July 28, 2010
Laugavegurinn -- Day 3
By far, the most difficult day of the trek, but possibly the most rewarding. While the other three days were not particularly tiring (4-5 hours of not super fast walking, not a crazy amount of climbing), this day was more like 7 hours, a lot faster than the first two, along many unmarked trails, and involved far more up and down than days 2 and 4, and possibly day 1 even.
When I woke up, it was not just warm by Icelandic standards, but hot by any standard. When I stumbled from my tent to the hut area for breakfast, I couldn´t believe that the sun was completely out, the sky was blue, and it was only 8 in the morning. People had spread their wet items on the deck outside the hut. We ate our sheep liver pate and salmon egg paste with butter sandwiches outside, along with smoked lamb sandwiches. Here, I talked to Klemenz a bit about music, U2, Rammstein, and Björk´s Gling Glo album (the first Icelandic I have met who likes it!). He was particularly surprised that I even know this album and was able to sing little snippets of it. Dori suggested that we take an alternate path along the lake, directly over the mountain, into a valley, where we would cross the river after the three rivers that fed it merged. This we did.
We walked quickly past the lake as it was swarming with flies. In fact, it was around this hut that I first started to see insects at all -- there were virtually none on the first two days. The climb over the first mountain was energizing, the valley below was beautiful. The river crossing was slightly scary as he had never crossed it before and was not 100% sure the path we were taking was the right one, but it ended up being not so deep where we crossed, maybe only up to the knee.
We passed sheep standing on a cliff, ups and downs along narrow creeks surrounded by moss, small grass, and little flowers, all different colors of green. Climbed up a fairly steep ridge to overlook a wide expanse of black sand, completely different than the green area we had been walking through. We stopped briefly to greet a German couple we had met the previous day, who had stopped to have lunch on a large boulder, crossed a rapid river by bridge, and hiked quickly across the sand fields to a spot to eat sheep liver pate, salmon egg paste, smoked lamb and butter sandwiches.
It was here he said "Hmmm...I really wanted to try this other route from here....but it´s too far.' And then paused. So I said "well, how far is it?" "Oh...maybe 4 more hours?" (we had already gone 3 and the regular path would have been more like 2). I said "Okay...I can do it, I´ll make it, but I´m going to be really, really tired at the end." So we set off, walking quickly across the sand, past a small mountain to another wide expanse of black sand littered with black rocks, no footprints to be seen anywhere (the path typically is well marked and well travelled...this area was not) towards another row of steep hills. After reaching those hills, we walked up a very steep one, such that by the top I had to use my hands to grap the rocks ahead of me, almost like climbing. At the top I realized i was semi exhausted already, and then it started to rain, but everything was looking good, so I kept going.
We walked through another area of ups and downs, rapidly changing vegetation, big rocks, small rocks, soft black sand, dirt, flowers, wild rivers, small clear streams, giant water falls, towards the melting glacier. We turned back there, stopped at an impressive waterfall where Dori chatted with the guide for a French group, and walked the way to the hut (another hour and a half), including a steep climb towards the very end.
I was very tired, and very sore, but was glad to have done it. Also, I felt less bad about being so tired when I learned that the big group had arrived only minutes before we did, and had hiked at least 5 km less.
I joined the big group for a walk to another very impressive gorge (don´t really have the words to describe it, just "big", "deep" and "colorful") while chatting mostly with the Canadian couple about musicals and children with fetal alcohol syndrome. Upon returning to the huts, I sat with them and read (Bret Easton Ellis´Less Than Zero now), then chatted some more, as well as with a Swiss couple, the Dutch guy from the first day, and the two younger Dutch guys, who had yet again finished this leg of the hike in record speed, definitely the most energetic travelers I met. Dinner was barbequed salmon, again super delicious, and salad.
I sat outside for hours more talking to this group, as well as a guy from Manchester, discussing a) differences between accents within England and the Netherlands and between US and Canada, b) how amazing the trek has been so far, c) the Icelandic town Skogar, and d) the charming lyrics to Dutch football songs.
By around midnight this group dissolved, and it was cold, and I started walking to the tent, but as I passed the warden´s tent, I noticed the lights on, all the guides sitting inside, and Soft Cell´s "Tainted Love" playing. They see me, and immediately waive me in and start cheering. I notice a huge bottle of the "moonshine" from the other night on the table, and they pour me a mug, and continue joking around, laughing, mostly among themselves, but periodically updating me on what was going on. My favorite of this was them singing along to Icelandic songs from the 1960s and 1970s, at the tops of their lungs, all knowing all the words. I don´t recall why, but I know I was laughing along with them for a while, and at some point singing along with one of the Icelandic guides (who amazingly knew all the words!) to Peter Gabriel/Kate Bush´s "Don´t Give Up" and Bob Dylan´s "Tangled Up in Blue" . I looked around at this scene, crowded in the tiny warden´s hut deep in the highlands, singing and laughing, that the decision to make this trek had been a very good one. And I thought about back in 1998 when I first started wanting to come. And how unlikely all of this would have seemed.
I got back to my hut at about 2:30 a.m., convinced that I would be hurting the next day. Miraculously, I was not hurting.
Björk -- Alfur Ut Ur Hol
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