In the End: Part I -- Iceland

Reyjkavik, Iceland
Latitude 64°7'52" N
September 9, 2011

In the end, Iceland ranks in the top five of all countries I´ve visited.  It´s simply WOW! 

In the end, we put 2,220 miles on the car.  That is, the three cars that we rented.  After two stone chips cracked the windshield of the first car, we picked up a second one only to have the trunk lock not work.  We finished off the stay with an SUV that was just plain fun to drive.

In the end, we toured the Western side of the country, Icelands´s wild West Fjords in the northwest and the histrionically dramatic, glacier-studded south coast. Our appetites were whetted to see more of the country.  We´re already talking of June 2012 to take advantage of the 24 hour white nights!

In the end, we went as far north as the 66nd Parallel.  Another .33 degrees would have placed us on the Arctic Circle.  Another time!

In the end, things were expensive, but not unmanageably.  We prepared all our own meals, slept in hostels, used our own sleepiong bags, and didn´t go crazy shopping.  Did I really need an Icelandic sweater for $250.00?  Not really.  The one thing we did not skimp on was gasoline. Yes, it was $8.20 a gallon, but who cares.  There are worse ways to spend $565.00.Do we really have any control of the future?  Who knows if we´ll really make it back this way.

In the end, we never made an attempt to pronounce Icelandic.  Who can, with its unpronouncable combinations of vowels and consonant combinations we´d never seen before.  Try to say þjoðeldisbærn, fjarðarglfjufur or vatnajökulsþjoðgarður three times.  We simply made up names for places.  Stykkisholmur and Snæfellsness, for example, simply became Sticksville and Sneffles.

In the end, we were not disappointed.  How could we be with a geologic landscape that simply knocked our socks off.  We climbed active volcanoes, walked on massive glaciers, crossed the largest sandar in the world, wound down and around stunningly beautiful fjords and drifted through a lagoon filled with luminous-blue icebergs.

In the end, Iceland overwhelmed.  Really!  Geysers spouted.  Waterfalls by the hundreds toppled of massive rocks formations.  Black sand beaches stretched on endlessly.  Volcanoes erupted and glaciers glittered!  How cool will all this be at the summer solstice when the sun in the north never sets for six weeks! 

In the end, Iceland had lost 84 minutes of daylight from the time we arrived on August 26th to the time we left on September 9th.  The lush, Irish green fields of late August were beginning to burnish with autumnal gold in the days after Labor Day.  The sun, though still up until almost 9:00 pm, was October-low in the sky.  Autumn was coming.  Iceland was steadily plunging into its long, dark days of winter.  In the West Fjords, which we loved so much, the sun would not rise at all from mid December to late January.

In the end, it was time to move on.  Iceland, this magical land of fire and ice, was wonderful, spectacular, bigger than words can convey.  But, a whole new travel adventure lay in front of me.  It was time to leave.