Iceland🇮🇸Meeting Siberian beer hunters, world jugglers and oil tanker captains

Iceland: how I met Siberian bear hunters, world jugglers and oil tanker captains... After my five day hike (see previous post) I was up for a 10 day drive all around the island. To earn some credits back for the numerous times I had been picked up before in my life, I had decided to take a bunch of hitchhikers on the way.

But soon that seemed the worst idea ever. After less than half an hour driving I had two 90kg full grown Polish guys in my car with the looks as if they would kill me if I would sneeze a little too loud for their tasting. They however turned out to be real nice guys. They said they had been standing there for 4 hours and asked if that would have to do something with themselves. “Well, most other car owners are not too keen on boarding two serial killers,“ I thought but I remained silent trying to look innocent.

After having them dropped at their campsite, I continued and no 5 minutes later the next one stood on the side of the road. This time it was a Siberian fighter who hunts bears for nature control but he had camouflaged his background much better than the Polish guys, with a large friendly smile and an even friendlier yellow raincoat. This Siberian turned out to become my travel mate for the next five days which must be the longest one-ride hitchhike ever recorded in history. We completed the whole round around Iceland together and were interchanging stories about our very different lives.

It was his first time outside Siberia and hence the most common things could be a full blown surprise. First time he drove in a cloud. First time he saw children jumping on a large air cushion. And first time he had tasted Nutella. If I would have known that, I would have bought Nutella stocks right away. He was eating Nutella with bread as breakfast, lunch and dinner, emptying one full bottle a day.

One night, we encountered 3 Norwegians in the hostel and we approached them asking if they were up for a Russian game. Unconsciously i must have taken over the Russian accent from my new friend since the three Norwegians thought we were both Russian and wanted to play for money. Once we had calmed down their stress levels (my Siberian friend with his unrussian smile, and me using my full Dutch accent to convince I was one of them) we have played Durak the entire evening. And that is a very unwise thing to do in Iceland since the evening basically never stops, or never starts. Apparently Iceland has been so isolated that it never got the basics that the sun should go down at night. They still haven’t adapted to this day-night rhythm, successfully introduced in the rest of the world. Instead they use a very uncomfortable year rhythm. Summer is light, winter is dark.

And with some more stops and card playing drinking evenings on the way, we finished the complete circle. But don’t ask me how the East of Iceland was. I have really no idea. I guess it must be totally awesome but a constant fog has covered all the potential beauty before our eyes. In cartoons clouds are always a wonderful thing where it’s always sunny and you jump around in the white fluffy wadding blanket. In reality it’s just drizzling rain without any view.

After dropping the Siberian close to Reykjavik, i added the Snæfellsnes peninsula as a well rewarded extra. The concept of paved roads hadn’t really reached this peninsula so my small Opel Karl had to step up its game and pretend to be a 4WD. He managed well. It wasn’t for long however that I could be just me and my Karl. Suddenly two Slovenian boys stood juggling with five balls each at the side of the road. They were in fact so busy with juggling that they hadn’t even seen I stopped for them.
The next day I continued my road and as soon as the boys saw me coming, they climbed on top of each other to become a 3.5 meter high hitchhiker. They had stepped up their game as professional hitchhiker even more so very little doubt to take them again on board.

That last day kind of ended my trip. Iceland has been a real cool experience with stunning scenery, fog, mountain roads, Nutella eating bear hunters, polish friendly look-alike serial killers, Norwegians scared for being played bankrupt, three Icelandic guys with whom a Taiwanese guy and I had a funny night out, a full massive bird attack by Arctic Sterns, two super funny Slovenian jugglers and an English girl who was capable of navigating an oil tanker or cruise ship (how often do you encounter that in the backpack scene) with whom I ended up exploring a long cave without guide just the morning before my flight and almost lost our way inside (don’t tell my mom I did this!)

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