Judging by the number of times I’ve been ill in Iceland, I can only conclude they spray you with the Pathogen of the Month as you walk through passport control at Kef. This year it was only a cold, albeit of the variety that stuck around for eight weeks. I’ve had worse and more aggressive in previous years and 2014 memorably gave me some kind of ear bug that made the entire country spin around above my head and prompted me to hastily renew my travel insurance (from inside a wet spinning tent), with added volcano cover, since the summer of 2014 was when Bárðarbunga was rumbling particularly loudly.
This is the worst picture of me in the world and I so nearly didn’t include it. But the point of this post is that not everything is sunshine and rainbows and Insta-perfect pictures. So here’s me dying in the tent early one morning (I mean, I’m alive enough to take selfies pretending to be dead so..)
Most of these illnesses featured a day wasted flat on my back in the nearest (cheapest) hotel before getting back to the business of Enjoying Being in Iceland and getting on with things as best I could. But this time was different. Somehow I didn’t seem to be able to activate Enjoying Iceland mode.
I’m putting that down to three factors.
Number One. I didn’t have any event days planned. In 2016 I was going to Holuhraun. In 2015 I was visiting Fortitude. In 2014 I had plans to climb Esja and make my first ever visit to Mývatn Nature Baths. In 2013 I was going to Askja and Viti. When you have even a single day planned and anticipated, it’s easier to switch on Enjoying Iceland mode. When all you’ve got is “five days probably around the west coast”, it’s harder.
Number Two. The weather. It was damp and drizzly and cold the whole time I was there. It was late September so I wasn’t expecting shorts and t-shirt weather but it would have been nice to go out without several fleeces under a raincoat just occasionally. The sun didn’t show its face at all until I stepped off the bus in Reykjavik after dropping off the van.
Number Three. The campervan. I’ve tried to put into words my feelings about the campervan before. At first it looks like freedom. “Wherever we want to go, we go. That’s what a ship is, you know. It’s not just a keel and hull and a deck and sails. That’s what a ship needs. But what a ship is… what the Black Pearl really is… is freedom.” But a campervan soon starts to feel more like a prison. You sleep in the van. You drive in the van. You shelter from the weather in the van. You eat in the van. You read in the van. Despite the splendor and scale of the Icelandic landscape, your world shrinks down to the less than 2 cubic metres of van space. You’d think that would drive you out of the van and up the mountains and into the wilds but you’re reckoning without feeling ill and cold and tired and kind of generally listless and lethargic. Not to mention permanently damp.
I think what I really wanted, what I really needed, was a warm soft bed for a night or two, inside, with a hot shower. And real darkness. Iceland gets dark at night by September but my van’s windscreen was uncovered and streetlights exist, as do neighbour vans who run their engines and lights all night until I start fantasising about blowing the van up.
So every day was a bit of an “Ugh, I’m awake again and I’m cold and I have no enthusiasm for being here whatsoever. How can I make this day vanish?” I climbed a crater with absolute minimal interest. In the rain. Just because I hadn’t really done anything. I did smack a little bit of life into myself halfway round Snæfellsnes, which I mostly used to sit and stare at waves crashing on the beach. And I spent many long hours soaking in hotpots. I have always loved the pool at Borgarnes. There’s nothing wrong with the one at Akranes; the hotpot is more interesting and I loved the waterfalls in the slide splash pool but I did sit there with cold rain beating down on me, trying to keep as much bare skin under the water as possible.
But earlier in the year, I put together a scrapbook of Iceland. I’d done one for Latvia, I was preparing the bones of one for Paris and I’d collected so much paper it seemed madness not to do one for Iceland. As I put it together, I was just dumbstruck by how many pictures I’d taken and how many places I’d been to and how many things I’d done. Maybe it’s so ingrained in me to Do All The Things that I’d automatically done them without my brain registering them as Things I’d Done. It became such a fat little scrapbook that I needed to order a new set of larger binder rings for it.
So what’s my point? I guess my point is that you don’t always enjoy every trip. You can’t love everything. But my point is also that my instincts can outweigh not loving it and it’s perfectly possible to realise in hindsight that you enjoyed it more than you realised at the time. Which is definitely a thing because I know I didn’t enjoy dogsledding, snowmobiling or getting on the wrong train in Helsinki – three things I now look back on with a mixture of pride, amusement and pleasure. Also caving – I have always enjoyed caving far more when thinking back on the day I’ve just done than while I’m stuck in a vertical squeeze.