If there’s a long hallway, I’m at the end of it

Greetings from Iceland, which is a bit cooler than The Sandbox, for sure! However, panicking led to overpacking for my eight-day tour around the island. I brought my Minsk overpants for a “glacier hike” that was maybe five minutes and my heavy parka, which has served for excellent filler space in the giant roller bag that  I loaded up. No real regrets on the latter, though, because I couldn’t fit everything in the carry-on anyway and would have still had to take the larger bag.

The “hike” was a bit of a letdown; he only other glacier hikes I’ve done, I’ve gone in from the top and been left by a helicopter. This one was from the bottom, and the longest part of the hike was the trek from the bus to the bottom of the glacier. We then walked by a well-beaten trail of glacier, but the kind of glacier that’s completely brown and looks like cold dirt rather than snow that’s buried in dirt. When we got to the white part – or at least the part with way more snow than dirt – we were only there maybe 5-10 minutes and never took any trails or anything before doubling back. I wasn’t disappointed, per say, but others in my tour group were. Today I discovered the tour company refunded us $30 for the hike, which was nice of them.

Overall, the tour was excellent, but I knew going in it was a “highlight hitter” tour and wouldn’t be anything in-depth. Every place we stopped, I could have spent six hours just getting lost. The landscape is so harsh, different and beautiful that I wanted to just hike and wander. There are lush fields and acres upon acres of barren wasteland that run into each other. At one point, we looked like we were on the surface of Mars and five minutes later saw sheep grazing on green grass.

The lava fields were beautiful to me, all covered in moss with tiny flowers. So were the craters of the volcanos. At one point, we drove through the crater of an extinct volcano and found gorgeous lakes. Oh, and waterfalls – they are everywhere, and each one is just phenomenal. I could watch a waterfall all day.

But if you ask me the name of any particular one I saw, I have not a clue. Icelandic is a tough language to grasp and most of the names are extremely long. My takeaways were that “Vik” is the shortest city name in Iceland and “—foss” means waterfall. So it might have been Snellenfoss or something similar, mostly with letters that do not appear in English.

The black sand beaches were fantastic. One had black powdery sand and another had sand plus “diamonds” – huge chunks of glacier ice that pooled in a lake that, from the air, looked like ice cube soup. (I saw drone footage.) Occasionally, a chunk would calve off and float to the Atlantic, where it would then get washed up on the shore, getting beaten regularly by waves in the most mesmerizing fashion.

The fire and ice contrast is stark. I’ve seen glaciers and I’ve seen steam spewing out of the earth, along with boiling hot water and liquid clay. It’s pretty powerful.

So far, the vacation’s been quite nice, but this leg of it is almost over. Tonight I head out to my next destination. Since the flight I had to take coming here stopped in Vienna, I figured I’d stop there on the way back, too. Honestly, as enjoyable as Iceland has been, being in a different lodging every night has gotten old and I am ready to park it at an AirBnB for a couple consecutive days and do laundry.

Somehow on the tour I got a private room. I signed up to share, so this was a pleasant surprise. There was another single woman on the tour – half my age – but I guess she must have paid double occupancy, because I did not.

The rooms have definitely varied, but there’s been one consistent for me. If there’s a long hallway, my room is the furthest one down it. Oh man, it puts the “lug” in luggage – to be that far and still have to trek down one last road before pulling in for the evening.

Losing track of time

My time in The 100-Acre Sandbox is winding down, not that I’m able to keep track of it.

There’s a new set of bosses in, which means longer days initially, but it doesn’t feel like they’re long. Recently, I was in the hallway, headed to the bathroom and ran into someone locking up. I said something like, “Wow, you’re leaving early,” and she pointed out that it was almost 6:30 p.m.! I had thought it was around 4 p.m.

The weather rarely changes; it goes from hot to hotter. It was 120 yesterday, which is not unusual. Fortunately, it’s not unusual. Everywhere else is having the same kind of weather but it is unusual. But yeah, three-digit dry heat with not a cloud in the sky. Our shade is from buildings and you can see people walk in the shadows of the building to make the two-block trek to the cafeteria.

Currently, I am on my last R&R and when I return I should only have about two months remaining in my tour. It seems surreal based on my last trek to The Sandbox, when I’d signed up for two years and my position was eliminated after one and then due to external issues had to leave after 11 months. It honestly never occurred to me that this tour would last two full years, but I’m on track to do so.

The R&R, though – very welcome. Not timed well because my new No. 1 arrived the day after I left, but I had little choice. For whatever reason, my visa expired on August 10. I got a new one, but I had to leave before August 10. I’m currently in Iceland and honestly cannot tell you my itinerary. Once I decided on Iceland, I went to Tour Radar and stuck in approximate dates and times and just picked a tour. They all sounded wonderful and there have been no disappointments.

The landscape of this country – my No. 90 – changes constantly. After getting out at a tundra formed by large volcanic rocks and viewing a powerful waterfall a 10-minute walk into what we theorized looked like the surface of the moon, we drove five more minutes and were in the middle of a lush countryside. I blinked and missed the transition. Last night, we stayed at a place that looked and felt like the ranch I worked at in Colorado. Mountains on both sides, a river running through it (no Adian Quinn, Henry Elliott or Brad Pitt), sheep, horses and – a 3-kilometer walk away – an Indiana Jones-like bridge with a little cage that you cranked across with a winch.

That was just one photo op for our group, which is about 15 people. We have a Spanish couple who lives in England; a niece (around my age) and her aunt from Oregon and California; a Chinese woman and her Iranian-born husband, who have been married over 30 years and have lived in Sydney that long; a gay male Mexican couple who retired extremely young somehow; New York transplants who live in Miami and brought along their 20-year-old nephew, who is studying to be a marine ship captain; a retired gay male couple from California who are still jetlagged because their flight was so late they had to catch up with the tour; a 25-year-old Chinese girl from the same province Guangzhou is in; and me. We have a WhatsApp group and are sharing photos.

Beyond lots of waterfalls and changing landscapes, other highlights so far include geysers, gurgling clay spewing from the ground, seeing the tectonic plates where North America and Europe meet, hot springs (plus a couple dips into the freezing cold water next the hot pool), a glacier hike, the pulley bridge and ice on beaches with black sand. It’s really been phenomenal so far, and we still have whale watching and ponies to go.

The hotels have been a nice surprise, but not because I was expecting anything much in hotels. I had signed up to share a room and somehow both I and the girl from China have gotten our own rooms; I had figured they’d put us together.

After this tour, I have a couple more days in Iceland and then head to Vienna/Bratislava. My flight came through there so I went ahead and gave myself a four-day layover..