Ring Road on a Whim

There I was, the last bus stop out of town, armed with a towel and the naive determination to make it to the other side of a subarctic island in January. No idea what to expect, Sarah (new to Iceland, fresh out of Arkansas) and I had arranged a couple couchsurfing hosts a few days before and decided to give hitch-hiking a try.

Word to the wise: Thumbs much more effective than a towel

It rained and poured...

But we pressed on!

On the drive, we rode with urban vacationers, a horse rancher, and a few others before a couple on their way to Höbn for a funeral drove us the rest of the way. We passed several glaciers, including Vatnajokull, Europe’s largest. Unfortunately, we missed some breathtaking landscape due to nightfall.

Finally, we made it to Höfn, a town in the Southeast and our first destination– in the sign above, you’ll notice that in certain cases the town is spelled as Hafnar: this is called a declension, but I think it’s sheer insanity. We had arranged to stay with a teacher named Björg, but here phone was turned off when we arrived. We grabbed dinner at a place recommended by the gas station attendant:

Tried Björg again; no response. In a town of 1500, she can’t be that hard to find, right? We checked out a phone book, but Höfn has 4 Björgs. Back to the gas station, where the attendant said she was a student of our host, whose first name, it turns out, isn’t even officially Björg after all. She told us roughly where she lived, so we snooped around an apartment block for a while to no avail. We decided to go to a campsite, but, first, one more call. And she answered! (This pattern was typical of our trip. After a lot of hardship, something would finally go right, but we looked on the bright side and chalked the whole thing up to luck.)

She gave us directions to her place (nowhere near where we’d been snooping) and we enjoyed conversation over a glass of wine with Björg and her nine-year old son. She was pretty lonely, having just moved out to the town from Reykjavik to teach. She sort of forced us to stay for coffee and tea before we could get on the road the next day, after taking us to the municipal pool (very popular throughout Iceland).

On the road again, our next stop was a town in the Eastfjords called Stöðvarfjörður. We hitched a ride with a fishing boat owner (pretty much the pinnacle of Iceland’s socioeconomic hierarchy, now that the financial titans have fallen) who gave us a ride the whole way. Our host in Stöðvarfjörður had told us we could stay at his place even though he would be in Reykjavik that weekend. As we arrived, he told us on the phone that his house would be easy to find: just look for house with a limo, boat, and 4wheeler in front.

Here we are!

In retrospect, things were already a bit fishy at this point, even before we a dog inside barked intensely for fifteen minutes straight.

Scary guard dog

Messiest house I've ever seen

Our host’s friends stopped by after a bit, before heading out to a bar a few towns over for the night. We watched a movie and went to bed, only to be woken at 4 AM by those guys, seriously intoxicated, and not very pleasant. Finally got them to leave us alone by promising to drink with them the next day– but instead got out in a hurry the next morning.

Click for full glory!

After exploring the town and getting a private exhibition showing by a gallery owner we met, we hiked up to a waterfall he recommended.

Putting my time at the climbing gym to use

Now, after getting halfway around the island, we thought to ourselves, “Why turn back, as originally planned?” Instead, we pressed onward, lining up a few more couchsurfing hosts and hitting the road. What had begun as a weekend on a whim had shifted to a worthy week.

Killing time before the next ride

Next we stayed in Egilsstaðir with Bjork (regional development director, not famous popstar). We watched Madagascar with her littlest one and played video games with a middle schooler. She also cooked us a delicious Icelandic dinner and served us cereal the next morning. What a way to travel!

Our next host was in Akureyri, Iceland’s second biggest town, but we had a hankering for the Northern Lights, and heard Lake Myvatn (halfway between Egilsstaðir and Akureyri) would likely provide.

The road to Myvatn was long– not in miles but in scarcity of cars. A couple of middle-of-nowhere stops ended not a moment too soon.

Shacks break the wind

We somehow missed seeing any Reindeer as we traveled through their Icelandic territory, but all that was forgotten when we arrived at the natural hot springs outside Myvatn, where our driver was kind enough to drop us off. With a sizeable facility to ourselves, we killed the rest of the evening there. On to the small town nearby, where we were the only guests at the only open hostel in town. We didn’t see the Northern Lights that night, but had plenty of adventures the next day to make Myvatn a worthwhile stop.

All the typical tourist activities were closed for January, so we had to make our own adventure.

We saw a rowboat by the side of the lake...

... and borrowed it for a while.

Stumbed upon a hole in the ground which revealed an expansive cave.

Akureyri, our next destination, surprisingly proved the hardest to get to. We accidentally took the wrong road around the lake and walked for miles (some of us even getting a little grumpy) before getting a ride back to where we started. Luckily, we quickly caught a semi-truck from there and avoided the dreaded small tent/thin sleeping bags combo.

Our hosts in Akureyri consisted of a couple, Elissa from Iceland and Ryan from Virginia. We had a nice evening exchanging photos. The next day, we explored Akureyri (including its heart-shaped stoplights) before heading back with Ryan to Reykjavik in the evening (about a 5-hour drive.) Along the way, we stopped to watch some brilliant green bands in the sky. Our luck had not run out!

By then, we were ready for home. All told, we were stayed with 4 hosts and got 20 different rides while hitchhiking. I felt that I encountered a broad cross-section of Icelandic society, from a pickup truck driver decrying Reykjavik’s “bloody leftists” to a semi-truck driver who’d always wanted to be a pilot, instead rarely able to see his wife and son between deliveries.

After this experience, my impressions of Iceland have evolved beyond doe-eyed idealism and disappointed cynicism, in a way that only personal encounters can accomplish.

I also found a statue of the Greek Goddess from which my Alma Mater takes its name.

Pomona and Me

Advertisement