From the ends of the earth (almost)

Reader!

Amazing to get back to a computer. Last I left you i was still in Reykjavik and time flies... i´m afraid my photos are terribly out of sync with my words because they are so difficult and time consuming to upload on the archaic PC´s i´ve been using. Working on a solution to upload a large file to my FTP site then provide you with a link to download them and view in full glory on your computer.

Things have been interesting... I am back in Isafjorður after 3.5 days on the Hornstrandir peninsula and nature reserve. Treated myself to a night in the local hotel here, as a reward for the OH SO grueling conditions I just HAD to withstand while on the peninsula ;)

but let me write about where we last left off...
After the debauchery of a weekend in r´kavik, I set out for the Ring road, road 1: build by americans (i THINK) during WWII, the ring road goes all around the island and connects many towns. It was this road I aimed for in getting out of reykjavik, which, like most urban centers, was difficult to get out of, as the area surrounding the outskirts of town and the ring rtoad are built for cars, not humans. Nonetheless, after some trying and asking questions, I managed to find myself standing there, thumb out, waiting for a ride. 10 minutes later, I found myself in a car, the likes of which looked like he was living in it, of a guy with beer in hand, (at least it looked like some kind of malt) traeling to Mosfelsbær, a suburb of Reykajavik. Also happens to be the place that spawned Sigur Ros, and holds their current studio, which I did see and get a cheesy tourist photo of. The end goal was a place called Stykkisholmur, town that had the ferry to take me to the West fjords. I wont bore you with too many details of hitchhiking, save to say that 8 hours and 6 rides got me there, and got me onto the snæsenfels (sp) peninsula, an amazing piece of land and one that i will revisit on my car tour around iceland. I was dumped (not dumped, really) in places in the middle of the road that were so quiet and erie, the mountains with shadows of clouds over them and sheep bleating in the distance, just amazing sights. It wasn´t difficult to find rides, 10-15 mintues was the max time i spent waiting. Anyone who has the grace and courage to pick up a lone male hitchhiker has my blessing and thanks, and a couple (he from denmark, she from iceland) had the good curtosey to drive me the rest of the way to Stykksholmur, through lava fields and the wastes of red mountains and bleak rock. I camped at a local camp site just outside town, and watched the world cup in a packed-like-sardines common house, watching holland SUCK and seeing people shout with glee at spain in their godless, and undeserving victory. (But remember I'm american and don´t accually care about soccer,i just had to root for holland because i lived there for 1.5 years!)

Stykkisholmor was a beautiful little fishing town, nice little houses and a charming center, with a great naturally protected harbor with a little island just beyond the main breaker that you can walk up to. After getting my ferry ticket, i had time to kill and went to a local cafe to write postcards and drink coffee. Up on top of the small island, later on, it was suberbly nice: beautiful view of charming sea side town, with the mountains of the snæsenfels peninsula in the background. True panorama material. Boat ride; nothing extraordinary... just a nice day on the water! can´t beat that. Getting into the west fjords was a different story though... the landscape almost at once became more intimidating and rugged (again, wish I had a mac for photos sake! this PC is at 88 of 280 images and videos on my first SD card) which makes one feel pretty small... and it MUCH more rural in comparison to the peninsula I was on, which was pretty rural indeed. Hitchhiking became more challenging here, as there are less people and the people whoa re there are usually families with filled up cars, campers hitched to the back and brimming with blonde children, or the lone service-provider-person, probably off to his next job fixing a broken refrigerator in ðæöþsfjördþæðöruryyséksmén. None the less, I came across, Vhan-can, a nice french guy who picked me up and suggested to travel to some less traveled parts of the west fjörds, to which I agreed. My limited french was no match for his intermediate english, and together we explored the long roads of the west fjords, getting a sense for what the end of the world looks like on top of some of these mountains... a stark and becautiful place, which inspires superstition and a fearful survival instinct. In this, I begin to knock on the door of the independent icelandic cultural traditions... ever so slightly... and get to know it even better on the hornstrandir peninsula, which i will discuss later.

Vhan-can (or vincent) and I went to the end of a road, a long gravel stretch ( of which most are gravel) and walked out to a spit, a sandy ismus with arctic turns attacking us, swooping down cawing their discontent with us so near their nests. fiersome little birds, they are truely aggressive and you have to put your hand up so they dont scratch your head. They also use shit as a weapon, but luckily I did not experience this first hand. Out on the beach, there was nothing. Just the gently waves from clear blue water, the galcier of the snæsenfels peninsula in the distance, the mountains to our back, sweeping down into the sea and the beach, clouds letting piercing rays of sunlight down into the select few, lucky patches of earth and sea, and the most interesting of all, the beach; at once edge pure black where the water laps the shore, and at the tide line and beyond, vivid orange, a bright orange enough to contrast the sky and water combined... wasn´t sure if it was broken shells, weathered down by years or something else, but right undernieth the orange sand, black lava sand, striking against its top color. Truely awesome scene, and again, wish my camera could describe it to you as my eyes did for me. and wish this computer would hurry up with that download.

moving on...

Many hours of driving later, we came to Bredavik (sp), the ends of the earth style habitation and camp ground. (thats where I wrote the last blog entry.) After a late evening and a bit of rain, we woke up to blazing sun and warm weather. It was a family run business, this small, dingy hotel and camp ground, with really nice, charming people. I learned they were also sheep farmers and had around 700 sheep, freely roaming the countryside. I forgot to ask how they find them all in winter...
Vincent, suggested we see the famous bird cliffs of the most south-westerly part of the west fjords. Which turned out to be quite cool! approaching the cliffs via more gravel roads, you could smells the stench of their bathrooms/homes, and the insessent complaining and kawing of litterally thousands of sea birds. Sea, salt, bird shit and the sonic quality of the place made for an experience out of my understanding. You could walk up to the cliffs, get on your belly and crawl to the edge, and there before you, tamer then tame, might be a puffin, just sitting there, looking at you with its curiously big clown eyes. Cute creatures, and apparently taste good, I said to the german couple next to me who turned up an eyebrown silently moved on )you´d have liked that, gene!).

It was time to move on. After all, the birds had fish to catch and we had sights to see. Dynjandi is a special place, a place new agers believe is a power spot in the earth. I call it, just plain statistics; a planet this big, in its geological formation, has to, at some point, produce the perfect view and scene, massive waterfall and beautiful fjord, right in once place. This was our destination, and eventually were the first SD ran dry. The road there, however, is more desolate and barren then most other roads, i can imagine. ROcks. Brown rocks. Bald mountains, and the omnipresent moss that layers icelands ground. Eventually, out of the mountains we came, and were presented with the waterfall, Dynjandi. It was not the first time my mouth dropped but the first time it hit the floor since being in iceland; one of the truely astonishing sights that one can see on their travels here and indeed, around the world (youWILL see the pictures).

Dynjandi is a massive, wide, tall, tumbling waterfall. It lives at the base (or begining) of a fjord, and at the bottom are a couple rivers and a campsite right by the seaside. You can also hike up the the waterfall itsself. What´s interesting about it, is that there are many waterfalls along the small trail up to it, all starting small and getting progressively bigger and bigger. Sonically, getting louder and louder as well, as you get nearer to the mother of all. I´d say about 150 ft wide and at least 3 or 4 stories high, it is massive and aweinspiring. One of the coolest things about Iceland is its purity of water... i don´t know anywhere else where you can freely, and safely lap up stream and river water. The sickest you´ll ever get is from too much beer or sweets! I think most the water i´ve drank on this trip has been from the land itsself.

Whats also strange, is that back in Brendavik and also at Dynjandi, I ran into a neighbor, a true neighbor! someone who lives litteraly 3 streets away from me back in seattle, I met here at the ends of the earth! Was quite impressive, really. Vincent was carrying on away from that place, and I was to head to Isafjordur. I would stand by the road and wait for a car in that direction, and if no one came, I would camp there at Dynjandi. After about two hours of munching on dried fish, it was getting later and I decided to camp. But not after I scoped out a better spot, away from the hoard of campers and children; a little dot of land, right on the sea side, looking out over the massive fjord with the big water fall behind and to the left, and a smaller stream/waterfall to my right, i camped there on that grassy patch looking over everything and in the most amazing of places, and also feeing quite lonely at that point; the curse of the lone traveler perhaps? but it IS what I signed up for and in a way I think of it as a test of strength and courage. None the less, I would have liked for you to have been there with me, as that is a sight to be shared.

The day after breaking camp, I learned about the difficulties of traveling in this rural place by thumb, and that is there are NOT MANY PEOPLE THERE. And also the people who are driving there are, like I said, families with cars filled up or just simply wary people of a lone dude out there in the middle of no where. Maybe too many american slasher flicks. That being said, I walked a lot that day and was picked up twice: once by a nice older out doors type guy, and once by a lady with a MASSIVELY tricked out, modded, landrover type car witha little baby in the back seat! This is how it went; looking at my map, i figured it was 17 kilometers to the nearest town and place to set up camp. OR I could cross the next mountain pass, and safe about 10 kilometers of walking. Hitchhiking got to the point where I extended money bills along with my thumb, but that might have insulted people rather then encouraged them to pick me up. An act of desperation if I ever saw one. But, it was at the moment I decided to cross the mountains that the Gods decided to send me an angel who was that lady and her baby. She drove me all the way into Isafjordur, through a long, 7KM erie tunnel, and out on the other side, popped a grocery store! Great success. I love grocery stores... they somehow embody something about a place that isn´t grasped in any other type of establishment. I bought some camper style food, knowing that i´d need it for the next part of my journey.

Another stroke of luck; the grocery store was a few KM out of town, and stuck out my thumb again to the 3exit of the place, and a nice girl picked me up and drove me into town, in fact, to the best beer joint and cafe in Isafjordur! how sweet it was to have that crappy icelandic beer in the sun, sitting with locals and other tourists, just soaking it in. I think I spent the whole day there, doing nothing and having fun with them, only to stagger off to the near campsite and catch a few Z´s before investigating how to get to the hornstrandir peninsula. (Live note: uploading files on the go might be the most frustrating thing ever. there are no macs around, okay, thats fine, and this fucking PC won´t allow me to ZIP the GD file. This might be impossible.)

Anywayy, I had to wait another day in Isafjordur for the propor boat connection to be made... apparently to do the trip I wanted to do, I had to wait so... yeah. thats that. so i got a room in a guest house, very nice, cheap, place and checked email, read the unbeawrable lightness of being which is a good book btw, if you haven´t heard about it ;) and then the next day came, and I was on a boat, to something which seemed like a battle to me, because I knew it was going to be me, alone, in the wilds of Iceland, with no communication and just a map and compass and my home on my back. What a wild time, and an exausting time I might add. First, we landed in Heyteri, which was a small town adn apparently a doctor lived there. It was absolutely nice! Beautiful weather the whole time, and I was presented with a choice; take the lower route along the seaside (which is not tao be taken at high tide) or the higher which goes on top of the fjord. I took the lower. At high tide, of course. Thats the tom sawyer in me I guess, always doing something the most difficult way possible. It was great fun, but also a bit percarious at times, as I was forced to do some Bear Grylls style jumping and climbing... at one point, I was forced to climb onto a small, peninsula type thing of land, and jump across a gap, climb up more, climb down about 6 or 7 feet and scramble after my backpack as it started to slide off, and on either side of me was a drop of about 30 feet. It all ended up alright though... that wasnt´t even the most difficult part... the worst of it was getting to the end of the fjord and climbing out. Everyone says going up it easier then coming down. I disagree. Youmake way better time coming down and use less energy doing it. It´s fun coming down. It´s like saying whats more entertainin, uphill skiing or downhill skiing? Well in my opinion, its the downhill thats the best. After an exausting climb up (oh and the reason for that? because the backpackers map i had dosen´t conform to reality! oh wow! in for an adventure now!) and out of the fjord, I made my way to the other end of the peninsula. Cairns, few and far between, guided what vague assemblence of a trail there was. Across green moss ridden steppes, water flowing freely from snow tracts, clinging onto the mountain side, and up another brown rock climb, I stood ontop of a mountain and looked down to the otherside of the sea, and beyond that sea lay Svalbard, probably, and the north pole. Desolate. Alone. The nighttime sun guiding me and then mountain shadows cast down on the land as I desended. Long walking time, it was, and the playlist in myhead played truely random tunes... trashy tunes that you shouldn´t listen to when sober. Rivers, and water falls... shadowns and sunlight and moss again. Hard to describe without some photos (of which seem less and less likely because of these worthless computers I´m forced to type on...) Finally, after much deliberation and walking, I manage to find the sea. Some campers direct me to the official camp site, and I refill my water blatter and bottle before heading 2 more kilometers to the site. Along the beach, I come across 2 pairs of arctic fox babies! They seemed tame and didnt run too far when I was walking pretty much beside them. As I approach the camp site, I walk past a family of Icelanders, and I greeted them with the traditional goðamdayen(good day), also asking if I could set up camp nearby. They seemed friendly enough, and if i´ve learned something about these northern countries, its that you don´t want to be the typical, outgoing, what they feel as overbearing american. I keep reserved and quiet, and a little girl, about 10 years old, comes over to me as I´m setting up camp with a hotdog ´would you like an icelandic hotdog?´she asks. It was like heaven... as if kindness was like drinking from a spring when you´re partched, I accepted. they beconed me to join them, and I went over. With them, they had soup, hotdogs, bread, beer, liquor, coffee, hot chocolate... everything you could imagine! What I learned later on, was that they were trekking through the Hornstrandir, and had arranged, via a small shop in isafjordur, for food to be dropped at specific locations by a boat, on beaches... so basically they would order what they wanted, and just have it all delivered to their campsite! Amazing. They gave me beer, hotdogs, a few shots of booze, but more then all that, they were company. it felt like family. The little girl, olof was like the icelandic version of my little sister... funny, mischevious, gergarious, outgoing, with a bright indigo around her. A truly fun person to be around, and she chattered at me with the best english I´ve heard a young, non-english speaker use. I went to sleep with a full belly, on the seaside with the midnight sun dipping down behind an impending cloudbank that the land seemed to just be keeping at bay. Next morning, I broke camp and set off for hornvik, site of those massive cliffs you see in icelandic ads. The journey there wasn´t as bad, maybe because mentally i knew i was going to a great place. A steep climb up a mountain, down through another valley of bleak stones and moss, and then up again, and then down and along the seaside. I got stuck behind a scout group of about 30 icelandic teenage boys, loud and obnoxious as ever, which slowed my progress. Ah well. Sometimes you have to hear those obnoxious songs they sing and the weird gutteral sounds procuded by an old norse tongue. Hofn, is the estuary is something out of Avatar... cradeled by mountains, it is a fertile plaine of grass and sand, the cliffs and hills surriounding it pouring their glacial melt and spring water into the delta there and then spewing it out into the sea. the beach is dark with fluffy sand, and there is a ranger station there with a knowledgeable kindly guy who over sees the place. I set up camp, away from the other tents in a nice little alcove, tucked away beyond the wind and against a rock wall, and near the mountain side, hoping that the icelandic family I met might set up nearby and I could have their great company once again. Taking a walk around the place, sea birds roamed around, and a slight mist of moisture was present in the air so it made the distance look even greater. On the map, it dosent look like much... in reality, it is MASSIVE and one of the more becauseitul places Ive ever been. There, also lies the Hornbajrg, home to the great king and queen of cliffs of the world, like water, sloshing about and frozen in place at the zenith or its slosh, those cliffs sweep up into the air and then fall away at once, and look as if someone carved them with the exacto-knife of the Godkings. (again, hoping for pictures). about 2 hours after I arrived, the family arrived as well and did set up near me. I was once again with the friendliest people I´ve met in iceland. Little did I know, however, that in their most recent food drop, they had ordered two legs of lamb and a load of charcol to cook it with! In the beach, they dug a BBQ, and set about making bernaise sause and seasoned potatoes. Olof invited me to join them for dinner, and with wine, beer, potatoes, sause and the BEST lamb I´ve ever had, we ate our fill ion the cold,dying sunlight and mist of the hornstrandir. The lamb, cooked to perfection, was also wrapped and marinated in herbs they had picked from the hill side... flowers, icelandic thyme, and others made a delicious seasoning that couldn´t be had elsewhere. I felt truely at home. I felt full, and happy... it was like thing i´ll experience again, eating extraordinary food with wonderful people, in what I felt before was a barren, desolate and lonely place.

It is the kind of place that inspires superstition, sonic quality being the gentle white noise of breeze across the land, and the omnipresent sound of waterfalls in the distance or babbling brooks and springs welling up and streaming underfoot towards their never changing goal of the sea. You could definaetly get wrapped up in the spirits, hidden folk, trolls, elves, etc if you spent enough time there, your mind playing tricks on you.

THe next day was exausting. Rough. Although a beautiful sunny, day, I knew I watned to see those cliffs up close, and i also knew I had to get to my pickup point, which was one fjord away from where I started, but also across the entire peninsula from where I was in hornvik. It was going to be long. I set out at about 12pm, across the flat land, away from the beach because the ranger said you can´t get across the river when its high tide, so with all my clothes on (it was cold) it set out... then all of the sudden, halfway across the black sanddunes, it was hot! oh great. None the less, the lid of my pack detached and I could use it as a day pack with the essentials in it. I crossed the river, but stupidly didn´t take off my pants, and all three lower layers got wet. I put them around my neck to dry, and carried on, down the beach, staying close to the fjord side. Heading north was my direection, and although the map said there was a trail, it fluctuated and constaltly disappeared and reappeared along the beach. hard going on stones, as they try and twist your feet this way and that. But some amazing scenery... sea stacks, and water falls cascading down into the ocean... Finally, after a long walk, I started to ascend. The smells were getting stronger, of grass and herbs, and flowers, not unilke costal washington and vancouver island... a familiar smell that urged me on. Finally, after a long ascent (There was a good view of the whole steppe now) I came to a cliff. The northern most point of hornbajrag (sp), and a famous picture point. You keep following the cliff edge and the trail leads you up, across a mountain and into the next part of the valley... it disappeared though and i made up a trail as I went. Kind of scary, being on a mountain like that... steep. Big view. I didn´t like it. I prefer to be on the sea. On top of that, there were NO trails up there, and the space was immense and massive. Although the views were out of this world... there they were, sweeping upwards, those cliffs i´ve seen so many times on Google image searches of ´iceland´. At this point, the trail descended and lead me to a small lake on that strip of land, but then just as it had been so strongly there, disappeared, and on the map it showed a competely different trail, climbing the second mountain! i trail blazed up that mountain, and came out on top, looking for another trail... there were paths not on the map and the path i was looking for didn´t seem to exist. I could see the cliffs. And after climbing to the cliff edge, impossibly high and what felt to be super precarious, in that beating sunlight, driven on by frustration alone, and said fuck it, and made a V-line to back to the beach. I was lost, felt mislead (overreaction, of course), and ready to leave as the clouds were rolling in like an unwelcome flood. I saw the cliffs and that was enough, so I half jumped, half ran down the steep slopes until i was deep into stream territory, and followed a river until I coud make my way back down to the beach. At least I could see where i watned to be. After getting down back onto the beach trail, it wasn´t far to the delta/estuary to where i had to cross to get back to the camp site... but it was flodding now, low tide apparently causes deep rivers or water. I walked to the end and saw about a 50m streatch of water to cross. An american couple caught up with me, (from boston) and the man of the two happily said i´ll scout it! i was more then happy to let hiim... he walked out into the water which, at the last moment, became waist deep. I was not about to let some water get in my way, after all i was in a hurry and had to make it to the pickup point THAT NIGHT so that the boat would not leave me behind in the morning. So they left, as they had time to go around and the lady had all her warm gear on, and I bundled everything up, took off my pants and rolled up my shirts, and went headlong into the water. IT did get deep by the end, and i was shriviling up if you know what imean, but i MADE it. Bear grylls would be proud. As the other americans were vanishing into the distance, I let out a naked victory woo-hoo! and they in turn responded with vicory yelps. Walking the kilometer back to camp on sand though was probably more frustrating then any of the last bit, because i could SEE where i wanted to go, but it was terribly slow going. Basically after getting back, and making a feed bag, I packed up everything, left a note for the family who had given me so much, and went on, a little sad and a little daunted by the trekk ahead of me. Map said it was 9km, and i know how to trust that map... long hike, lots of up, not a lot of cairns... and it was difficult. I knew though, that stopping was not an option, and the thought of getting back to civilization kept me going, like some lone.. .person or thing, or whatever.

the lack of trail meant I actually used my compass for the first time, and headed directly south west. A bit scary, really, but I used my instincts and looked for traces of humans before me, in footprints. Compass, footprints, and the occasional carin finally got me to the top of the pass.

As I got up to the mountain pass, there was a large snow field, and looking at the tracks in front of me, looked like you could slide down it... so thats just what i did, it was quite a steep slope and i was really glad that i wasn´t climbing UP that thing. I sat down, and skied down the thing! it was pretty fun, a moment of glee in all that trudging. In a moment of loosing the trail, I saw people. Hope! Humanity! Two of them, far down, but going slow enough to catch up to. I hauled ass down there and eventually caught up with them. They were a german couple, from Bravaria, heading to the same pickup point. We banded forces together and headed down... they set a strenuous pace which got us down a lot quicker. More snow fields, and I kept thinking i´m so glad i´m not climbing up this thing... Evnetually, finally, we made it to the bottom of the valley, and to the base of the fjord. The boat company had told us to go just a little out from the base, so as we went, we saw a mooring bouy in the sea, and an A-frame latrine. We were there. Made it. At 1AM sharp. My day hard started walking around steep cliffs, sprinting back and then walking 10 kilometers to the rendezvous point. Setting up camp was mechanical; footprint, tent, poles, etc. They had salami from Germany with them, and it tasted like heaven. We went to bed at 2am, bellies full, ready for the boat ride back. I awoke at 8am, feeling quite rested, for some reason, and packed up my gear. The boat came, and we loaded our selves onto it, but only a bunch of soon to be sorry saps loaded off it, clearly looking like they were on holiday, and apparently, going to climb what I had just come off of. Hope they´re alright because it would take a very persuasive guide to muster that kind of motivation.

Onto the water, and one more pickup, we stopped at a family summer house, and there dogs and kids greeted us. They had to unload some gear (a cement mixer and an off roading ATV) onto the boat to get them serviced in the town, i guess. Anyway, was a funny sight, dead tired hikers, babies, dogs and farm equipment on a boat in fjords. Felt to me, a small fraction of the relief that soliders must feel when they are pulled out of the field and back home to base or whereever... relief to be back and alive, and allowed to realx a little.

When we got into the nearest town (actually not isafjordur) we were waiting for a bus. Next to the stop was a grocery store, and one by one, we all went in an bought copious amounts of sweets. After being so pure in the wilderness, we all had one thing on our mind; SWEETS. Funny, that. just loaded up on junk food... None the less, I treated myself to the upscale hotel in isafjordur, a room and bath all to myself, where i can shower, repack, dry out and get laundry done. Which is where I'm writing this from now, and where hopefully i´ll get some photos uploaded... Wish I had my Mac ;)

Thats all for now... 2:20am and time for bed. next stop... Akueryri and the Northeast. Or Reykjavik and the Southeast. We´ll see.

Until next time...


-eric