Category: Iceland 2016

25.03.21: Nostalgia took over me as I researched the map and sorted photos.. Will continue tomorrow.

06.02.23: The tomorrow has finally come.

That day was a very long one. I woke up about 07:00 and was already 08:30 at the top of Skogar waterfall going up the stairs to the right of the camp.

21.04.24

And so here we are: its year 2024, I broke my clavicula four weeks ago rather stupidly (as my children say in German by now, “papa fährt ski sehr schnell aber schlecht“), it sort of almost healed by itself in about 3 weeks from then, but for more elegance in line and for more classic shoulder form without ungainly bone protrusions I went for a ‘small routine operation’ that for now keeps me mostly home-bound and mostly on painkillers. They gave me a ton at the hospital, also some heavier prescription-only stuff I’ve never tried before;)

I can type though..

The path first went uphill along the impressive Skogar gorge raising almost a kilometer (from 0m altitude a the Skogar camp to 1000m at the to the Magni/Modi pass with the Eyafjallajokul glacier on the left). Back then I was pretty young (and headstrong) so 1000m with a 20kg rucksack — i think i didnt even notice that much.

Still, by about midday on that day I was walking in complete solitude. Some dude overcame me jogging though at some point. He didnt even have a bottle of water on him, to say nothing of the backpack. I never seen him running back so I reckon he’s been jogging over to the Þórsmörk. Must have been an amazing jog, that route.

As I passed Eyjafjallajokull on the right, the glacier felt like a menace, I tried to pass it quickly. In 2010, as I was blissfully not being aware of whats happening in the world, but the eruption of that volcano make huge news back then – I remember that somehow, it was in the late spring and the volcano dust grounded the airplanes for a few days with business people charting taxis to go from DE back to UK and so.

Its funny though that that particular eruption was nowhere near what the volcanos can do (and did in the past) in terms of dust produced. It was rather benign. Enjoy air travel while you can…

Anyways, about 13:00 I started to descend toward Þórsmörk over the black snow and magma fields, being quite under the awe of that particular place of Icelands nature.

About 14:00 suddenly many people appeared, most of them walking towards me (duh!). What I didnt consider, is that the descent to the Þórsmörk is for the most part without water access as it follows a dry rock ridge downwards. I didnt know that of course so I struggled a bit with empty bottles until I was almost at the bottom.

2016 was a pretty rich year for me: I was about to finish my posh MBA degree (urgh), got accidentally hired by Microsoft in the spring ’16 and also our 6month-old son was growing up quickly.

To use up the rest of the vacation and to have some ‘me’ time away from nappies I planned something I wanted to do since a long, long time: that is, a hiking trip to Iceland.

Now, Iceland fascinated me since I was a teenager.

The Icelandic names alone! All those æ’s and ð’s! 

I think I was totally engrossed in an Œuvre of one particular high-fantasy author who, as I learned only later, ‘borrowed’ most of the content from Icelandic mythology and sprinked it with some random sex in the process (definitely helping its popularity among high school-level audience). I remember I was totally thrilled.

Anyways, in Aug’16 I packed my 20kg Penguin, booked a one-way bus ticket to Skogar for 6000ISK and got on a WOW air (RIP WOWair :/) flight to Reykjavik for the price of 315EUR.

I had two weeks to enjoy myself in Iceland with complete hiking gear and provisions for 1 week.

My plan was simple and ambitious:

Week 1: Start from Skogar, finish at Geysir. The first third of the way I’d follow the famous Landmannalaugar trail and then improvise
Week 2: no idea. May be Eastern Iceland. But i’d have to come back to Reykjavik to restock.

In retrospect, Week 1 worked out as a charm. I made the 160km trek in 6 days and returned to Reykjavik almost in good shape (but more of that later). Week 2 I kind of botched 😀

…..

On 4th August 2016 I boarded the plane to Reykjavik, filled with a sense of adventure and an expectation of something mystical to happenen. And oh boy so it did!

On the plane I was seated with a young lady who, suprisingly, was visiting for Reykjavik as an intermediate stop for a layover to USA. That’d be cheaper, and she’d have a few days in Reykjavik to party. Her husband worked for Microsoft too, what a coincidence. But I partying wasn’t on my todo list this time! I had to disembark quickly to catch the Reykjavik Excursions bus to Skogar, where I would make the camp for the night and early next morning start over the Landmannalaugar.

Well, first thing that went awry was this: I spent an hour waiting for my rucksack to appear (the two Icelandic ladies working the baggage told me this is now normal: so many tourists are coming over they are barely managing) and I missed the connecting bus. No problem: for a meagre fee of ca. 15000 ISK (100EUR?) the taxi brought me to the gas station outside Reykjavik where I was picked by the bus to Skogar.

It was an amazing, mild and sunny afternoon in Iceland.

The bus to Skogar took about 4 hours, I think, but it did stop at various sightseeing-worthy places for long enough to enjoy them.

The one stop that forever will be in my memory was Seljalandsfoss at about 8pm that day.

About 9pm I was at the full, but still surprisingly quiet Skogar camp, put my tent, ate, went quickly to the chilly waterfall nearby, returned and fell soundly asleep. Tomorrow I’d start off early: I didn’t have much time.

Executing on the blog’s purpose, I really liked re-reading what I wrote about my travels. You’re so vain, Carly. But it does bring me back so completely. Almost as if I relive it ✨

It takes me almost a day of effort, I think, to write and edit a day’s report. But this starts to pay off!

So, without further ado, with this post I endeavor to describe my trip to Iceland in (counting the years) the Year 2016.

I estimate to be done by June 2021.

So, headphones on, Fleetwood Mac rollin.