Reykjavik. Iceland

The voyage to the North Atlantic country of Iceland began with a slight deviation. When checking into the vessel, wing commander and i had been separated and for a reason unknown to me i had been moved to a premium seat – not that i was complaining, but my soul companion was no longer sitting next to me. This made me both nervous and restless.

To deal with the paranoia and to distract my fickle mind i decided to befriend the local sitting beside me. She was an Icelandic local who had retired as a air stewardess at Iceland air. i told her the compelling story of the adventures planned over the course of the next month, at first much like everyone she was both impressed and shocked at the idea. The conversation soon turned to the Nordic country and what was in store. I had just realised that we had made a slight miscalculation. She informed me that one of the worst storms of the year was on the outskirts of the city, lingering over it the cities head. She advised me of the consequences of such a storm, none of which sounded attractive in our favour. She had advised that going out and facing such weather was “not a good idea”, after this some banter followed. I was eager to explain the dire situation to my partner in crime and soon was debriefing him of what we had in store. we reached a logical consensus. YOLO or in our case YOGTIO – You only go to Iceland Once.

Shortly after we had a bumpy decent to Reykjavik International Airport, as we proceeded to exit our plane to the tarmac we could already see the storm coming in- a dark all consuming monster floating into our vision towards us. Scuffling into the airport and circumventing our way to where we were to catch the bus we both looked confused – the bus tickets were $60 return. Checking if this was a miscalculation and querying the situation we discovered that a taxi would cost $130 each way. We quietly purchased the tickets and started to wonder at the prices that we faced in the country.

Also to much of our disappointment we discovered that the Northern lights tour had been called off for the night – the weather was proving more of an obstacle than i had imagined. for the second time in my life a 30+ hour journey to see the Aurora Borealis had failed.

We checked into the hotel at 5pm and the sky had now turned pitch black, although there was some very strong winds we had yet to see the force of nature show itself. I went over to the sink to get a glass of water to discover that the water smelt BAD – after a quick google i found that this was normal, and the high sulphur content in the water lead to the weird smell and taste. The water however was still drinkable. Despite that fact i threw the glass of water and decided that we needed water bottles asap. We dropped off the bags and rugged up. It was dinner time and the city of Reykjavik awaited our presence.

It took a whole of 4 minutes for us to realise what we had dismissed earlier. Winds strong enough to cause me to fall over, pelting buckets of rain, and snow which was felt like sand granuals against the skin. We had left and already we had been drenched in water head to toe within 5 minutes of leaving our hotel. At this point the task to explore the city had become a challenge, our first Iceland Mission.

About 15 minutes into the resistance we started approaching the shops and beautiful restaurants. Glancing over the menus as we walked, our initial fears were correct, restaurant after restaurant showing main dishes which ranged from $42 all the way to $75. I am talking a simple burger for $42! We soon came to terms that this place was for the ones that are slightly better off. I was no Donald Trump and my Wing Commander did not feel much like Mr Gates. 45 minutes after trekking in some really hardcore weather, we bit the bullet and headed to a place that seemed reasonable compared to the others. A Burrito for $18 was my calling whilst my Wing commander displayed his bravery and courage once again by ordering the Traditional Iceland Fish Stew, which after a nervous wait time, he seemed to enjoy.

The walk back to the hotel was eventful. The storm had intensified. The snow storm left visibility to a minimum and we were now so wet that we could feel the water against our skins, thermals, jackets all starting to fail. Walking with our eyes on the ground feeling like soldiers with a mission to survive till our hotel room we trekked. This stuff felt like dessert sand hitting our faces, walking against the attacking snow.

Wing Commander let out a loud shout. Shocked i stopped trekking and turned back to see what had happened – he said i survived and AVALANCHE! confused we pulled into a shaded area where we could talk – he described how a large portion of snow had just been blown off a building and landed 2 steps before where he was walking. If this had hit his head he would have been knocked out or even injured. We counted our blessings and continued to walk.

We soon Crossed paths with what we call a Cadet. This Cadet was a guy in his 20s he was wearing a t-shirt and walking down the road with a take away burger. Wing commander and i laughed as we passed this super human man as he continued to stroll to wherever he was going to eat his frozen and wet burger.

Finally getting to the hotel felt like surviving a deadly illness the relief was unbelievable. We were freezing and had to set up all our cloths to dry as we collapsed on the beds due to the exhaustive encounters we had just had.

Day 2 of our Icelandic adventure was much more productive and much more memorable for the right reasons. The storm had cleared, our cloths had dried and the sun was rising – Here the sun rises at 11:30am and sets by 3:30pm. All equipped and fresh from our early night we headed out to see an Iceland we couldn’t actually see the night before. We experienced a view of true Iceland, Mesmerising frozen mountains (possibly where the Yeti lives), An breathtaking church with views from the observation deck of Reykjavik in its glory, Ducks in a frozen lake, just chilling and shiz.

The day was much more of a success after the calming of the weather.

We soon said goodbye to his beautiful and ridiculously expensive country. Our North Atlantic stint had been completed it was time to head to the United States of America

Iceland: A Desolate Frozen Wasteland of the Wealthy Viking Gods