Amsterdam on accident

I didn't know what to expect when we arrived in Norway. I'd never really heard much about the place. I just assumed it was cold. Thankfully, compared to Iceland, it turned out to be an extremely pleasant temperature for this time of year. This was important because we arrived to Oslo airport late and decided to try our hand at stealth camping just outside the terminal. It wasn't hard to find a spot and it ended up being warmer than any of our nights in Iceland.

But, really, what is there to say about Norway? Or Sweden? Or Denmark for that matter? They were all quite nice, though expensive, and each of the countries had an oddly intense obsession with hot dogs that I found a little bit concerning. They were very clean and the architecture was fantastic but this is the part where I don't need to give a play by play of what I did every day because much of it was similar. We hitched our way down, starting in Oslo, and it wasn't awful. It wasn't the best hitching I've ever had either though. It just seems like the northern European countries are a little more reserved and a little more afraid of strangers standing on the side of the road. There were a couple memorable hitches that we got heading south though. One was from a young kid and the other a man from just outside of Amsterdam. We'll start with the kid.

It was early in the morning and we'd just been dropped off by our first ride at some outlet mall sort of thing right on the border of Norway and Sweden. We stopped for a chocolate and coffee break before walking a little bit away for a good hitching spot. Didn't take more than five minutes for a silver Mercedes to come to a stop for us. After a quick conversation with the driver we determined we were both headed in the same direction and I jumped up front while Kayzia got in the back. There wasn't much said in the first couple minutes but he broke the silence with some small talk questions like "where are you from?" and whatnot. It didn't take long before he started to tell us more and more interesting things. He told us he was only 16 and wasn't supposed to be driving the car really casually. Me and Kayzia were both burning to ask who owned the car then if he wasn't supposed to be driving it. He then proceeded to tell us about the wild night he'd had partying and how he had to run away from the cops yesterday for some odd reason or another. The story was very jumbled and it was difficult to discern what was true and what wasn't, as well as putting all the events he told us in chronological order. By the end of the car ride we'd learned that he also drives to Germany with his older brother and friends in cars of unknown origin and to buy carloads of liquor to smuggle back into Sweden and sell for profit which is certainly not legal. He told us all about these wild police chases and things him and his friends had to do to get the alcohol into the country. It was all hilarious. We didn't know whether to believe him or not. Maybe he was telling the truth and maybe he wasn't. No doubt he was at least telling some of the truth, we knew that, but he is also a 16 year old boy. Regardless, by then end we were a good 100km down the freeway and had a great story to tell for it. 

The next memorable ride comes from international waters. Yeah, that's right, we hitched while on a boat. We were taking the ferry from Denmark over to Germany because it was the quickest route to get out of these more expensive countries. But to say 'boat' would be a little bit misleading. It was more of a floating mall. It had an all inclusive buffet and a few other restaurants aboard as well as a liquor store and arcade. We spent the hour ride drinking cider and beer on the upper deck. As we neared Germany a voice came over the intercom asking all the drivers to return to their cars. That meant us as well even though we didn't have a car. We quickly gathered our things and went down to the car deck. All around us were people getting into their cars and starting their engines like it was the starting line for a racetrack they were all about to speed off from. Which, in fact, they were because autobahn! Anyways, we walked the lines of cars with our thumbs out and laughing about the ridiculousness of it all as everyone shook their head no or turned their eyes away. At the end of the last line, still, no one had shown any interest in picking us up. But that happens a lot, you have to give them a moment to think about it so we walked the lines again and at the end a man rolled down his window to ask where we were headed. We hopped in, explaining our destination and he was extremely welcoming. Jan was a great guy and we soon learned he was headed to Amsterdam the next day. After a short discussion, it turns out we were also headed to Amsterdam the next day. Germany could wait. 

Ah, Amsterdam. What is there to say about Amsterdam that you haven't heard about already other than it's all true. There are 'coffee shops' on most corners, but no one goes for the coffee. Psychedelic shops aren't hard to find either. And the red light district is nothing short of mesmerizing despite your motivations for checking it out. It really was quite an adventure and a great couple days spent in the city exploring museums and odd cultural peculiarities. I wish we could've spent more time wandering the canals and interacting with the locals, but it was exciting enough that we managed to end up there on accident in the first place. Next time I come around I'll be going back for a more in depth adventure of the city.  

Be happy,

Beacon 

Iceland comes to an end

We woke up after having spent a what can be described as chilly at best night in a bathhouse somewhere, not quite sure where, in Iceland with a stranger who'd picked us up while we were hitchhiking. It was still early but the night we'd spent huddled up inside a primitive house insured that we were ready to go in the morning. There wasn't much to the inside of the structure. There was a small wooden bench against a wall that you could sit on without you back being unnaturally straight and the floor was made of skinny wooden slats upon a concrete floor. The door leading out to the warm pool looked old and rickety, but it did the job we wanted it to do which was to keep the wind from blowing into what was our hope of a cozy night. Despite the undoubtedly dodgy sounding bathhouse we spent the night in it was all amazing as soon as we opened the door to the outside. The view was beautiful. Directly in front of the house was the warm pool and to the left was a river flowing toward the ocean. In the distance I could hear the waterfall that the river was coming from. It was kind of amazing. Kayzia, Ingrid, and I all got our things together around eight or so and, after soaking up our beautiful surroundings, we all walked downriver to where the car was parked to start our day off.

Ingrid was good company. She's a surfer and extremely fun to travel with. Our first stop was at a lighthouse on the top of some cliffs running up to beach. The lighthouse was beautiful, I will admit. The view was great as well. Beach stretching off forever in one direction and incredible rock arches off the the other with wonderful waterfalls and plateaus more inland. That was all cool, but it wasn't the thing that struck us most as we got out of the car. As soon as we opened the car door what stuck us was the wind. I used to think Northern Texas was windy, but it was nothing compared to what I was experiencing on the coastline of Iceland. Literally, I had to lean forward when I walked so that I could stay upright and continue moving forward. And I don't mean slightly forward either, I mean like at a hard angle. It was nuts. Looking over into the ocean the waves were going insane as well. I'm sure part of it was because of the lay of the land, but I could tell the ridiculous amount of wind was also having an effect on the massive waves. They were pounding relentlessly upon the beach. So much so that it made me afraid of the ocean for a moment. Just remember that while you're doing whatever it is you're doing the ocean is waging a war on all fronts.

After getting blown around a bit we went looking for an old army plane that'd crash landed somewhere on the beach. There was no address for the plane and no way for us to navigate to it other than to be like 'Eh, maybe this old farm road is where we need to be?' And that we did. It took us a pass or two before deciding on what we believed to be the right road down to the beach where the crash had been. Fifteen minutes down a sand road later we found the wreck. It was impressive.

After that all there really was for us to find were a bunch of waterfalls along the way. The drive was beautiful though, through some crazy strange environments. At one point we drove through a huge lava field that had been totally conquered by a thick layer of moss. For as far as the eye can see, all I could see was moss, moss, moss. It looked like another planet. After a bunch of driving and some goofing off we made it to the volcano glacier thing we meant to spend the night at. We didn't know where we were going to sleep yet, but we imagined we would do something similar to the night before and find a building to sleep in but it wasn't time for that. We all geared up and set off on a nice hike to a unique waterfall where the rocks surrounding it were all in the shape of hexagonal pillars. It was really cool and we got lucky enough so that it didn't rain on us the whole time. After the waterfall and we rounding the top of the climb there was a beautiful glacier lake was well. It was some beautiful hiking.

Ingrid and Kayzia

Where the three of us finally made it back down to the visitor center decided to all sleep together in one of the large private bathrooms. It's the kind that has a shower in it as well and so it was more than large enough for the three of us It was probably the warmest night we spent in Iceland.

The next morning we said our goodbyes to Ingrid. It'd been really nice getting to know her and not having to worry about finding a ride for a day or two, We wrote down names and became Facebook friends before she went off and we walked over to the main road. She'd offered for us to come visit her in Southern France when we got around that way and we were hoping to do so. That was in the future though and we were worried about hitching back to Reykjavik for our flight to Norway the next day. We made it to the ring road stuck our thumbs out. It was such that we could see cars coming at least five minutes before they finally made it around the long curve to us. Most of them were turning into the nature park we'd spent the night in, but the first car that was passing by us stopped and we met Natalie and Phillip. They were a cute young couple from Austria and we got along well with them. We did some exploring through some craters and the moss fields as well as watching the wind literally blow waterfalls upward. They took us all the way to Reykjavik and had a really good time doing it.

They dropped us off downtown where we decided to find ourselves a hostel for the night. It was difficult and the hostel was nice. I'd become friends with Phillip on Facebook and they'd offered to take us to the Blue Lagoon with them before our flight. The Blue Lagoon is a famous spa/ hot springs in Iceland near the airport and we decided to go along with them. The place was beautiful. Absolutely gorgeous and the hot water was everything we needed. We easily spent all day there before Natalie and Phillip dropped us off at the airport. They were great people and hanging out with them had been awesome. They also left us with the offer to come visit them in Austria sometime. Hitchhiking in Iceland was fantastic. It was so awesomely wonderful and a the people we met, both the natives and the tourists, were fantastic. Unfortunately it was time for us to say our goodbyes to Iceland and move on to mainland Europe, beginning with Norway.

Be happy,

Beacon.

Hitching Iceland

It was Kayzia's first hand at hitchhiking and it was a little bit exciting. I don't always get to go hitchhiking with someone, but when I do it's a pleasure. It's nice to have someone to joke with on the side of the road and to share the pain of any exceptionally long wait times with. I'd never hitched in Iceland before but as far as I had heard and from everything I'd gleamed from the map of the country it wouldn't be too extremely difficult. Mostly because Iceland really only has one road, the ring road, and the island nature of a country typically insures good thumbing. 

We'd spent the previous night at a thermal pool with our couchsurfer host, Einar, and eating hotdogs (apparently the national food of Iceland? Well, that and fermented shark). I felt rejuvenated. From the hot water yes, but mostly because it was exiting to stretch my thumb again. It wasn't a long walk from where we'd been staying to where I thought we could get a ride out of town. I don't really know how I pick these spots to hitch from. Sometimes I look at hitchwiki, but usually I pan around google maps until my unnatural hitching sense tells me 'that's the spot for a ride'. 

I was feeling a little bit of pressure this morning though as I talk a big hitching game and I wanted this to be a great first experience for Kayzia. The first spot we stopped at would have worked, but we were standing in the shade of some frosted trees on the side of the road and it was damn cold. We moved up a little bit to sunnier hitching and ended up finding a pretty good piece of road. It was under a half hour before Thoran (I'm not pretending I spelt that name correctly) picked us up. 

I'm not saying it's uncommon to be picked up by a single woman, but it's never what I expect. Somehow, still, it happens frequently. Thoran was a nice girl who'd, judging by the arrangement of booster seats in the back, just dropped her kids off  somewhere. She wasn't going far but she got us out of Reykjavik and to the one highway, highway 1, which was all we needed to get a longer ride. 

It was about 15 or 20 minutes before Kester stopped for us. He was a professor of technical drawing at the trade school in Reykjavik. He was on his way back home to a village about an hour outside of the capitol. This was our first real look at what Iceland looked like as not 5 minutes into the ride we were driving across lava fields with a fresh blanket of snow laying on top. Kester pointed out the various volcanoes for us and pronounced all with their increasingly difficult names. We attempted a few of them and I admit my tongue was not made for Icelandic. He took us around a bit and gave us a tour of his small village with 600 residents before leaving us outside his town and next to the only long term prison in Iceland. 

Never fear, there're only a hundred people in the one prison for an entire country. Pretty docile place. The first car that drove by, maybe 2 minutes later, gave us a ride up to the next town of Selfoss. It was another single woman who happened to be named Thoran as well. We took a break at Subway to get out of the cold and the wind for a second and then walked out of the small town to stand on the side of the road with the Icelandic ponies. 

We waited a little longer for this ride and we were getting cold when a work truck pulled over for us. It was a woman who owns a plumbing business and was off to check out a job site. She took us a good chunk down the road and left us at a nice petrol station. We bought an extremely expensive bottle of Vodka (because it's ridiculously taxed in Iceland), for the cold of course and went out in hope of one more ride before the sun set around 5. 

We stood for a short time, but it appeared most of the traffic was local. Ingrid was the one who stopped for us. She was French, on vacation in Iceland for a little while. She was driving around seeing the sights and such. Without even much of a conversation about it we all took it that we were a team now, at least for a little while. We became the navigators and she the driver. It was a good match up I think as we went along the coast exploring the magical waterfalls Iceland has nearly everywhere. 

We had done zero research for our trip to Iceland so thank goodness Ingrid knew what she was doing and what to look for.  There was the normal smattering of conversation before we came upon the first waterfall. And it was incredible. 

Down the highway about twenty minutes next waterfall was notning shy of spectacular either.

It was huge

While climing to the top of this waterfall we saw someone ahead of us who looked a bit familiar. And behold, it happened the lads we'd met up with for the spinning of the wheel had found their way out of Reykjavik and to this waterfall as well! Just a little bonus 'small world' feeling.

We did some catching up with them and they told us about this hot spring around the corner. The sun was about to set at this point but Ingrid, Kayzia, and I all decided we'd camp at the springs for the night. So we said goodbye to the boys and made our way down the cliffside to the car and on our way to some springs.

It took us a little bit to find the dirt road leading up to the edge of the plateu. Once we found the parking area though it was easy for us to find our way to the springs. It was gorgeous and we'd arrived just as it was getting dark. We were all extremely excited because it was cold out and sitting in a hot spring was going to be amazing. Me and Kayzia set our tent up while Ingrid did the same with hers, then we changed in the small bathhouse that was next to the pool that'd been made to collect the hot water. We got in. I'm not gonna say it was cold, but it certainly wasn't hot! All three of us soon realized out mistake and bailed ASAP. Soon after that we abandoned the tents as well and all joined forces on the wooden slats in the bathhouse. It was still cold, but much warmer (the vodka helped). We stayed up talking that night hoping the norther lights would come out. We were dissappointed by the lights, but I think our first real day hitching was a success.

The 'hot' spring

Be happy,

Beacon