US Mess Part III

We woke up early the next morning. Or, at least, I did. I’m not a great sleeper usually, I stay up late, am restless through the night, then wake up a little after sunrise. It’s a blessing and a curse, but mostly a curse. I let Kollette sleep and spent an hour or two reading a romance novel until she woke up around seven. We made a cute little breakfast of my moms homemade caramels, snacks, and English Breakfast tea. We did our usual morning excursion where we checked out what the property looks like in actual daylight! There were so many sheep around, except Kollette told me that it was my constant chasing of them in my clunky yellow wellies that was scaring them all away. So, she carefully snuck up to a couple and got a close up picture (I was not allowed anymore). Truly, remarkably close to them. And it’s as we’re heading back inside the guesthouse that we realize how Icelandic doors work. They lock automatically from the inside as soon as you close them…. We were unaware of that and left the key in the living room. Yeah, so we got locked out. At eight in the morning. On a Monday. In a foreign country. With absolutely nothing on us (not even a jacket), except for our phones. We ended up grabbing our rental car (luckily that did not lock on its own) and heading up to the main house, I knocked on the door, and we waited to see if anyone would wake up. It took about ten minutes but someone opened the door! It was a man who reminded me vaguely of the grandfather from the original Willy Wonka movie. I tried my best to speak as succinctly as possible about the situation, apologizing profusely because I would have been so annoyed if I was him. Icelandic people are so kind—not only was he not upset but he rushed away in his little tall socks and got us the spare key. He told us just to leave both keys in the guesthouse when we left and he’d take care of everything. And most importantly, despite the early hour, he said it all with the biggest smile on his face. I don’t remember his name but I really hope he’s doing well, wherever he is. As I was turning back to Kollette, she motioned that I should ask him about a washing machine, since we already had his attention. And what do you know! He has laundry facilities at the main house! He took us over to the main house and unlocked the door, then showed us where the machines were. He told us he’d keep the door unlocked for us and close up later so just to make sure the door was closed (miraculously, this one did not automatically lock) when we headed out for the day. What. A. Relief. Primarily for Kollette because she isn’t a psycho like me when it comes to packing. I should mention at this point that Kollette packed smart and efficiently and she is the reason why we met all of our weight requirements on the flight there. She packed four or five sets of layered outfits and assumed that at one of the hotels or Airbnb’s we would have access to laundry facilities. On the other hand, she is well aware of exactly who I am and that I would pack at least one outfit per day then a few layers on top of that. Plus an extra outfit or two for funsies. Unfortunately for her, Adam Sandler’s “it’s better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it” won out. No worries, though, right? Because we just found our washer and dryer! Wrong.

Kollette and I go back to the guest house, quickly grab her suitcase, and just start shoving all of our dirty clothes into it, while we put all of the clean clothes we had left into my giant suitcase so we knew where everything was. We walk over to the main house with the suitcase and just start loading up the washing machine with mass amounts of dirty clothes. Remember, we’re two people AND we’ve been wearing pajamas, hiking/adventuring clothes, layers, swimsuits, and everything smells strongly of sulfur because it’s what all of the water and a lot of the air in the country smells like. It’s at this point that Kollette asks me how we turn on the washing machine. I told her it was just like any washing machine at a laundromat. Which is true! It didn’t look like the one in her childhood home and it didn’t look like the one in my childhood home. Lucky for us, I’ve lived in various cities and so have been to various different laundromats. You’d be surprised how confusing it can be when you only know how one single washing machine works, okay! It’s a valid question. Now I have to stop and mention that yes, while Kollette did not know how to work this machine, I also (on accident) inadvertently lied to her when I told her how to do it and turned it on myself. We think everything is fine and dandy, we put his powdered laundry detergent in the cubby, the water starts swishing, and we think it’s a good time to make our exit and get dressed for the day. No one else was there so we left the suitcase next to the laundry closet.

As we walk back, past the family graveyard, down the grassy dirt trail, sheep start screaming at us. I don’t mean that as a joke, I mean this was no gentle “baaaaa.” This ram started legitimately screaming at us as we walked by. So, I screamed back. He deserved it! I thought it would be a cute little scream conversation between me and this sheep, that I’ll have made a new friend. Except after about three scream volleys back and forth, this ram motions like he’s about to start coming after us. We quickly hurried away from him, I was not ready to get stabbed in the stomach by some of his horns. I don’t even know what I would’ve done if he’d charged at me. I don’t know how I get us into those situations. 

We get dressed, have our leisurely morning, then walk back over to the main house. I should clarify, this was like a ten minute walk. We did this there and back about four times. When we get to the laundry room, we see the cycle hasn’t quite finished. We figure, wait a few minutes and let the water drain, maybe we were just a few minutes early? Yet, upon further look, we see that the washer still had an hour to go. The washing machine was intending to run a cycle for two hours? No, that must’ve been a mistake. Either way, we didn’t have time for that. After much debate about how we should proceed, we decide to just take the clothes out and put them in the dryer. We didn’t really understand how to work this one? Instead of stating a length of time, it just said degrees and types of fabric. Except, how do we know if this entire group of clothes should be entered as wool, or polyester, or cotton? We just decided to put it in and hope for the best. Except after we walk back, pack up and put everything in the car, then drive over to check on the clothes again, they’re still not done. It says multiple hours left to finish drying the clothes. At this point we’re supposed to be checked out within the next twenty minutes and the clothes are still sopping wet. And we cannot figure out a button to choose that will take less than 3 hours to dry the clothes. Up until this point, we’d truly had a magical trip. It was seriously something out of a movie. And yet, this was really bringing Kollette down because this meant she had one outfit left before she was fully out of clothes and she didn’t have a way to fix it. We needed to get these clothes dry but we also needed to get gas and the closest gas station was an hour away; luckily we didn’t have any time constraints that day. We come to the decision that Kollette should go get gas, I will stay with the clothes, and we pretend that we’ve already checked out when really I was hiding away in the main house while we tried to dry our laundry. I’m not kidding when I say, I squatted at that house for two and a half hours before Kollette got back. At one point, the Willy Wonka guy pulled his truck in front of the house and he and his dog went walking through the land. I had to duck down out of the windows so he couldn’t see me but I could still peek and know where he was. His dog was really cute. But I just sat there, unable to call or text Kollette because we didn’t have service, waiting for her to return. 

By the time she came back, our laundry still was not dry. I didn’t even change the cycle, I to this day do not understand how that machine was supposed to work. Kollette and I hide out upstairs again and decide to give it one more hour before we say fuck it and leave with wet clothes. Low and behold, but by the time that hour is up our clothes are not yet dry. I don’t mean damp, I don’t mean kinda wet and chilly/could use a little more heat. I mean they are just a step under soaking wet. We put all of the wet clothes in one suitcase and give up. We head to the car to go to our next destination, which is Vallanes Organic Farm. Oh and did I mention it was raining too?

Kollette was so excited about this farm! We drove and drove through actually the scariest conditions. We were on a one lane road that was so thin, skating between mountains as it’s pouring rain and we can barely see the road. We were actually terrified for like two entire hours of the drive. But as we got through, it was gorgeous, we saw dewy red fields, waterfalls and natural ponds and all these fall colors through a slight sprinkle of rain as we sang along to country music. We finally make it to the farm and we notice it’s kind of barren. There wasn’t anyone there, there was a slight hint of construction, all the lights were off. We go up to the main door and there’s just a paper sign attached to it that states they’re closed for the season… We missed it by like a week. And not even closed with someone still tending to the building, I mean no one was going to be on the property for the remainder of the season. It was really disappointing. As we walked the few feet back to the car, we see a couple of greenhouse doors open and decide that we’re making the trip worth it and we’re going in. It was beautiful. If this was what the greenhouses looked like when shut down, I could just imagine what they looked like in their prime. Plump vegetables and fruits, rows upon rows of plants and flowers and herbs. There was a lot of produce that had fallen to the ground but it clearly had been in season just recently. There were two lovely seating areas set up for if someone wanted to enjoy a nice beverage and snack and enjoy the greenery. I’m glad we got to go in and see it, Kollette absolutely adored it. 

My lovely best friend also made the very smart declaration when we got back to the car that we should lay out our clothes so that they weren’t all wet and lumped together. We needed to spread them out on the backs of the seats, on the dashboard, etc so they had a chance to dry out when we turned the heat all the way up. We still needed swimsuits for that evening, after all. 

With the sad news of the Vallanes farm, we headed into town near our next destination (which was already extremely close to where we were) in order to find some dinner. We headed into some tourist chain that I don’t even remember the name of. We sat down and were immediately kind of turned off. The lady at the front was rude, there were a few tourists who were watching television on their phone with no headphones and their sound turned all the way up, and the bathrooms were a total mess. We had already noticed the menu was severely overpriced for the most basic cups of coffee (we were getting a hang of the currency at this point) and decided that it just wasn’t worth it to have more than a cuppa here. We found a cute diner a few minutes away that was supposedly the best in the city and left immediately. This place was so cute. Imagine Icelandic retro fifties in complete pink and turquoise with two areas, a dining area and an ice cream parlor that had a loveseat. 

Every time we go to get food, I always want several items on the menu. My eyes are a thousand times bigger than my stomach. Kollette always has to remind me that it’s not worth getting two or three dishes when one is big enough and we aren’t at a place where we’re able to take leftovers home. And she would be correct every time. The look of just “I told you so” on her face every time we finish eating a meal and I just admit that that was more than enough. I don’t know what I’d do without her, that woman is my conscience for sure. Post dinner we end up sitting on the loveseat, eating ice cream and staring out at the night while it rains. We got a little morose that night. Maybe it was the way the day just dissolved into a total mess or maybe it was the fact that I didn’t take nearly enough Lactaid for that ice cream dish. Maybe it was both. Kollette was feeling a little down and I was feeling masochistically bloated. We’re halfway through the trip, and while everything so far has been magical, not everything can stay that way. It’s amazing we made it that long as it was! Vacations are a different world from our everyday lives, but that doesn’t mean they’re impervious to life. Besides, I told Kollette it would be quite funny in retrospect and it was. We pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps and drove over to Vök Baths, our last item on the agenda for the day. 

This thermal bath was incredible. After the requisite shower, you walk down a set of four stairs that become submerged in water while still being indoors so you’re not shocked by the temperature change before getting in the water. When you reach the bottom level, you walk a few feet then are just outdoors in the introductory pool. This one had the introductory pool that led to the main floor pool with the swim up bar (god, I love those) then if you get out and walk over a short bridge, you meet two floating pools out in the Urridavatn lake. These two pools were way hotter than the main floor pools and also had ladders that dropped into the lake in case you wanted to dip in the lake before warming in the floating pools. Which, obviously, Kollette and I did because we’re really cool people and also it’s tradition. We did that twice, once for each pool. I’d like to tell you that I didn’t scream like a banshee but I totally did. I was not a cool girl. I was so not a cool girl in that moment. I was a fucking freezing girl for sure, but not a cool one. I should say that not only is that lake freezing on a good day in October, but also it was like 9pm and pitch black so it was even chillier. As I screamed, the people in the pool just laughed. I wonder if their tolerance is better than a girl who lives on the west coast? Probably. The second time? I held it together, I totally held my own. I just kept repeating my tag line for that trip “I invented chill.” I actually think I may have growled it as my body sunk into the lake before springing back up. That’s right, I’m impressive.

Kollette and I sat and talked for hours. Mostly about boys. My failed attempts at relationships, her most recent one. We shared tips, tricks, traumas all while sipping my prosecco and her seltzer in an extremely heated pool that’s literally floating in an Icelandic lake. At one point I was saying something mid story, and an older woman stops us and says, “you’re a comedian! Oh my gosh, I could definitely tell!” First of all, I have zero clue what I said but I know for a fact it was about my ex boyfriend and not comedy; second, I love that this woman was eavesdropping and what she gathered was that I’m hilarious, definitely not going to correct her, thank you. 

Our stay that night was a room at a shared Airbnb. When we got there, we ran into the other guests as they were leaving for a night out. We took this time by ourselves to hang up all of our wet clothes so they could dry overnight (the laying out in the car didn’t dry anything that wasn’t on the dashboard), Kollette was the mastermind behind this plan. We were hanging our towels and sweaters up on the coat racks; shirts, swimsuits, pants were all dangling from the curtain rods in our bedroom; we draped shirts on the chair in the kitchen, on the rocking chair in our bedroom; and most infamously, our socks, bras, and panties on all of the drawers in the mini dresser in our room. It was like a small Christmas tree of laundry! It was like eleven at night so no one could even say anything. And I have to give it to her, Kollette was right. All of our clothes dried overnight. Some of them smelled a little funky, but we could wear them again. While everyone else had gone out the night before, Kollette and I went straight to bed. But while everyone else was still sleeping the next morning, Kollette and I were outside and taking the tarp off the hottub by eight, despite the slight drizzle. We had a little morning of drinking champagne in the hot tub, to which the others were very confused when they saw. We later found out this is because hot tubs in Iceland are primarily used in the evening only. Oh well! We enjoyed it. 

Our day goes on—we go to a waterfall (this time we see it from the top), Námaskarð which is essentially a park full of mud pots exuding sulfur steam (I jumped in a lot of the mud and still am scrubbing it off my rainboots), and Mývatn Nature Baths. When we got in line at the nature baths to get our wristbands for entry, we were standing behind a couple of guys who were talking to the man at the counter. The man at the counter definitely told us his name later but I forgot it so let’s call him Gunnar. As we’re standing behind them, I can sense Gunnar is a bit agitated and absolutely does not want to be there. I whisper to Kollette, “he definitely hates those guys and I know we can make him smile.” I am competitive by nature but I didn’t have any malicious intent, I just wanted to make his workday a little less torturous. So, I turned on that midwest charm and Kollette and I stepped forward to talk to him. Let me tell you, all it took was a smile and a “Hi!” from Kollette and I before he no longer hated his job. We actually ended up seeing him after we showered and changed too, he got switched to tending the swim up bar. Gunnar loved us. He ended up telling us about an hour and a half and two drinks later that his family owns the property a short drive from there that has a cave with its own hot spring. So, he just drives to the cave when it’s especially cold, and has his personal hot spring on “his family’s land.” Yeah, Kollette and I swooned at that line too. As I’m writing this, it seems kind of creepy and douchey but he was such a genuine, kind guy our age who was just trying to impress us and it worked. But then again, our moms warned us about going anywhere alone with potential kidnappers, so we swam away after that. 

It’s sometime between driving to the natural baths and leaving the natural baths that I lost my face moisturizer. Not good. A little background, I have always been super into moisturizing. I lotion my entire body when I get out of the shower every day, daily face moisturizer, I always have a hand lotion bottle nearby, and during winters in the midwest I would cover my hands with vaseline then put on gloves in order to go to bed. The sulfur in the water there really dries your skin out, so when we had to shower post nature baths I just had to leave with my skin feeling really tight and dry. A feeling I abhor. I started to fall asleep on the drive to the next hostel for the night and Kollette laughed slightly and made a comment about me falling asleep. Except, I am the absolute crankiest person when I am in the napping limbo. Where I’m partially asleep but not, and I refuse to admit I was falling asleep. It’s something I’m absurdly stubborn about. But I’m also cranky when I feel like I desperately need lotion or chapstick but don’t have access to any. It seriously grinds my gears. And Kollette, being my oldest friend, knows this about me. She dubbed me “the moisture monster” which I still refer to myself as every time I’m five minutes past needing chapstick. I laugh about it every time I say it because it’s just the dumbest thing but I will die on this hill, both the nap-limbo and the moisture monster. 

Picture this: I’m cranky and half asleep and feeling like the skin on my face is being stretched way too tight, Kollette is laughing and is wide awake. We’re driving down a road we think leads to the hostel but we’re not really sure and it’s pitch black again. A dog runs up to the car and I start playing with it through the window, he’s very friendly! We’re making noises and faces at the pup from inside the car and then someone starts to walk outside. Yup, definitely not this building! We drive away down the road and see two buildings that the hostel owns, but we’re not sure which one we’re staying at. Kollette gets out to check and (luckily) it turns out to be the one we’re parked at, and even better, she says there’s a really hot french man inside. Up until this trip, Kollette and I really didn’t think we had the same taste in men. So, I’m thinking nothing of it, grumbling my way inside with the first half of the luggage as she gets ready to pull out the second half. And holy shit, as soon as I walk in the door, I realize she’s right. Hot French Man is sitting at the dinner table right in view of the front door I just walked into and suddenly I had to try to make my personality seem better with only seconds to spare. I smiled at him but I don’t think I fully succeeded as I walked into what Kollette says is our private suite for the night. As soon as she and I are in the room I turn to her and just jaw dropped, eyes wide, look at her. Yeah, we have the same taste in European men for sure. We eat our little MRE’s and drink the rest of our (half remaining) bottle of champagne from breakfast then go to sleep. After hanging up a few pieces of clothing to dry out some more, that is! 

The next morning starts off regular, but is the first part in my favorite day of the trip to talk about. We wake up, I make us each a cup of instant coffee. We popped into the kitchen to see if we needed anything to help make it, but we were good. I think it was more of an excuse for us to run into Hot French Man again. Unfortunately I was wearing an adult sized footie onesie at the time? Great choice, Samantha. Cut to: we’re sitting in our private suite with me reading on the bed and Kollette blow drying her clothes, I’ve just finished heating water in the kettle for the instant coffee. All the electricity goes out. We try to turn the lights on and off, but no dice. Kollette can’t turn the hair dryer on again. A blaring horn starts going off. Think fire alarm but a longer beep and seven times as loud. I scream out “It wasn’t me this time!” We have no fucking idea what’s going on. We open the door to our room and walk out into the kitchen; Kollette wearing regular adult pajamas and me in the fuzzy blue footie onesie. We find out what’s happened—Hot French Man did something dumb with the toaster and set off the fire alarm. Oh, how dumb he must’ve felt as the entire building convened to the kitchen area. We go back to our room and realize we have to just get ready for the day because we’re going to be late if we entertain the fire alarm anymore. We change into regular clothes, drink instant coffee, and head to our first adventure of the day, a whale watching tour. 

I ate a granola bar in the car. Crazy way to start a paragraph, eh? You’ll understand in just a moment. This means I had a granola bar, instant coffee, and last night’s champagne in my stomach. We head into line for our whale watching tour. There’s a four year old and her parents in line behind us to get on the boat. The tour guide asks if they really want to take a four year old onto the water like this and they say, “She’s done lots of crazy things, she’ll be fine!” Kollette and I started cracking up because to that the guide just said, “I guess we’ll see, huh.” How foreboding. We get on the boat and put on our giant full body suits that are supposed to keep us warm and also (mostly) dry. We’re covered head to toe and it’s so funny to look at, as we take off Kollette and I are holding onto the railing and pretend surfing, dancing around, being silly. The tour guides say that the weather has been kind of turbulent the last few days but that it’s perfect for whale watching! However, if you have to throw up, it’s best to do so in the ocean. They’ll be carrying puke bags at the back of the boat if anyone needs them, but all should be well! The boat is zipping through waves, splashing us, the wind whipping at our faces. I’m grateful for a hat and gloves at that moment. And then we hear crying, the poor four year old is standing behind us on a bench while her parents sit next to her. Kollette says she must not like it. I look at the water, the view, then I turn back and see the little girl has thrown up all down her front. As bad as we feel for her, Kollette and I can’t help but laugh a little, thinking of what the tour guide said before we hopped on. The rest of the trip wasn’t bad for that little girl though, she just sat there looking comatose. But a few minutes after her little throw up, we see a change happen with the people on board. For the first third of this ride, Kollette and I looked out over the side where we’d been standing from the beginning, watching the waves, joking around, excited to see whales. About a third of the way through, I turn around and see the two people on the opposite side of the boat literally laying on the ground, faces against the boards, holding onto the railing for dear life. Others sitting down and looking vaguely green, masses heading to the back of the boat where it’s said to be steadier, and puke bags… Oh, those horrid puke bags. 

As I turn back to the water and laugh with Kollette about people not having strong stomachs, I start to feel kind of hot, overheated. This is pretty typical for me, I run hot to begin with. A few days prior I’d worn a tank top when we stopped at a waterfall for fifteen minutes. I just unzip the second overcoat they had us put on, so I’m just wearing mine and the mandatory one. It’s helping a little but not so much. I take my gloves off, better but not by much. I get a pit in my stomach. Oh, that’s not good. Kollette states that we should move up to the front of the boat so we can see better. Halfway there, I stop and sit down and tell her I’ll be right there, that I’m just getting overheated. At this point I know I need to fucking yarf, but I don’t want to. I wanted to be one of the very few who didn’t throw up! I wanted to be hot cool girl! Hot cool girl does not throw up while whale watching. I needed to get it together. I thought I had it together. The tour guide announces on the speaker that this weather is way worse than they thought and they’re sorry for anyone feeling sick, ordinarily they don’t go on water this choppy but they’re going to finish the trip since we’re so far out at sea. Oh thank god, I’m not a loser and this is actually confirmed to be intense waters. That was all I needed to hear. I went up to Kollette and just nonchalantly said, “I’m gonna go throw up at the back really quick, I’ll just be a minute” then sauntered (as much as someone can in a full puffy suit) away. I see puke bag upon puke bag, no one is standing up and looking for whales except my group and one other, everyone is wholly incapacitated. I leaned over the side real quick and what do you know! The granola bar and instant coffee come right up! One and a half minutes and I feel at the top of my game again as I head back up to the front. I cannot make this up but as soon as I got back to the front and stood by Kollette again, we saw a whale jump partially out of the water. By the time we head back, we’ve seen three whales and that was one of the most entertaining two and a half hours of my life. If you’ve ever seen the movie Triangle of Sadness, I swear to you it was that scene where they all get seasick. I am in AWE of Kollette’s ability to keep her stomach. Truly so impressive. We decide to cross the street right into a crepes place before we leave the whale watching area. We spent the rest of that day and the next in Iceland and left the next morning after dropping off our rental car, Petra. Those days were just more magic. When people ask me about the trip, they’ve started to ask me what I learned about myself because of it. Honestly, I hadn’t realized how much I’d learned until I came back. That day we went whale watching, we went to Geosea after crepes and as we were getting changed for the showers before, my bracelet snapped off and beads flew everywhere. The week before we left for Iceland marked one year since Atlas passed away and it was something that had sat so heavily on my mind. When I’d gotten in my moms car with Al at the airport from LA, I accidentally snapped my S A necklace that I’d gotten in college with mine and Atlas’ initials on it (crazy cat lady, I know, I know). In that locker room at Geosea, I snapped the bracelet Kollette had gotten me with his name on it after he died. And in that moment, I lost it. I got really quiet, I picked up the pieces to the bracelet and I just muttered how freaking stupid I was. Kollette has lost animals, so she understood. He was my best bud, he and I got each other through a lot. In a way, my moving to California was the end of an era. It was the first apartment I would live in that he wouldn’t have, I had a new living being that I had to make choices for, I had a new mental space that I was in. My life looked a lot different than it did at the one year mark prior. I guess I’d been holding a lot of my grief in (I am the more ‘suffer in silence’ type) and talking to Kollette while drinking prosecco and overlooking the sea from that pool, it helped lighten my load. I hadn’t realized until that trip how much I hold within myself. I hadn’t realized until that trip how much I’d relied on a schedule and being based in whatever city I was living in. I’ve always been extremely hesitant to plan vacations and I didn’t realize how much I needed one until I was there. Until I was back and talking about it and having to worry about finding parking in Los Angeles again. I felt free. I let loose and enjoyed the little things life has to offer. Relished in the kindness of others and the information I learned while in Iceland. Vacation isn’t impervious to life, but life isn’t impervious to vacation either. Whether it’s letting go of routine, grief, stricture, we all have to release it sometime. Plus, I know a lot about Icelandic importation laws now too.