“Mama, this
is not fun.”
The voice
from behind me was thin and high, almost lost in the headwind that my young
co-pedaler and I had been battling, mile after mile. It was, nonetheless, quite firm. “This is not fun!”
Guilt
stabbed at me. The twins did not sign up
for this. And, let’s face it, Lizzy has
a point. Normal tourists rent cars.
The
insistent 48-degrees-Farenheit rain blew up the cuffs of my raincoat. It spun from my front wheel and dripped from
my panniers. It trickled off the end of
my nose. It had been raining – or
drizzling, or splattering, or heavily-misting – all day. We had likewise been treated to almost
unceasing precipitation all of the previous day, as we had struggled against a
headwind on the road from Hólaskógur to Brautarholt. The day before that, between Flúðir and Hólaskógur
– it rained. Chilly, grey, slanting moisture. I wasn’t holding out for anything better in Eyrarbakki
and Stokkseyri.
Family vacation,
2013. Gosh, kids, let’s go bike touring and tent camping! In… (wait for it) …Iceland!
Our group
included Jay (the man to whom I am blissfully wedded), Molly and Lizzy (the
small humans whom we produced a few years back), myself, and Tom (who is in no
way related to us, but is strangely tolerant of our company). Our Grand Scheme was that as a getaway from our
home in remote, Arctic, sparsely populated Alaska, we would visit a remote,
Arctic, and sparsely populated nation with place names such as “Kirkjubæjarklaustur”
and “Fáskrúðsfjörður”; local delicacies such as fermented shark and smoked
puffin; and summer weather marked by cold temperatures, heavy rain, high winds,
and rampant unpredictability. And,
really, what could be a better mode of transportation than one that picks up
the icy drizzle right off the wet roads and sprays it back into your face, even
as you fight for control in the raging gusts?
Given the
peculiar predilections of our family, it wasn’t surprising that we’d plan a
non-motorized vacation (see
http://latitude.nancyfresco.com/2011/05/spinning-our-wheels.html or
http://latitude.nancyfresco.com/2011/01/this-hike-is-not-recommended-for-young.html or… well, you get the point).)
Even so, from the earliest planning stages, I
had a few misgivings about the sanity of the venture. Was I expecting too much
of the kids, physically, by planning to cover thirty to fifty miles per day via
pedal-power? Would even that relatively ambitious mileage be enough to reach an
adequate number of Awesome Sights, and to really see a cross-section of Iceland
in a mere two weeks?
Would we achieve a
reasonable balance between time spent pedaling and time spent in non-pedaling
Enriching Activities such as visiting museums, sampling adventuresome foods,
gazing at geysers, and diving into inter-cultural conversation?
In short, was the idea of biking around
Iceland with two seven-year-olds on tag-along bikes completely bats-in-the-treehouse-loony?
In part, my misgivings were based on helpful
feedback from friends who told me, in effect, “Bicycling around Iceland with
two seven-year-olds on tag-along bikes is bats-in-the-treehouse-loony.” My
trepidations was also based on a relatively brief perusal of Icelandic weather
data.
This is not
to say that no one was enthused by the idea of visiting the land of Vikings,
fjords, trolls, hot springs, and the Reykjavik Phallus Museum. In fact, most of my acquaintances seemed
interested, or even jealous, when I mentioned our destination, especially when
I boasted about the astonishing cheapness of the airline tickets we’d managed
to snag. However, friends and family
were flummoxed when we went on to explain that our luggage would include our
velocipedes, our bulging panniers – and nothing else. “What do you plan to do there,” one friend
asked my, suspicion written all over his face, “besides… biking?”
Um… well…
It’s not fun.
So,
yeah. Here I was, out in the cold rain
with nary a Viking ruin, geyser, or waterfall in sight, and my co-pilot was
getting peeved. All my guilt and
misgivings came rushing back. I was tempted to wail, “You’re right! It’s NOT fun!
I am a fool, a poor deluded
fool!” Past experience, however,
forewarned me that maternal histrionics would do little to lighten the
mood. Instead, I looked around for
potential distractions.
“Look!
Cows! Let’s stop and say hi to
them!”
And thus we
learned that damp Icelandic cows – who all seem to be of the dairy variety,
rather than the more-emotionally-challenging going-to-get-eaten variety -- are
a convivial, svelte, politely curious bunch, grass-happy and eager to tell you
just how delicious their skyr yogurt is: “Fat free and high in protein! Do try
the melon and astar fruit flavor!” All
the calves are taught perfect English, which is awfully handy for clueless
American tourists.
Lizzy
cheered up. She counted cows. She told me about which mama cows had
twins. Twins!
On we went. Just as the troops were getting restless
again, we discovered an experimental forestry plantation. At least, that’s what I think it was. The sign said, “Skógræktarfélag Árnesinga”
which I took to mean, “nice woodsy place in which some previous traveller in
worse straights than you built a rather pathetic lean-to out of sticks.” It was an idyllic little sylvan patch in an
almost-unforested nation. It felt
sheltered, private, ours alone. We
never, ever would have stopped at the Skógræktarfélag Árnesinga if we’d been in
an automobile… or a bus… or a Happy Camper van. It was most definitely not on the map.
Not that
being Off the Map was anything new. From
the very beginning of our adventure, we’d been stopping in places that tourists
– the kind driving shiny little rental cars or riding in trundling Reykjavik
Excursions behemoths – would never, ever bother to examine in miniscule detail.
For example, on Day One, we looked at rocks and bones.
That first
day of the trip was crystal clear, a blue-sky gift that even the pickiest of
travelers could not possibly have complained about. Unfortunately, our flight spat us out at
Keklavik airport at 6 a.m., but left our internal body clocks back in Alaska,
where it was 10 p.m. the previous evening.
Not one of us had slept on the plane – but sleep was no longer an
option, now. The only option was biking.
After
spending some quality time annoying the airport security folks by fumbling our
seven bajillion bicycle parts back together in an inconvenient lobby, and after
desperately searching for—and eventually unearthing -- the luggage storage
facility, we were all set to hit the road. Except, of course, for the fact that
we were blindingly exhausted.
The children
biked 40 kilometers (25 miles) over the course of four hours. We stopped for snacks. We stopped to look at lava rocks, intricately
bubbly little confections that they are.
We stopped to look at the tiny wind-dried bones of birds. A seagull skull is a thing of strange and
delicate beauty, if you are very, very jet-lagged. At the picturesque campsite in the orderly
little fishing village of Grindavik, we sampled a delicious
natively-greenhouse-grown little melon, into which Lizzy’s face slumped as she
fell asleep.
And so it
continued. On Day Two, after a
delightful morning spent both mocking and enjoying the over-hyped Blue Lagoon, we
successfully escaped all sign of any other tourists at not one, not two, but
THREE fascinatingly arbitrary roadside locations -- one for each of Tom’s flat
tires. The last of these was also our
makeshift campsite – last resort of the jet-lagged, headwind-cursed, and puncture-prone
-- on the gale-swept shores of Kleifarvatn.
This deep and ominous lake is draining into a gigantic geological
fissure, and is, moreover, frequented by trolls. Or so we heard. We would never, ever have stopped there, had
we not been on bikes. Did I mention that
the tent almost blew away in the middle of the night?
Day three
was full of new experiences. Such as,
for example, coasting uphill. The force
of a temperamental (and possibly psychotic) 30+mph Icelandic wind propelled us
into Reykjavik – and sometimes perpendicular to Reykjavik, and/or away from
Reykjavik. Had we been in a car, we
would doubtless not have stopped, dripping, at a suburban grocery store, where
we cowered by the unused shopping carts, ate a frightening quantity of
chocolate doughnuts, and garnered the quietly amused sympathy of the locals. Nor would we have stopped sixteen or
seventeen times at the junctions of the city’s extensive and utterly perplexing
network of biking/walking paths. In
doing so, we had plenty of time to admire the tidy fronts, backs, and sides of
hundreds of lovely urban homes. We
learned that Reykjavikers push old-fashioned baby carriages. They go running. They plant trees and flowers. They grow cabbages, turnips, and
potatoes. And they post lots of signs
with little graphics that make it abundantly clear that you need to pick up
your dog’s crap in a little plastic bag, thank you very much.
Day four. Cloudy with occasional drizzle. But in a city full of bike paths, every
fantastic museum is mere minutes away, and parking is oh-so-convenient. Yes, kids, the Vikings came here in the year
871 (plus or minus two). They had
fascinating homes with sod roofs, all manner of tools and implements for
fishing and farming, and swords to whack each other with. But no bicycles. If they’d had bicycles, maybe they would have
spent less time whacking each other with swords. And that thing in the glass case is a sperm
whale penis. Now, let’s get some falafel
sandwiches for lunch. Are you culturally
confused yet?
With
sunshine on our shoulders, we hit some major tourist hotspots on days five,
six, and seven. We visited Þingvellir,
where ancient Vikings shouted laws about sheep-stealing at one another. We camped within earshot of Geysir, where hot
water breath-stoppingly blasts eighty feet out of the ground – an entirely
expected phenomenon that causes dozens of grownups to squeal in surprise. Every.
Single. Time. We wandered about in the
thunderous spray of Gulfoss, which is humungous. And a waterfall. And beautiful, of course – utterly beautiful.
Many
tourists flash along the narrow roads at 90 kph, and hit all these big-name
attractions in a single day. But we were
on bikes. We were… slower.
We were on
bikes, and we were travelling with kids.
Thus, we hit some not-so-major tourist attractions: small-town
playgrounds; supermarket cafes; an almost infinite supply of adorable Icelandic
ponies who obligingly took apple cores from the kids’ fingers with gentle,
leathery lips; rock piles; interestingly
unfathomable signs; home-town hot-tubs in villages almost too small to merit
names; and people who wanted to know who the heck we were -- and why.
Why was a big question. Sure, there were other bike-touring folks out
there – Germans, French, Canadians, Danes, Norwegians, Finns – and there were
other tent-campers tucked among the RVs, trailers, and Happy Campers at every
campground. But, as we discovered, being
a family on bikes made us unique. (A
family plus a Tom, that is – but no one ever questioned why there was a stray
friend, or perhaps funny uncle or second husband, in our group.) Instead, they wanted to know where we were
from (what crazy nation breeds freaks such as these?) and where we were going
(how many kilometers can those tiny legs pedal in a day?) and how on earth we
had brainwashed our kids into thinking this was fun.
“Mama, this is not fun!”
Well… mostly
fun. Except for at moments like
this. Ok. Time for another stop. Selfoss
was an unpromising town, a workaday place about which even the upbeat Lonely
Planet guide had nothing in particular to say.
But we stopped there for lunch, because… Kids.
Bikes. Raining. My burden of self-doubt felt heavy again, as
I tried to hang little raincoats and little rainpants near the heaters in the
pizza joint without hogging more than two tables.
“I hope you
don’t mind that I took a photo of your bicycles. Where are you from?” The gray-ponytailed guy looked slightly
shabby, in a friendly aging-hippie Alaskan sort of way, but he was definitely
Icelandic. That is, as I soon
discovered, he was Icelandic -- but had lived for some years in the US, where
he had married an American of Cherokee descent.
They now lived in Stokkseyri.
Would we like to visit them?
Alas, we weren’t going to make it that far that day, but we happily told
our newfound friend about our biking adventures. He, in turn, told us about the culture shock
his kids suffered when they first moved from California to a small fishing
village in the Arctic.
It was food
for thought. It was connection, in a
country that I perceived as being both friendly and Nordically reserved. And the pizza was pretty darned good, too.
It was still
raining when we left Selfoss. The rain
gear was immediately soaked again. But a
couple of hours later, it hung dripping across half a dozen pegs in the women’s
locker room at the Eyrerbakki pool. There
were no other tourists in the hot tub -- or in the locker room. There was, however, a smiling young woman who
was curious enough about these odd-yet-seemingly-harmless Americans to engage
the kids in conversation. Oh, so they
liked the ponies? She herself had forty
ponies!
At last I
was able to ask all the questions I’d accumulated about the logistics and
economics of horse-farming in Iceland (yes, I ruminate about subjects like
economics; I can’t help myself). Our local interpreter was eager to educate
me. Yes, they exported the animals,
which were sought-after all over the world.
Yes, they got breeding fees for their stallions. Lots of Icelanders simply enjoying
riding. And what kind of adventures were
we having in her homeland?
Tom and Jay
looked a bit perplexed about how long it took for us to emerge from the locker
room. They, it seemed, had not engaged
in nude chit-chat with any locals.
But hey, at
least this young woman spoke fantastic English.
The previous night, in the non-metropolis of Brautarholt, we’d
discovered the Iceland-rare phenomenon of being forced to play
we-are-American-idiots-charades. The
smiling middle-aged man in charge of the pool – as well as the field next door
that was the official campground, for us and us alone – could not quite work
out how to charge us. In fact, he seemed
genuinely loath to do so, despite the reasonable posted rates of about six
dollars per adult for camping, and about three bucks for all the hot-tubbing we
wanted. (Kids were free. Kids were free everywhere.) Likewise, the
elderly man trying to recapture his adorable Chocolate Lab puppy didn’t speak
any English. However, with our two
little kids as puppy-bait, it was easy to help him out – and no one really
needed to say anything besides “vinsamlegast” and “takk fyrir.”
Come to
think of it, who needs English?
That evening
– on the same day in which my self-confidence had felt so sodden when the
riding was “not fun” -- the little town of Eyrarbakki offered a playground, a
sandbox with more mysterious bones (just like a REAL archaeologist!), another
pool hot tub combo, and – at last – enough breezy sunshine to almost dry the laundry,
if only it would stop blowing off the line.
And then… yet another Icelandic stranger ambled over and, grinning
gently, handed me a bag of clothespins.
She looked like a grandma. Somebody’s grandma. Everybody’s grandma. I
loved her immediately. She told me, in
English mostly comprised of smiles and nods, that she and her husband were from
Heimeay Island. On my map, I found this
little swatch of land -- perched out in the temperamental ocean off Iceland’s
south coast. Oh, this was a woman who certainly
knew how to hang up laundry in high winds, in the brief respites between rain showers. I accepted the colorful plastic pins
gratefully. “Takk fyrir.” And everything
came together, somehow. The trip felt
right. Complete.
Not that our
journey was over on the Night of the Clothespins; the very next day we enjoyed
two museums, a lava tube, more bubbly geothermal phenomena, and a thoroughly
unexpected town-wide carnival. Whoopee,
time for the annual Flower Festival in Hveragerði! Moreover, it was gloriously sunny all day,
and we enjoyed a helpful yet genteel tailwind.
Nonetheless, I’m pretty sure it was not all this photogenic and bikable
loveliness that won me over. No, it was
in unprepossessing little Eyrarbakki that I finally let go of my guilt, my
qualms, and my double-guessing. Biking
around Iceland with my husband, my good friend, and my two small children? Yeah, it was a fantastic idea.
What I discovered
about biking in Iceland was, essentially, what I already knew about biking in
Alaska – and everywhere else. Yes, bicycles
are slow, as compared to cars – but only in the same way that home-cooking is
slow, as compared to Burger King. Sure,
biking can be damp, and cold, and windy, but it can also be blissfully real.
A car -- with the windows rolled up, the heat blasting, the windshield
wipers flapping, and the stereo on -- is awfully comfortable, but it’s also a
cocoon that shuts out the world. It
filters out the smell of pony, the faints wafts of sulfur from a cracked and
restless earth, and the sharp cries of the gulls.
In contrast,
it’s impossible to hide on a bike. I’m
sure that plenty of people thought we were nuts, but at least we weren’t just
one more faceless batch of tourists rushing through the Obligatory Sights. On bikes, Molly and Lizzy paid attention to
geology, geography, flora, fauna, archaeology, architecture, and infrastructure
(Seriously. We’re talking major
edification!) They also received smiles
from old ladies walking dogs, garnered curious stares from kids their own age,
and earned spontaneous cheers from construction workers (and who wouldn’t
appreciate a little attention from a young Viking in a reflective vest?)
In a car, the stereotypical family-vacations
question is, “Are we there yet?” On a
bike, that isn’t even really relevant: you’re already there. Wherever you happen to be – staring at cows,
reading the interpretive plaque by a pair of windmills, catching a glimpse of a
nameless waterfall, borrowing a bag of clothespins, or being photographed
outside a pizza joint -- is part of the fun, and part of the not-fun, and part
of everything in between.
No, we
didn’t see the whole country. But then I
haven’t seen all of America, either. Yes, it sometimes rained. But even Lizzy, at her more whimsical
moments, took this in stride. “I think
the giants’ babies are crying again,” she laughed. And we pedaled on.
Takk fyrir,
Iceland.
