
I packed my bike into a polyethylene mattress cover that I scored in some Riga furniture stores in Purvciems; Andrey used trash bags and duct tape. Our departure went without a hitch; according to the airline's requirements, we didn't even have to wrap the bikes – taking off the pedals and turning the handlebars sideways was enough. Oh, and slightly deflating the tires, but that wasn't critical, they didn't even check. Overall, everything went exceptionally smoothly and without problems, which is far from always the case when flying with bicycles. I did have to lug the bike into a special huge “X-ray” for oversized luggage, where it got mercilessly bounced around on the conveyor belt, but whatever.
Keflavík Airport has won awards for the best airport
My luggage, by the way, weighed 23 kg, while 20 is allowed, so I had to take my backpack as carry-on. The backpack ended up being super annoying later – it increased wind resistance and was always mostly empty; it only came in handy when we hiked in the mountains for a couple of days, and in the city. If you calculate how much my bike weighed in the end, it comes to 16 kg bike + 23 kg gear + 1.5 water = 40 kg. There was no way to lug it with one hand, and grabbing it with two is awkward.
Advertising in Iceland, like everything else, is very sweet, elegant, and always plays on national motifs
Some Lithuanian cyclists were flying on the same flight with us, but we only chatted with them near the gate, when the baggage check-in formalities were sorted. The guy turned out to be a PhD student in mathematics, he spoke English just perfectly, better than me, and his girlfriend was pretty good too. I'm actually amazed by how all Lithuanians without exception speak English – at the “Tundra” music festival (which really deserves a separate story, but not this time) everyone communicated fluently in English, too. I guess I just happen upon such cultured places, and people too. I bet the tough guys on the bus from Ilūkste only know the word “fuck” from the entire rich lexicon of the English language.
It was the mathematician who told me about the new WOW Air airline. It was also funny how I showed him my mega-map from the Icelandic mapping agency's website, and he guessed that I had downloaded it with a script. These days, mathematicians all know how to program; you can't get anywhere without it.
We took off at 6 AM and arrived around 12. Knowing that the flight from Vilnius to Reykjavík is about three hours, the attentive reader will realize that Iceland's time zone is GMT, i.e., UTC +0, and they don't observe daylight saving time there, unlike Lithuania and Latvia. The seats on Iceland Express are a bit short, uncomfortable to sleep on, but on the flight there I had three whole seats to myself. The company is a low-coster, by the way, and it has no planes of its own – it leases its single aircraft from Holidays Czech Airlines. Because of this, we almost flew to Reykjavík via Prague – at first, not enough tickets were bought from Lithuania. Luckily, Lithuanians and neighbors remembered that such a chance doesn't come every year, and bought up the tickets in time.
We got our luggage without any problems, and even quite fast, in about 20 minutes. You can't assemble bikes inside the airport building, so we had to get out, fortunately not into the rain. But there was wind, naturally, because there's always wind in Iceland. Since we were going to take a bus to the center anyway, we didn't assemble the bikes, we just asked the nearest person where the transport to the center was. A ticket with a bike cost, I think, about 14 lats. It's 40 km from the airport to the center, just so you know. This was the first sign telling us that this was indeed Iceland – we had arrived exactly where we intended, because there aren't many other countries this expensive in the world.
We successfully assembled the bikes at the deserted central bus station, marvelled a bit at their weight, and headed into the center.
