While we were in Landmannalaugar, the ranger told us that riding to Reykjavik on Route 1 isn't exactly the most thrilling experience. The highway is just slightly less than completely packed with traffic, and the surrounding landscapes don't offer much variety. The best option is to sneak along the coast, where a wonderful new paved highway has recently been built, wide and deserted. So we agreed on that, especially since our time margin allowed it — after all, we had a total of 14 full days at our disposal. True, Andrey was incredibly eager to reach Reykjavik before Saturday night to enjoy the boiling and bubbling nightlife of the capital, but here it's like in the joke about artificial insemination — we'll see how it goes.
Iceland Cycling - day 10
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In the morning it turned out my neck was hurting. The last time this happened it ended with me ending up in the hospital for a week, and I'm still feeling the consequences to this day, so total panic mode kicked in, which doesn't reach this level for me very often. Whether for this reason or some other, but I got distracted looking at the GPS screen while moving on an absolutely flat highway, and told Andrey "Stop" so as not to overcomplicate the process. Andrey acted weird: he actually listened, and being unaccustomed to that, I didn't have time to brake and slammed right into him at full speed. From such a collision I even started seeing stars, a rare occasion: I can't remember something like that happening for a long time. Apparently, the whole thing looked pretty terrifying too, because a car behind us stopped, and its passengers offered help, which, fortunately, wasn't needed.
I got pretty bruised up, so I rested on the shoulder for a bit and popped a painkiller. However, we didn't have any other options — gritted my teeth, and we moved on. I felt absolutely nightmarish, both mentally (because of the neck) and physically. That is, the very hardcore stuff I promised you in almost every episode happened again. Although it really seems providence thought this wasn't enough, because we hadn't even been riding for twenty minutes when Andrey complained that his bike rack was acting weird.
The chance that our flimsy bike racks wouldn't withstand the tough Icelandic stones was huge and this value was known right from the start, so I didn't get surprised. Instead, I walked over and carefully examined the back of the bicycle. A conclusion appeared rather quickly, and a completely disappointing one at that: it wasn't the rack that broke, but the bike itself, namely — the frame had snapped in the spot where the lower rear tube attaches near the hub to the rest of the frame.
At this point Andrey panicked for real, or maybe he decided to use this chance to slack off, and so he yelled out loud: "I'm not riding any further on a broken frame, we're taking a bus." As you understand, such unsportsmanlike behavior cannot be received positively by me, so I calmly took out the super-strong gray duct tape, wrapped the frame with it, and announced that they build boats and bridges out of this tape, so we need to stop whining and start rolling.
Andrey came to his senses after a while, and soon we continued our way.
Stopped by a bakery
Bought some buns
The urinals flush by a sensor, all at once. That's what it means: there's plenty of water, no need to save it
Hay bales in the fields, almost like back home, but on a slightly larger scale
Kids are flying a kite
Didn't have time to take a picture of the fracture, we taped it up real quick
"Bónus" supermarket
The cheapest supermarket chain in Iceland is called "Bónus", and its logo is a pink pig. The curious thing is: while here at home in "Maxima" the crap-bikes (that is, super cheap and super low-quality bikes) are of some shady no-name brands, in Iceland they are actually the more or less decent Polish "Kross".
In the store we bought a local fermented milk product called Skyr, it's like yogurt, but denser. In our "Maxima" they just started selling Greek yogurt, which is squeezed through a cheesecloth filter, well Skyr is similar to it. It costs about 1.30 Ls for four hundred grams.
A bit later we rolled into a town whose name has mysteriously vanished from my memory. Looks like it was Árborg. We had dinner there in an Italian restaurant (insane amounts of money again, but we really craved some normal food), and the punk also found a 66° North outlet with dirt-cheap prices, but for some reasons didn't buy anything.
Since we still had some strength left, and the campsite was left behind, it was decided to push on until the bitter end, especially since the map hinted that a sanctuary awaited us on the coast. It was suspicious to see a tent icon near uninhabited lava fields, but what the hell — we decided to tempt fate. Andrey, admittedly, pretended that he was terribly tired and would drop dead any second, but I've proven it time and time again — if a person says they won't ride anywhere and have absolutely no strength left, you can squeeze exactly another 20 kilometers out of them.
And so it turned out, although we moved unhurriedly.
It talks about how Icelanders visited America long before Columbus, and here was the farm of the chief of the enterprise named Bjarni
And from here he set off on his journey
We got lucky to see such places, no kidding. You could consider it a miracle in miniature. At least some kind of compensation for the morning suffering, but still not enough for now.
By this point I got a bit tired, otherwise I might have figured out that we needed to go exactly where the red sign is
However, it was roughly obvious anyway that we still had a hell of a long way to pedal. As a result of a heroic feat of hammering the pedals on the highway, a record of sorts was set — we rode 92 km in a day.
Iceland is a cultured country — there are sculptures even on a roundabout
An endless deserted highway with lava fields
And it's also deserted all around
I have to say that I'm exceptionally easily swayed by emotions. Therefore, when my neck hints that I'll be checking into a hospital upon returning home, my body aches from bruises, Andrey makes a gloomy face for half a day, the wind blows fiercely from the sea, and there isn't a trace of human habitation around, it feels like there can't possibly be any campsite in these parts, and we'll be sleeping in the wind, and without fresh water too, and in general my life will soon end right here. However, as I've already informed you more than once, this completely contradicts our standard scheme of "hardcore in the morning — a miracle in the evening". On the contrary, the presence of a 5-star Hilton with a "free night for cycle tourists" promo perfectly fits this concept.
So which of these extremes awaits us in reality? For the sake of suspense, you will only find out in the next episode.