Day One: June 17/18, 2015

Nobody knows what sleep is. But I know what it means when we don’t sleep.

burning eyes. No poops.

Apathy like whales.

The tourist magnets provided a concrete destination in our deepest hours of confusion and despair.

“This is romance?”

But ask that in the presence of a waterfall named after the richness of gold and the answer is irresistebly yes.

There were times we were lied to.

There were times we lied to ourselves, like when we said “We’re prepared.”

There are no hamburgers in the exit aisles. And even though Anna found this extremely alarming, it was okay.

The maps are terrible and the signs don’t make sense. Hitchhikers are our only guides.

After the geysirs and having our fill with all the geysirstoffa we found our own private parking lot.

Rest, to some extent, was finally ours.

Day Two: June 19, 2015

 There is no sunrise because there is no sunset and the clouds and jet lag jettison any meaning to the time of day.

 There are hours this we are sure of because we drive, for many of them in the wrong direction.

 If it wasn’t for Anna losing her phone we wouldn’t have seen the waterfall that neither of us (as it turned out) cared to see.

 Our guide from Singapore was helpful in his one observation “You’re going the wrong way.”

 We later repaid him by taking him and his French companion the last 10km of their 100km journey that took 6 hours to complete.  

We arrived once again in a town that had little more to offer than locked doors.

For the first time Women’s suffrage was a bane for both of us.

We eagerly proceeded to a “campsite” on our own private beach.

There we made love as if it was the Saga Age.

Lyrical exagerations muted by the confines of the Rav4 and then washed out entirely by the crashing sea.

aside: There is a bird that lives on this beach whose response to a percieved threat is to fake injury and wander away from its nest as a diversion.

Day Three: June 20, 2015

The boundaries of days are as fluid as the shifting of a state line along a river in a heavy flood season.’

We awoke at 2:00am with the vigor of farmers driven more by demand than fervor.

The Vitamin Energy “Black Sex” flavored energy drink changed all that. Suddenly there were Rams everywhere.

Crowded in by mountain peaks and deep fjords the roads become a dangerous common ground for beast and machine.

Eastern Isolation was a phrase written by the bleakness and the fjords themselves.

This country is overly dramatic, constantly shedding glacial tears that cut deep scars in its face like a drugged out psychopath.

From here the ring road becomes rocked, tarnished kitch, or costume easily broken and (although built in the 70s it seems to be the only connection to the “outside” world) wholly unneeded.

Rising and arcing towards the interior we are confronted by more wasteland.

Every turn impossibly more bleak than the last.

“Nothing lives here!” Anna exclaims “. . . sorry brown grass.” she concedes.

She often jokes of a creature perfectly adapted for the baren lifeless earth who screams in a Gilford Godfrey pitched vocalization, “I’m adapted to the Wasteland!”

Here Nature’s effort is equally reflected by the humans who visit.

In the 11th century two bishops who were having a turf war met here and erected the most half assed cairns anyone has ever decided to call a cairn.

Piles of rock that somehow linger uninfluenced by anyones ideas of value or beauty.

Day 3, Part 2:

My neck, my back, my pussy and Myvatn. Lake Myvatn.

Trina would be pleased to find her nastiness eagerly embraced and exceeded by nature.

Foul smells. Caustic acids. Ooze, seep, bubble and steam. Out of the most unenvious and straight up ugliest forms of rock that I have yet encountered.’

Trails pass directly over steam vents, signs are laying prone on the ground. Its National Park Anarchy.

We drove 6 hours to get here, all before 9:00am.

Swarms of bugs are attracted to our faces with the ferocity of rare earth magnets.

We spent $8.00 each on headnets to keep the bugs away. We walked around like happy idiots while everyone else scowled, waving their hands about as if they were pretending to be runway workers at the worlds most chaotic airport.

To cap it off we took a long eyegazing soak in on of Iceland’s famous blue pools.

Deeply affirming our love and attraction for at least the amount of time until our next bout with hunger and having to go to the bathroom anxiety.

We left Myvatn and descended into the creepiest fog that we employed as a semi-effective veil for our love making.

Day 4: June 21st

On the second shortest night of the year Anna slept for 11 hours.

This, however, allowed us to get back on a reasonable time schedule and we celebrated by drinking coffee at noon and paying 10 dollars for a small bowl of soup.

Iceland has effectively priced us out of any cultural experience (and alcoholism).

Another hitchhiker exploded our world into day dreams and posibilities and we spent the rest of the day chasing ellusive sand dunes and unfenced horses.  I saw a horse with a seemingly cool haircut eat a piece of shit instead of a carrot.  They know nothing of terats or snacks, just shit and hay.

Eventually we made our way to the most photogenic cliff in all of the Snaefellsness and kissed each others naked bodies in the glow of the longest sunset of our lives. (factual),

Day 5: June 22nd

Ambition has gotten the better of us as we are rapidly running out of Iceland to explore.

Today and tomorrow mostly feel like staging days in preparation for our flight to Norway.

We spend most of the morning in the Snaefellsness getting over caffinated and catching up camp reports.

From there I tried singing a song for Anna with a chorus of Dwarves in a cave beneath a glacier known for its remarkable acoustics.

For the first time we had to share a campsite.

We seem to be haunted by a wild pack of tiny cars driven by angry Germans.