It's a typical Icelandic town: 3 houses, a derelict gaz station, sea on one side, glaciers and volcanoes on the other, and a constant gale - right now the wind blows at more than a 100 km per hour. Yet for the coldness of the place as I am depicting it to you, it has what Iceland has to offer: we indeed met here with a group of young glacier guides and they're hosting us and keeping us warm and dry while the storm drenches and wipe out most of the area (already several cars have been blown of the road).
We've been in Iceland for about 2 weeks now and it never ceases to take the breath out of us:
- among the darn steepest mountain passes we've climbed (up to 17%)
- probably the strongest wind we've experienced along with Bolivia (right now there are blows at 120 km per hour)
- sceneries and landscape that only Icelanders can find normal, where eruptions meet ice and water and air play around with rocks
Nature is here uncontrolled, unmastered, wild and ferocious, beautiful and extreme. The small island gathers in a handkerchief a huge collection of diverse climates and environment. We are now at the foot of the biggest glacier in Europe - second biggest in the world after the poles. We have cycled from North-East harbour down to here through a great variety of landscapes where human presence is so scarce one cannot help beeing constantly reminded how small one is.
Riding and living on the road with our daughter Lirio is however a delight. Comfortably sheltered in her trailer she suffers neither the wind we are struggling against nor the rain we're soaken by (so don't start calling us bad parents). She's growing into a beautiful and lovely young child, crawls out from the tent in the morning to smile at us while we're making some tea, stands and dizzily walks if we hold her hands, draws people's attention more, if possible, than our 3 meter long tandem bicycle and well she just fills our days and nights with joy.
Actually she fills our days with joy.
No, don't get me wrong I don't mean to say she's a pain at night - although...
What I mean to say is there is NO night up here. Sunlight 24 hours over 24 and a sun that barely sinks into the sea at 1 am and emerges from it some tens of minutes later. Our body doesn't know anymore when to rest and when to be active.
At the peak of this phenomenon we were living in a deep fjord with a family running a guesthouse - it is the farest place one can get from Reykjavik, capital city of Iceland, and the locals call it "the end of the road". People whose Elders have known the conquest of Iceland, a time when farms were blown away to the sea by the wind and mankind had just its will and strength to survive through a 9 month long winter, digging their way out of their houses in meters of snow and ice.
Climate hasn't much changed but modern technologies help the Icelanders to live better. Still, a nice house with central geothermal heating and a huge 4 wheel drive car don't make up much for 9 months without sunlight. Those people are tough. Rough and tough.
But once you get to know them well they're treasure.
And we shall keep hunting for those treasures for a couple months still.
Untill next time, be safe.
Delphine, Damien, Lirio