The temperature has remained in the double negatives and I blame not posting this update earlier on my fingers not fully thawing until 2 days after leaving Iceland.
Rebecca and I continued our petting zoo streak that we started three years ago in Nerja, Spain, and we kicked off the day with a visit to the Bru “petting zoo” in Gullfoss, which is basically an eight-car dirt parking lot on a highway turnoff where magical Icelandic horses are waiting for you to put €2 in the unattended donation box and then grab a little paper cup of “Horse Candy” to feed them. Of everything Iceland has to offer, I believe their sweet horses are my favorite wonder. They are simply the most gentle, friendly, beautiful creatures and all the while they manage to just hang out in the freezing snow plains with not a bother in the world. We were not as hardy as these horses, however, and unfortunately could only spend about 5 minutes at the zoo for fear of our fingers snapping off and shattering to the ground in a million icicle pieces. I continue to contend that this weekend in Iceland was, is, and forever will be the coldest I have ever been.
Adding 100 more km onto Suzuki friend, we bid adieu to our first set of horse buddies and made our way Laxnes Horse Farm to actually ride horses vs just chasing them around and force-petting them in the wild. If you go to Iceland and you don’t visit Laxnes Horse Farm then your trip is not complete. A sweet and extremely efficient little woman will immediately put a helmet and, if needed, giant snowsuit and gloves on you before you’ve even said hi, the jolliest Icelandic man you will ever meet in your life will match you up with your perfect horse, and then you get to spend 2 hours riding around the Icelandic countryside and smashing through ice streams with your cool little head-banging horse.
I told the jolly Icelander that I’m a super pro rider because I hate when you get the really short dead-eyed one that doesn’t want to do any cool things like trotting, and as such I ended up with my bestie here, Githeaed. “She’s frisky, this one,” he warned me. “And she likes to go fast. She’s not one of those braindead ones, this one here is a REAL horse.”
Well that was all fine and good and we were all in love with one another’s spirited selves until about halfway through the trip when, after a short break, I confidently mounted miss Githeaed without waiting for any help (because I’m awesome and am a total horse expert) and the little shit head took off on a wild trot before I’d even swung my other leg up. She proceeded to run around in very large circles while I was hanging on for dear life with one leg up in the air over my head like one of those Charreada ladies in the rodeo and I don’t think the guides even noticed and no one helped me and I’m pretty sure I could have died. It took about a full minute to finally get my leg in the stirrup and pull back on the reins hard enough to stop her rampage and then both she and the tour guides acted like nothing weird had happened at all so that was that. So I guess the real moral of the story is that Laxnes Horse Farm is awesome and you should still go and ask to ride Githeaed because she is the best but maybe ask for helping getting back up on her after the break or she’ll try to merrily murder you.
Meanwhile, Rebecca’s sweet little horse was only happy when she was at the front directly between the two guides, who we think might have liked each other so we imagine they were quite delighted every time Rebecca and her friend busted up between the two of them.
Post-horse-riding hijinks we finally made our way to yet-unseen Reykjavik, which has not disappointed. This town is bright and cheerful and clean and arty, and the Christmas lights popping up everywhere only dial up it’s already fairy-likeness. Almost the first thing we saw after parking the car was this magical tree, which may very well indeed be home to the lesser-known Icelandic Keebler Elf cousins.
If there’s one reason to travel, it’s perhaps the chance that you will meet people who will fill missing spots in your life that you didn’t even know you needed filled. Rebecca and I have been lucky enough to make some pretty amazing friends throughout our travels together, and I’ve felt incredibly lucky that we were able to carry on this tradition in Reykjavik. In a pretty grand instance of a “Universe Hug,” it so happened that a friend that I had just made stateside under pretty extraordinary circumstances lived in Reykjavik, and when I told her I’d be visiting there a week later we made plans to reconnect. Above and beyond simply meeting up, my friend Hrund welcomed me and a Rebecca into her home to share a roasted lamb and additional amazing delicious things with her and her husband Gunnar and it was one of the memories of my travels that I will always hold most dearly. Gunnar moonlights as an Icelandic horse expedition leader and both he and Hrund were born and raised in Reykjavik, and together they can tell you more amazing stuff about this country than any tour guide you could ever book. To scratch the surface on our time together, we learned about what happens when Gullfoss Falls freezes (a giant ice sheet forms down the waterfall but millions of liters of water are still crushing down below it), what the realization of Iceland’s independence from Denmark looked like when you lived through it, how the Icelandic highlands sheep migration happens, the national liquor preference of Iceland vs other Scandinavian countries, the history of the now defunct Reykjavik NATO base, and maybe most importantly that Reykjavik just got its first CostCo and the prices are awesome but it’s still a pain to get to because it’s 15 minutes away and in Icelandic driving time 15 minutes away = forever. It’s an amazing thing to look back and realize that you filled three hours, with people who a week prior hadn’t even been in your lives, with never ending stories, histories, opinions, laments, advice and laughter, questions and just genuine warmth for one another. Even more than the Icelandic Horses, I find it apropos on the day before Thanksgiving as I write this to say to Hrund and Gunnar that I am truly thankful for their friendship and for their generosity. Couldn’t have imagined a better way to end our visit to a place that made us feel as though we’ve spent the last three days suspended in the air in a bubble of (freezing cold) magic.
Back to Paris now, and more stories to come soon, including one about an insane waiter street fight involving the use of chairs as weapons. Au Revoire!