Woman in Iceland – Part 2

February 26 2018

I couldn’t sleep that night because I’d been so overtired, and because Kai’s snoring was through the roof. I was thinking about if we did find couchsurfing, if they didn’t have blankets I could use my winter parka. Then I realized I couldn’t remember bringing it out of the airport. I got really nervous and left the place to check to see if it was in the car. I woke Kai to tell her I’d be right back, which was good because I accidentally locked myself out. It was screaming with wind outside but the rain had stopped. It was the middle on the night so no one was around, and only the wind made noise. No coat in the car. I returned and talked to Kai about it. She said it had been in the overhead compartment in the airplane and she’d reminded me about it, but I didn’t remember hearing her and in any case, I forgot it. I emailed the airport and the airline lost and found, the latter of which auto-responded to say they’d reply within 72 hours.

I couldn’t regulate emotionally because I was still exhausted and now I was upset about my coat. I’d finally bought a new one after about 8 years of my old one which was never warm enough. It was a lovely coat and I hadn’t even had it for a season and now I was in a cold country without it! I did have my raincoat at least. Kai offered that we watch a show to help me calm down so we watched Dragon’s Den and that helped a lot. We decided to go to the airport in the morning to get my coat. I slept well after that.

Too well! I woke up and asked Kai what time it was – she said 6am. I said I’d had a dream it was 11:52am. She checked her phone and indeed it was after eleven! We consistently had trouble with the time and our alarms on this trip but actually the timing actually worked out wonderfully in the end – we just never knew that in the moment!

We headed back to Keflavik, about 40 minutes outside Reykjavik. So the employee at the airlines’ lost and found told me that although she remembered seeing my coat, it was gone – she didn’t know where! The only way to get it back was to wait for the airline support to email me back. I couldn’t believe it. We tried to push for it but she honestly knew nothing. Oh well – I’ll wait for the email, I thought…

From there, we started on the Southern leg of our trip. We had a tour for the ice caves on the Tuesday, so Monday we mostly drove. We stopped at another Bonus and got some sprouts, more chips, skyr (yoghurt made with Icelandic cultures), and licorice candy. Yes, we went through two bags of chips in one day!

We drove well into dark, stopping for gas and also stopping at 3 waterfalls, including one draped in darkness and completely our own. The waterfalls are very accessible, right off the main road. They often have tourists at them, but if you’re patient, you can get photos without other people in them. I doubt this is the case in the summer. We stayed for a bit at the last waterfall, ours, and just enjoyed the fact that we were in another country together and in love.

As a passenger, I assembled our sandwiches and we ate on the road. Outside of Reykjavik, there were almost no AirBnbs and the one we contacted didn’t respond so we went to a hotel called Kálfafellsstaður Bed and Breakfast. It was exorbitantly priced but at least included a free breakfast. It was after 11pm when we arrived. The room had two single beds and a sink.

We also booked a hotel for the next night so we didn’t have to worry about it. I wrote in my travel journal as I try to do every night and we crashed around 1am.

Continue to Part 3