In the previous post, the iron friend in the status bar flashed a number slightly over 9000 at me, and so the details of the unbridled orgy warm welcome were left behind the scenes. I'm fixing that now.
What was spent on us:
Jars of honey: 1
Packs of cheese: 2
Packs of ham: 1 (because punk is a veggie)
Packs of crispbread: 2
Packs of butter: 1
Plus tea, sugar, water, and gas in unknown quantities, since I rustled up some millet porridge, which bubbles away for 20 minutes to cook through. Where I predicted we'd have moments when we wouldn't mind sparing the gas is unclear, but I figured we'd spend the night in cabins sooner or later. As it turned out, this even happened more than once, but let's not get ahead of ourselves just yet.
The beds are bunk beds
The house is decorated with paintings
The woman who mostly held heart-to-heart conversations with us was named Elizabeth. She fully lived up to her name, being a rather ceremonious person, but nonetheless left a quite bright impression. Interestingly, my main association with this name is the heroine of Julian May's excellent book series “The Many-Colored Land”. In the book, this woman was quite a piece of work, a snob and an intellectual, but she brought a lot of good to those around her, so the fictional image overlaid the real one in my mind, and where I'm attributing the character's traits to the person, and where I guessed correctly, is impossible to tell.
And skulls
The guy who pulled us out of the storm, meanwhile, turned out to be pretty tipsy; maybe that's why he took pity on us. He then explained long and hard that now we were obligated to spread the love, and of course, help out any Icelander we meet in life as fully as possible. I already stick to the principles of mutual aid and universal support, so I heartily assured him of my backing for his hippie principles.
Iceland Cycling - day 5
EveryTrail - Find the best hikes in California and beyond
The idea was repeated to us so many times that I'll even repeat it to you: you can't leave a person outside in such weather. It's hard to argue, of course, but when stinky homeless people sleep in your apartment building's stairwell in the freezing winter, it's all perceived somewhat differently. The dialectics of existence, damn it.
A cabin with a solar panel, but no 220 volts; the electricity is only for the water pump and lighting. In principle, 220 volts isn't all that necessary anyway, since the people arrived in cars regardless, and the most important things, like phones, can be charged using them.
When we arrived at night, the light only worked in the bathroom; the days before had been way too overcast. We spent a romantic evening by candlelight.
To my left is Elizabeth, and to my right is our savior-guy
As it turned out, all the cabins around this one are for rent, but this one belongs to Elizabeth and her husband (I never figured out if her husband is the savior-guy, or the shaggy gray-haired guy behind him). Usually they rent out the cabin, but this time they came to relax with friends themselves.
As for us, it was time to leave this hospitable haven and head further on, to Landmannalaugar.
Our favorite cabin
The rest of the complex
On the way, it became clear that the campsite itself was located a bit further on, and the fact that we didn't make it there was considerable luck. Then again, the campsite owner would probably have taken pity on us too, our mugs were far too grimy. Punk, by the way, was really worried about this, saying it was terrible to appear before the cabin's inhabitants in such an unseemly state. I won't even write anything here; you can draw your own conclusions about the paranoid perception of reality versus the adequate one.
Along the way we were overtaken by bikers; they were descending slower than us, by the way
The landscapes are somewhat gloomy and piercing, just like the wind
The road is packed and rock-free, a joy to ride
There are rivers aplenty
About the rivers — pretty soon after leaving the campsite we encountered a ford, but our buddies were just zooming past in their pickup, so we got lucky at the first ford: we loaded the bikes into the back and dashed through, splashing mud in all directions. Fun and comfy. Of course, there was far more than one river crossing awaiting us ahead, so there's no need to worry that we missed out on any thrills.
As you can see, the inner part of the island looks and behaves as harshly as expected. I'll let you in on a terrible secret, though: my eyesight is crap, and therefore I can only appreciate the beauty of these landscapes by straining my imagination a bit, because I still can't see the fine details, only the outlines. Maybe, of course, this is from approaching old age and an overabundance of impressions in life, and not because of that at all.
We didn't have far to ride, about 20 kilometers, but it took almost half a day (which makes sense, since in the interior we usually covered about 40 kilometers a day). We got there under our own steam nonetheless, though the temptation in the form of Elizabeth's pickup was there. As we approached, we thought for a moment we'd have to ford a stream of enormous width, but fortunately, that's only necessary for motorized wagons — wooden footbridges have been built for pedestrians and bikes.
Here at last is the sign I've been wanting to show for a long time. Check it out.
Beyond the sign is Landmannalaugar — the absolute center of our journey, a mysterious place drowning in wisps of steam from fumaroles, beautiful due to its multicolored slopes covered in iron oxides, and blissful thanks to the hot springs right in the campsite. At the same time, it's crowded to the point of nausea, indecently expensive, cold to the point of making sleep impossible, and morally heavy to the point of despair.