I nearly choked when I filled up the car the next morning.  Gas runs nearly US$5/gallon in Iceland, and it was about $40 to fill the car.  I drove it back to the rental shop. The mechanic who'd been translating yesterday was there.

"So where did you go?  Suðavík?"  Suðavík is a town about 30km from Ísafjörður.

"Látrabjarg," I said.

"Wow.  You really did drive."

The car certainly looked it.  The whole lower half was caked with mud, but the manager didn't even blink when he inspected it.

"Ok," he said.  "Takk."

Easier than I thought.

Both the Lonely Planet guide and the guy on the  Lonely Planet Thorn Tree who recommended the Gistiheimili Áslaug to me recommended a bakery called Gamla Bakariið, on the square across from the Hotel Ísafjörður.  While in many respects, Icelandic towns seem more American than European, this bakery is one case where the feeling definitely comes from the Eastern side of the Atlantic.  Brightly lit and super-clean, the bakery windows are lined with loves of bread and a wide variety of pastries.  Not being much of a pastry guy myself, I asked for a couple of hard rolls and a cup of coffee, sat in the window and watched Ísafjörður go by.

I headed back to the guesthouse after a while to pack up my things.  When I went into the kitchen to get my food from the fridge, there were a man and woman about my age eating breakfast.

"Would you like some porridge?" the man asked.

"No, thanks," I said.

"You sure?  We've got a lot left over, and it'll just go to waste."

"I don't like porridge," the woman said.

I'd only had two rolls.  "Sure," I said.

The man was German, and his two traveling companions (the other came in later) were Norwegian.  All were studying in Reykjavík, and had spent the previous day touring the Westfjords as well.  It appears we may have come close to crossing paths a couple of times, as we were all in Talknafjörður and Dynjandi, but it never quite happened.  They were headed off somewhere (they didn't say where) quickly, so they were all out the door before I was even halfway through the porridge leaving me  (I don't believe maliciously) to clean the pot.

My flight back to Reykjavík wasn't till a little after 5, so I had to find somewhere to leave my bag for the day, since officially I was supposed to be out of the room by noon.  I couldn't find Áslaug or her daughter anywhere though, so I just left my things stacked neatly in the room and headed out for the day.

First thing I stopped in at the bookshop and picked up some postcards, then sat on the seawall and wrote them while watching the tide come in.  It was cool, calm, and cloudy: a beautiful day.  After a quick stop at the post office to mail them (miraculously, it took them less than a week to get to their various destinations in the States.), I started walking on the road out of town toward the airport.  Lonely Planet had suggested that there was some good hiking in Tungudalur, the valley that parallels the road to Flateyri, which forks off from the airport road.  The gravel road up Tungudalur passes the improbable Ísafjörður golf course, with short fairways and brown greens, then goes on to the campground.

At the campground, deserted this time of year, there's a trailhead that leads along a stream up a mountain to a waterfall.  It's steep, requiring the occasional quick clamber across a rock face.  In Iceland it's always a good idea to dress in layers, and this was a prime example of why.  I had on three this day: a jacket, a sweater, and a t-shirt, and by the time I got to the waterfall, I was down to the t-shirt, despite being surrounded by patches of snow.  The waterfall itself was modest but pretty.  I stopped here for a while and had lunch.

From the waterfall, the trail went straight, along the mountainside, just beneath a ridge.  Here and there there were still snowfields.  One looked safe enough to cross, so I did, but beneath the next one I heard running water.  Unsure of the thickness of the snow, I got off the path and descended below the snowfield, hopped across the stream, and continued on.  At the second snowfield, descent was impossible.  It was either go up or turn back. I went up.

At the ridge was a low barbed-wire fence, which I matter-of-factly ignored, with a road on the other side, I assume the old road to Flateyri, from before the tunnel.  I walked over to the road and began walking back into town.  It started to rain.
 

walking back into Ísafjörður

As I came back into a residential neighborhood, a man was walking toward me with his dog.  The dog ran up to me eagerly, and leapt up.  I scratched it behind the ears.  The man said something to me.

"I'm sorry?" I said.

He didn't speak English, so we just communicated in the universal language of pointing at the dog and laughing.

Back in town, Áslaug's daughter had appeared, so I got my bag out of the room and put it back behind the stairs in the coffeeshop.

"The bus to the airport will come at quarter to five," she said.

"Thanks."

Hungry after the hike despite my lunch on the mountain, I decided to go to Pizza 67, Iceland's ubiquitous, if inexplicable, 1960's themed pizza chain, which I had skipped my first trip.

For about $13 I got a 9" Sgt. Pepper's pizza (with a variety of peppers, predictably) and a coke in an atmosphere not altogether unlike what you might get if an Applebee's interior designer were stoned.  The pizza was pretty good--we're not talking Chicago here, but it was passable.

After lunch I ventured back out, heading for the harbor. I sat on a dock and watched a group of men engaged in an activity that was at first completely puzzling.  A couple of the men stood on a floating wooden platform; the rest were on shore.  They were guiding a crane from which hung a massive iron disc.  The disc itself had a number of chains attached to it, each one tied to a rope held by a man on shore.  Slowly and deliberately, the crane dropped the disc in the water.  Finally I understood what was going on.  The men on shore were pulling the chains up with their ropes, while the men on the platform anchored the chains to the platform itself: they were setting a new dock.  It had never occurred to me to wonder how these docks were made or anchored to the sea floor.  Now I know.

I walked back to the other side of town, toward the road to Bolungarvík, then headed back to the seawall.  In the backyard of a house against the seawall was a clothesline.  It was empty except for three fish hung out to dry.  A cat sat beneath it, meowing.
 

how to make the president of your suburban neighborhood association throw a fit: lesson 1

I sat on the seawall and read for a while.  I had brough thematic reading with me, The Fish Can Sing, by Halldor Laxness, Iceland's Nobel Prize winning author, who died in the late 1990s.  While much prize winning literature in intolerable (for every Kavalier & Clay there's an American Pastoral), Laxness is spellbinding, and reading him while listening to the lapping of the water was a nice way to spend the afternoon.

About 4, I went back to the coffeeshop and ordered a cup of coffee and waited for the bus.  The bus arrived on time, and got me to the airport.

"I'll bet you'd like a window," the ticket agent said when I checked my bag.

"Yes, please."

I stood with the children, nose against the window, waiting for the sight of the plane coming in.  Watching a plane fly into Ísafjörður is almost as good as being on one.  The plane appears to constantly be on the brink of disaster, especially when it makes its final U-turn and drops on to the runway.  In bad weather this must be something else.

The skies were mostly clear on the way back to Reykjavík, so I kept an eye out the window on the whole flight back, watching Iceland's tattered coastline beneath me.  Strangely, considering how carefully I've studied the geography of Iceland (which I probably know better than the geography of Indiana), I found it hard to recognize much of anything.

Kay was there when I arrived at the airport.

"You had a lot of important people on your flight," she said.  "It looks like there were three government ministers."

"Guess I was traveling in good company.  Or bad, depending on your politics."

We went back to the flat, where Kay cooked up spaghetti bolognese with loads of cheese.  Craig had some work to get done (he's a writer/editor/graphic designer/etc who works from home), so Kay and I went out for a walk.  It was a beautiful night.  The sky was--well, I don't know if I can say how the sky was.  Look at the picture on the front page.  You'll see.  We walked for a good while, turning back toward home when we got down to Laugavegur, the main shopping/clubbing street in Reykjavík.
 

Hallgrímskirkja

"Famous musician coming our way," Kay muttered.  "Look cool."

He had longish dark hair and was wearing a long coat.  "Who was he?" I asked.  It's not as if I'd recognize any of the members of Sigur Rós or GusGus, who make great music but whose faces I'm not quite familiar with.

"He's a famous songwriter.  Sort of an Icelandic Bob Dylan."

We cut through an alley, passing through a long row of back gardens, followed by an arthritic cat.  Back home, we settled in for the evening, watched a DVD of Trigger Happy TV, the British show that inspired the inferior Jackass on MTV, and went to bed.

 May 23: Reykjavík to Snæfellsnes and back
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