Clothed in white beauty, Iceland lives up to its name. Icy patches lead the roads to the sights, the cities and the landscape. There are two kinds of winter tourists in Iceland: those with spikes on their shoes and those without. Johnny Bravo and myself belong to the second category, the dumb‐asses, and so it is with forced, artistic mastery that we somewhere between controlled moving forward and uncontrollable falling backwards manage to trek uphill on the slippery slopes.
The days starts at 11.00. Not because we are intentionally sleeping in, but because the sun seems to need to catch up on all the rest it neglected in the summer. At 10.45 the first shimmer of light passes through the clouds and over the mountain ridges, only to shyly dive back down sometime around 15.45. At 16.00 it is dark again and by 17.30 it is as though night has claimed the land for its own.
We are here on a weekend-away escape. Leaving the obligations of the comfortable lives we are blessed with to, for a few days, hunt flowing lava and sprouting geysers, bath in blue lagoons and jump around in rocky landscapes. It’s an escape worthy it’s pleasures and despite the lack of Northern lights the country demonstrates some of its legendary beauty.
Graciously, nature bless us enough so that rain only fall while we are driving and so it is in the pink light of Northern winter that we climb a smoking vulcano, visit a frozen water fall, hike up to rocky gorges and soak our cold bodies in nature’s own constructed hot tubs. We eat geothermally grown tomato soup, stay in a loppis hotel, solve Exit games in the evening dark and practice our magic powers to fuel the geysers. It’s the perfect balance of seeing, doing and feeling.
On the last night, I visit the Fallological Museum (aka The Penis Museum) in Reykjavik while Johnny instead pampers our rental car, possibly afraid of the 2m dicks on display. It’s a fascinating museum, absolutely absurd, and it is with something between interest and repulsion that I watch the butchered specimens in their pickle jars. It is a perfect ending to a romantic weekend away.
