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July 28, 2005
Reykjavic rustica
A few days have passed since Johanna and I left Iceland bound for Germany, but I wanted to capture some of the time there before it faded in memory.
We arrived on a red-eye from Boston early on the morning of the 19th, and made our groggy way first to the main Reykjavik bus terminal (BSI) and then to the city’s public campground and HIYA youth hostel. We paid about 600ISK or $10/person for a our one night stay, pitched our new MEC tent on a lush patch of grass and promptly took a nice nap in the blazing 9AM sun. We discovered all too soon (15 minutes into our nap) that desipte only having a few months of sunlight, warmth and therefore green grass, the blond-haired, shirtless and brawny Icelandic teenagers have created a summer industry around grass mowing. A large ride-on mower carved a nice swath around our tent, some clippings gently landing on our rainfly while I had nightmares of a cord getting caught in the blade and the whole tent getting sucked into the mower. As we later discovered, these mowers were everywhere.
Mid-afternoon found us lounging at the public hot baths that were next door to the campground (entry 250ISK or $4/person). Along with the campground which felt very public (basically just one long grassy knoll with tents dotting the grass close together, every ten feet or so), the baths were another nice example of a nice European public facility. The locker rooms were packed with unabashed naked people taking showers under huge (6 inches in diameter, easy) and wonderful showerheads. The water was naturally warm (it still smelled faintly like sulphur) and it felt as though you were standing under a gentle and warm waterfall. The baths consisted of two large swimming pools (one for laps, one for goofing off), a large water slide (Johanna and I be friended a few Icelandic kids who kept on wanting to slide down with us, despite that fact that our large surface area and extra mass slowed them all way down — we also saw a probably 75-year-old man getting his slide on), a succession of four small pools that felt increasingly more like a lobster-boil by the last one (113-115 degrees Fahrenheit, i think yow!), and one mid-sized warm pool that looked to be the adult singles scene and the teenage hangout. The whole place was packed with Icelanders and it was clearly a great summer hangout, perfect for those cool (50-60 degree) summer evenings.
We grabbed a half-empty bottle of butane/propane mix from the campground’s pile of leftover-gas-that-cannot-be-taken-on-planes-so-we-might-as-well-leave-it-here-for-the-next-person pile and cooked a nice mac and cheese dinner.
The next morning, thanks to a slow watch battery, we almost missed our bus to Landmanallaugar for our big trek. Luckily we were tipped off by the morning lawnmowing shift, as we didn’t quite believe that, despite the sun being up and shining brightly early in the morning as usual, the teenage mowers would start at 6AM.
Next edition: the hike…
Posted by nick at 06:15 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack