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.
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.
Be happy,
Beacon
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