I woke at 7 AM that morning. Billy had taken the “center position” between me and Kaye and had clung to me all night, curling his small body next to mine. I was crowded and wary of rolling over onto him, so it wasn’t the greatest night’s sleep; but still, he’s such a loving boy I couldn’t fault him that much.
It had snowed overnight and now a fresh layer of snow covered the dangerous ice I’d almost fallen on the night before; ironically the new layer of snow made my path a little less treacherous, as the snow had sufficient “give” to create additional traction as I crossed the lot.
We had breakfast in the kitchen that morning. Like the bathrooms, the kitchen was undersized for the population of the campground—just three small tables that could hold four people each. We grabbed a table and had the some of the food we’d picked up at the grocery store—cereal, milk, and yogurt. I also did my best to cook some warm breakfast items using the malfunctioning castoff appliances we found in the campground kitchen; we wound up with burnt toast (the toaster didn’t automatically “pop,” which I only noticed when the smell of burnt toast filled the small kitchen) and lukewarm coffee (a defective electric kettle had a lid that wouldn’t close all the way).
The kitchen area also featured a topographic map of the area and highlighted the nearby Laki volcano. Again, we learned some discomfiting facts about volcanic activity in Iceland—the Laki volcano’s eruption in the 1780s let out sulfuric fumes that disrupted agriculture to such an extent that somewhere between 25 and 50 percent of Iceland’s population at the time died, as well as 75 percent of the country’s livestock. The explosion was powerful enough that it disrupted weather patterns worldwide, with some historians linking its eruption to food shortages and price spikes in Europe that led to the French Revolution.
After cleaning up after breakfast, I took a shower for 300 Kronen per three minutes. I was able to luxuriate with a whole six minutes, as the rest of the family decided not to use the showers there. Of course, it would be too convenient to be able to deposit all the money for a six-minute shower all at once; rather, I had to put in the money, let my allotted 3 minutes elapse, then shiver as I plugged another six 50-Kronen coins into the machine. After the shower I changed my undies and base layers despite having planned to wear that set for another day. I wasn’t sure when my next shower would be, so I figured I might as well start out as clean as possible for the next leg of our journey.
I took Gwen to the bathroom for one last stop before we were on our way at around 9. By that point the wind had picked up and it had begun snowing again, the wind blowing the snow horizontally across the already frozen terrain. “Another beautiful day in Iceland” I quipped.
The blowing snow only thickened as we traveled toward our next stop—Diamond Beach, where we had scheduled a noon trip to ice caves on the Jokulsarionglacier. I stared as waves of drifting snow washed over the blacktop like steam.
Even through the blowing snow, the beauty of the Icelandic countryside was striking. The snow let up a bit at one point and we stopped to admire Hvannadalshnúkur, Iceland’s highest mountain, standing 6900 feet above sea level. A plaque nearby noted that Hvannadalshnúkur was an active volcano and two “colossal eruptions” had occurred there in recent years. I stared at it across a vast field of bare rock as Gwen climbed a nearby structure of twisted, graffitied metal beams of unknown origin. The plaque said something about a 12-to-16-hour hike to summit the volcano that started at an abandoned farm town nearby. Gwen and I resolved that one day we would return to Iceland and do that hike. Later, I mused on that vow and remembered that my mom and I had resolved to someday return to Alaska after we’d been there together in 1997, and how that vow remained unfulfilled until her eventual death made it impossible. I wondered to myself whether Gwen’s and my vow would meet the same fate.
We continued our drive, through an Icelandic landscape filled with boulders, seemingly of volcanic origin, that were as big as our camper van. I found myself imagining an eruption as we passed by, huge chunks of volcanic rock blocking our path, then sealing us into a rocky cairn. I imagined living off our meager provisions until finally, desperate, I managed to dislodge one of the rocks to escape. My daydream of becoming trapped and having to subsist on our meager provisions would prove prescient.
The snow picked up again as we got closer to our destination of Diamond Beach—visibility was terrible as we stopped at a lookout so Billy and I could get out and pee in the fresh snow (there were no bathrooms there) as we were pelted by large snowflakes driven by the cold winds. The lookout wound up being a trailhead for the Jokulsarion Glacier (which also covers the Hvannadalshnúkur volcano we had recently admired). There was a short hike to be done there, but the weather—and our noon reservation for the ice cave tour—prevented us from doing it. On our way back to the van, I spotted a sign that stated that the glacier had retreated 8 kilometers since the 1870s. Doing some quick mental math, I realized that a century and a half ago, the glacier, now invisible from the road, would have stretched past the highway we were driving on and most likely to the sea. It was a sobering reminder of a heating world.
We had hoped that Gwen and Kaye could use the bathroom at that stop, but since there were no bathrooms there, we doubled back to the Fjallsárlón Frost Restaurant, which we had passed maybe ten miles back. We arrived at 11 (an hour before our appointment to tour the ice caves) and by that point the snow and wind had picked up to the point that our visibility was almost zero. We walked into the restaurant, which looked eerily abandoned as the blizzard raged outside. Eventually a waitress emerged from the kitchen and told us that due to the blizzard, the restaurant was closing at noon and had no food except for some pre-made cakes and coffee. As Kaye and Gwen used the bathroom and I paid, the waitress consulted road.is—a real-time road map of Iceland–-and pointed out vast swathes of ominous red shapes moving over an outline of the island, designating the horrible weather that blanketed our region. She said that road closures were projected (a prediction that would be proven correct later that day) and asked where we were staying that night. I told her, “In the camper” and she was like “you really shouldn’t stay in the camper tonight, you’re much better off getting a hotel. Maybe you and your wife would be OK but”—she affectionately ruffled Billy’s hair—“the kids might not be.”
Kaye came out of the bathroom and almost immediately got a phone call—the guide for the glacier tour canceled for the day and tentatively rescheduled it for 8 AM the next morning. Two independent Icelandic residents had now warned us that the weather was going to be terrible, so we began frantically looking for a place to stay that night, eventually choosing “The Glacier View” hotel in Hoffel, about an hour away, due to their having geothermal hot tubs on the property. We also planned to overshoot Hoffel a bit on Highway 1 and have lunch at Pakkhus restaurant in Hofn, a fishing town whose name literally means “Harbor” in Icelandic. I imagined it as a charming little seaside tourist town, but as I would soon learn, my expectations were way too high.
We told the kids about the change in plans and they—particularly Gwen—seemed crestfallen. She let out a disappointed groan when we told her we’d be staying in a hotel that night, and not in the camper. It became clear that the kids were really enjoying the camper van life.
I thanked the waitress and asked if she was from around there. She told me that she had moved there from Poland, and I remembered the host of the Lava Show had mentioned that Polish was one of the most widely spoken language in Iceland, due to immigration from that country. I told the waitress that and she seemed a little embarrassed; she said something about hoping that other Polish people were hard workers and were making a good impression on the people of Iceland (and I thought about how immigrant communities all over the world were under pressure from Nativists in their adopted countries). Kaye mentioned that we were from Chicago, with the highest number of Poles outside of Poland, and the waitress responded that all that immigration came around “The War”—which Kaye took to be a comment on the more difficult immigration environment under Trump, and that I thought was a comment on there being a well-established and longstanding immigrant community in Chicago, versus the newer community in Iceland. Our waitress told us she liked living in Iceland; that this was a busy restaurant, located just a 15-minute drive from the popular tourist attraction of Diamond Beach, and they would have up to 1000 people per day. But she said her off days were quiet, and she liked the fact that tourists who come to Iceland were there to see the natural beauty of the country, rather than to drink and party.
Later that day I’d see statistics online that there are approximately 20,000 Polish nationals living in Iceland, the biggest group of international residents (approximately 40% of the total immigrant population in Iceland), that they come there for wages that are up to three times as high as that in Poland, and that Polish immigrants find the culture and climate to be similar in Iceland and Poland.
We continued our way through the now-blinding snow, skirting close to the sea at Diamond Beach. Through my window, crashing waves were just visible through the whiteout storm. Despite the weather, I saw many cars parked in the parking lot; it seemed that despite our tour operator’s prudence, a lot of people were taking their chances.
As we continued to drive through unrelenting snow, Kaye—as in previous vacations in Italy and Ireland, where she transported us safely along steep and winding mountain roads—was her usual steely-eyed and sure-handed driver. After an hour and a half of whiteout conditions, we finally reached Hofn. From the numerous corrugated-metal warehouses there, I realized this was an industrial harbor town, not the charming seaside hamlet I was hoping for. We parked the car and made our way across a snow-packed snow to a restaurant named Pakkhus.
Like the rest of the town, Pakkhus wasn’t much to look at, at least at first glance. It was perched near the harbor, tugboats docked behind it. It looked like a haphazardly built shack and later I read that the word “Pakkhus” is Icelandic for “warehouse,” and that the restaurant was originally built in 1982 for that purpose, constructed mainly from scrap wood of other houses. There were letters stenciled into that scrap wood that were still visible. In addition to the place not looking like much, we were also wary that it might be closed due to the weather and scoped out some other, similarly unpromising looking places to eat.
But despite our fears, inside we found a warmly lit wood interior, with Arcade Fire and other American indy rock playing. It felt like a refuge from the howling winds and ice outside. The food was as welcoming as the atmosphere—it was delicious, the best we’d had in Iceland. We ordered an Icelandic fish stew for us all to eat, and it was a perfect, hearty meal for such a cold and windy day.
As we ate, Billy amused us by blowing on the window next to us and then, in the resulting frost, drawing the faces of various Marvel characters (or at least crude representations thereof) and having the rest of us guess who he drew. He did Captain America, Thanos, Ant Man, Spider Man, and others and we all did miserably in guessing who he drew. We were particularly perplexed by his version of Thanos, who sported an incongruous grin.
After we ate, I made everyone go behind the restaurant to get photographs in the rather charmless harbor, tugboats in view – I guess it reminded me of my time in Alaskan fish towns where the wharf was full of industrial machinery. Then we headed back to the car to make our way to Hoffel, maybe 20 kilometers away.
It was around 1:45 now and the snow and wind were absolutely punishing, reducing visibility virtually to zero. As we dove out of town, we encountered a Toyota Hilux blocking the road. It was an ominous sign: I knew the Hilux as the notoriously durable 4×4 pickup truck favored by ISIS and other militias the world round; in fact, a war between Libya and Chad in the 80s had been known as the “Great Toyota War,” as the two countries had employed Hiluxes outfitted with heavy machine guns in the cargo beds. We drew closer to the truck, and I saw it was manned by two massive Icelandic men. Kaye lowered her window and the man in the passenger seat told us that the highway had been closed. Kaye explained that we had a reservation in Hoffel, and they let us through, since it wasn’t too far.
But distance is all relative: it took us 45 minutes to drive the 20 kilometers, (or 12 miles) to Hoffel. We had to leave the main road to get to our hotel, and if anything, the road and visibility conditions got even worse on the back roads. We finally made it at around 2:30. As we pulled in, the front door to the main building was opening and closing at seemingly random intervals, the automatic sensor apparently triggered by the heavy snow and accumulating snowdrifts—an incongruous and slightly creepy touch out of a David Lynch movie. My sense of dread mounted as we checked in and the kids cavorted about a cavernous and completely empty dining room, a la “The Shining.” The dining room had a huge picture window that faced the massive Vatnajokull glacier (which accounted for the name of the hotel—“Glacier World”), which was not visible due to the blowing snow and ice.
The front desk told us that they didn’t have any food, but would put on a breakfast for us the next morning. When they learned that we would be leaving early the next day for our then-planned 7 AM glacier tour, they brought us up sandwiches and fruit for our journey; they also gave us a quart of milk for free. But other than that, what we had in the van would have to suffice for our dinner, and I found myself feeling grateful for the heavy meal I ate in Hofn.
We wound up being the only people staying at the hotel, so they gave us a rather large—if undistinguished—room consisting of a small atrium, a kitchenette, and two bedrooms, with a connecting hallway that we used as a makeshift dining room (pushing together two small tables together to accommodate the four of us). I deemed it clean but rather spartan and charmless, not unlike much of Iceland itself.
We’d picked this place in part due to its geothermal hot tubs, so once we got our luggage into the room (braving a set of ice-covered external stairs; I once again cursed the Icelandic disdain for snow and ice removal) we gathered our bathing things, donned our heaviest storm gear, and trudged through the howling snowstorm to the changing room, about a 20-meter walk through the snow. The place was separated into men’s and women’s dressing rooms, so I took Billy to strip off our heavy storm gear and don our swimsuits. Then we headed out of the changing room, and into the blizzard, to reach the outdoors geothermal pools. On our way out of the changing room, we ignored the sign that told us we needed to take a naked soapy shower before entering the pools; I guess I thought it was unnecessary since I’d showered that morning (though the road conditions made it feel like it had been far longer than just a few hours).
Even without being wet, it was jarring to step out into the ice and wind with just my swimsuit, flip-flops, and a towel wrapped around my shoulders. Billy had it a little better with a robe Kaye had packed for him, but his teeth immediately started chattering in the icy gale. My feet soon were also freezing as the accumulated snow and ice began to gather in the space between the soles of my feet and the flip flops, and Billy wasn’t faring much better in his crocs. We trudged through the freezing conditions and the almost-blinding snow, but I mustered enough courtesy to nod hello to a couple that was in one of the three hot tubs. They waved back and pointed me over to an empty one nearby. Billy and I shrugged off our clothes and got into the hot water, and although Billy at first groaned at the excessive heat, we were soon feeling much better being out of the winter storm that raged around us.
Kaye and Gwen came out a few minutes later, wet from complying with the instruction (that Billy and I had ignored) to take a shower before entering the hot tubs. Kaye complained to the couple that in the neighboring hot tub that the shower only provided cold water; the couple sort of shrugged at that, and their complete indifference to cold convinced me they were Iceland natives. Then Kaye and Gwen joined us in the hot tub, and we did our best to enjoy it while looking out at a frozen landscape that stretched out to a pair of twin ridges far in the distance. The Vatnajökull glacier sat between those ridges, and despite its almost unfathomable size (at 2,973 square miles, it covers 8% of the land mass of Iceland), for now all we could really see was the haze of the stormy sky, blowing sleet, and the steam coming off our hot tub.
I tried to relax in the hot water as the storm raged around us, but soon my hair was coated in freezing precipitation and my ears were pounding from the cold and flying ice. I looked over with envy at our “neighbors” in the other hot tub, who seemed completely inured to the winter storm, at least in part because of the winter beanies they were wearing in the hot tub. Gwen, Billy, and Kaye all were wearing beanies as well, but their hats were soon also soaking with both rain and water from the tub. I tried to use the steaming hot water to thaw my hair, which by now had frozen into an icy mass. That would provide me with some temporary relief, but at the unpleasant cost of leaving my hair even more saturated with water, which then soon froze into an even more solid mass—a vicious cycle. To make matters worse, as we moved about the tub (particularly the kids, who were still burning off energy after being cooped up in the car all day) the waves generated by our bodies sloshed over our towels and robes, which were also being pelted by snow, rendering them completely soaked within minutes of us entering the water.
Soon the wind, already howling around us, picked up even more, sending painful torrents of freezing snow slashing into my face with the sensation of little razors striking me. The kids wailed as the same snow struck them and I abruptly said, “OK, we’re going in.” I strode out of the water and futilely draped my now-soaked towel across my shoulders, which only made me colder, and handed Billy his soaked robe as he emerged, teeth chattering, from the hot tub. We donned our sandals—now full of snow—and hobbled over to the men’s locker room as Gwen and Kaye when the other way. I gave a polite wave goodbye to our fellow hot tub enthusiasts, who were undisturbed by the weather and seemed amused at our plight.
We went back to our room, hung up our soaking towels and swimsuits and hats to dry in the shower, and didn’t leave the room the rest of the night. We had a makeshift dinner of cereal, bread with Nutella, cookies, and three pieces of leftover pizza from the night before, which Kaye reheated in a frying pan she found in the kitchenette. As we ate our pieced-together meal, the cold winds raged outside with an eerie whistling sound. All that was missing was the sound of howling wolves in the background.
Everyone was on edge after the harrowing events of the day. While watching a movie, an errant kick from Gwen sent a water glass off a side table and it shattered, leading Kaye to scold her; then Billy accidentally locked himself into the bathroom, which again left Kaye yelling at him angrily. I asked Kaye to stop yelling at people (a request to which she replied with an icy glare) but a few minutes later the kids were roughhousing on one of the beds to the point where Billy would have fallen off onto his head if I hadn’t caught him, which led me to yell at both of them to leave their hands to themselves.
After a long and trying day, we sorted ourselves into our usual pairs—me sleeping with Gwen (who is a total “Daddy’s Girl” and whose restless sleep tends to irritate Kaye), Kaye sleeping with Billy—with the intent of getting up at 6 AM to head to the ice cave tour the next morning.
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