Somebody asked me once “You’ve already been to Iceland. Why would you want to go back?” Because it’s amazing. That’s why. That was the motivation that made me look for a Workaway in Reykjavik and the reason that I ended up spending the last two weeks of my first three months in Europe there. 

Arriving In Iceland

I flew from Paris on June 3rd and I arrived in Iceland on June 4th at midnight. Rosa, and her daughter, Rosalyn, went to pick me up at the airport and I could not tell that it was so late, first because they were in such a good mood and didn’t seem at all sleepy, and second because everything was bright and sunny. That’s what happens when it’s summer and you are in the arctic circle. 

On the way there Rosa explained what my task would be, which was to help build a fence. She told me that her husband, Pétur, was sleeping and that he would be getting up early to go fishing. She also told me about their two Chihuahuas. After about 40 minutes of driving through the barren landscape of volcanic rock and moss of the Keflavik peninsula, we arrived at their house.

As soon as we opened the door their two Chihuahuas came running out and barking. Rosa made the joke that they were my friends because they were also from Mexico, but, oh no, they were terrible dogs. They did not like me. They didn’t like me at all. Not even a little bit. For the rest of the time I had to be really careful around them. 

It was really late when we arrived, but it was so bizarre for everything to be so bright. They didn’t even need to turn on the lights. Rosa very quietly showed me my room. I remember she closed the blackout blinds and there was still light coming through. “You have a sleeping mask?”, she asked. I said, “Yes.” I had already known, thanks to Iceland With a View, to come prepared with a face mask for sleeping. They all went promptly to bed, but I was too excited. The first time I came to Iceland I was only a tourist, but now I was living here. Heck yeah!

My Workaway Tasks

The next morning Rosa explained, over a cup of Nespresso, in more detail what my job was. They had a yard that was shared between them and their neighbors. They had been postponing building a fence, but it was finally time. The two chihuahuas were absolute menaces and they were getting into their neighbors’ space, and likewise the other pets were coming over way too much. So that’s when they hired me. 

The first thing we needed to do was to go to the store to get some tools for me to do my job. Pétur was a fisherman, and he only had fisherman tools. What I needed were gardening tools. You see, the only barrier separating the three properties they had was the hedge of overgrown brush that needed to be trimmed down and destroyed. Eventually, after a fun visit to the hardware store, and armed with a saw, scissors, and a shovel, I was able to wage war against this outta control hedge. I spent about the first week and a half just clearing what were basically small trees.  

Eventually when I started digging the actual holes to put the fence posts in, to my surprise, I would dig about 4 inches and then hit solid rock. I would try to dig around it and find that it wasn’t just a rock that I could flip out and pull out of the ground. No. These were 4-ton rocks that either I needed to break with a jackhammer or I needed a freaking bulldozer to move out. Indeed, I ended up not completing the fence for this family, but at least I got them started. 

Hanging Out With My Host Family

Rosa was a hairdresser, so depending on her appointments, she had quite a bit of flexibility to come and go. We ended up spending a lot of time together. We started most mornings with a cup of coffee. She would go to her job and I would work on the fence outside. In the afternoon she would come back, and we would have dinner together with Pétur and Rosalyn. She was a fantastic cook. Every day was a treat, but the absolute best was the dinner of lamb steak and greens along with some Egils Appelsín soda. Absolutely delicious. 

I watched a lot of TV with Rosa’s family. One time we watched a whole documentary on Netflix about the World’s Strongest Men. One of them, of course, ended up being Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson, who was famous through the series Game of Thrones, as The Mountain. When the documentary started sharing his story, Rosa casually goes, “Oh! I cut that guys’ wife’s hair”. How cool is that?

Rosalyn was around 16 or 17 at the time. She was in high school, but, of course, it was summer. I remember I stayed up till midnight one night watching Thor Ragnarok with her. I am not a Marvel fan, so I asked her how accurate all of it was. She was like, “Yeah, well, I mean, it’s Hollywood, but we do get taught all these things in school”. She told me about the Norse deity hierarchy, and she told me about Fenrir, the giant wolf that even the gods feared. All of it was so cool! I really think that that conversation was the beginning of my affinity towards Norse culture. 

Their house was split into three levels. First was the basement, laundry room and the garage. Half a story up was the main level where the kitchen and the living room were, and half a story up from that is where all the bedrooms were. Outside in the Garden they had a large garden table that we never sat at. It was always just full of stuff. They also had a small little house adjacent to them, like a little studio that they rented out. A guy from Los Angeles was living there. I chatted with him once, but rarely saw him.

Discovering My Favorite Beach

One afternoon after finishing my work I got on Google Maps looking for any new cool places to check out. I found a hot bath right next to the ocean that I’d never been to before, so I rode one of Rosa’s bicycles to it. After passing an airport and going down a trail full of Nootka Lupines I made it to the Nauthólsvík Geothermal Beach, and there were a lot of people there. No wonder. There’s so much to do! 

The whole complex consisted of a beach with volleyball nets, a circular bench in the water, a small dock, and a hot bath and sauna. I paid the fee to get into the hot bath and went through the ritual of showering before getting in. Once I was all cleaned up I looked for a spot where I could squeeze into the crowded pool. 

While I was in the bath two amazing things happened. The first one was that a man, whom I can only describe as looking like Stoick from How To Train Your Dragon, invited me to overcome my fear of cold water. It’s a really cool story (pardon the pun), and you can find it here. The second was that, unbeknownst to me, in that crowded pool was a guy named Christian, from Italy, whom I would meet later on in my time in Iceland. After about two hours I eventually went home, feeling refreshed, and having found my favorite beach in Iceland. 

My CouchSurfing Weekend in Iceland

So Couch Surfing has a Hangout feature. You can make yourself “available” to hangout if you want to be spontaneous, or you can create an event, you select a time and place to meet and you give a description of what you are going to do. It was through this feature that I saw that a local couple wanted to go camping over the weekend, and they were looking for people to join them. I had the weekend free, so I decided to go along. 

The only thing I needed was to provide my own camping gear. Thankfully my host family had camping gear that I could borrow. I think Rosa even bought me a tent that I could take. (Seriously, she was the best.) On Friday afternoon, after I finished my work, Rosa took me to the pickup spot where I was supposed to meet with Christian and his girlfriend. When we saw each other Christian asked me where he had seen me before. We came to find out that we both had been at the hot bath two days earlier. Ha! What are the odds? After our quick chat, we loaded onto their little RAV-4 and off we went. 

There is not enough space in this blog to cram everything we did in those two days. You can read the full story in detail here, but I’ll briefly tell you that Christian and Isabella were so sweet. They were from Italy, but had lived in Iceland for three years and they were very familiar with what was going on in the area, so we drove to a waterfall and explored for a bit. Then we kept driving north for a few hours, and we made it to a cove where we made our campsite. It was bright as heck, and very windy, so it ended up being quite a chilly night. 

The next morning we woke up, we drove to a gas station, fueled up, and saw some giant blue eggs that you can buy for $10 for 4 eggs. We drove to a hot spring next to the ocean. We kept driving to the westernmost point of Iceland, where we saw the puffins! They say that from this point on a clear day, you can see Greenland! After that we drove to a red beach in the west fjords, and then we drove to a little town in a cove up there where we set up our camp. 

The next morning Christian and I went on a hike. Isabella was pregnant, so she didn’t come with us. We went up a slope and we ended up on top of what looked like a vast mesa of gray rock contrasting with the ocean and the clouds. I remember the earth was so crunchy up there. It was so beautiful, and so windy. I remember seeing the birds flying and just coasting, they were just letting the air carry them up there. Eventually we made it down to where Isabella was waiting for us. We loaded up and we started driving back to Reykjavik. 

Seeing the Midnight Sun

The one thing that I really did want to do was to see the Midnight Sun. I just missed the Solstice by a few days, but I really wanted to be awake during the night and take it all in. So, that same night that Rosalyn and I had watched Thor Ragnarok, at around 1 in the morning I took the bicycle to downtown Reykjavik and just explored.

It was strange to be out and to look at my watch and to know that it was 1:21 in the morning and to see everything be so bright. I just biked around seeing the same city that I had seen many times before, only at night this time. I rode past the harbor, past the hallgrímskirkja church, and I went and saw the Grótta Island, where hundreds of birds in their mating season were all so alive and awake.

I wanted to see the world like this. Everything was lit and covered in light, like a sunrise, and so still. The water of Reykjavik Harbor was a perfectly clear reflection of the sky. The moon was up, and the sun was up too, and the clouds were bathed in pink and purple and red. I wasn’t the only one out there. I saw other people walking, talking quietly. It was summer, and it was chilly. It was so peaceful and it was beautiful. 

I’ve written about how years prior I saw a little snippet in a magazine about kayaking underneath the midnight sun in Iceland. I had this desire to see the midnight sun, to go to Iceland and to see it like this. I finally got to do it. God fulfilled that desire for me. Up until The Coolest Thing That Ever Happened To Me, this had been the coolest thing that had happened to me. Eventually, at 2.36 a.m. I came back to the house and I went to sleep. 

The End of My Trip

On my second to last night I met up with Elyssa. I had met at a hostel in Switzerland about two months before, but she was from Reykjavik. I added her on Instagram, so when I was in her hometown we decided to catch up over dinner. She was a yogi, a dancer, and a vegetarian. I, on the other hand, had a horse burger that night, which was delicious. It was a fun night. The special thing was that it was my first time feeling like I had friends overseas. 

I know it might sound like a lot, but my time in Iceland turned out to be quite chill this time around. All the other workdays I had done up to that point I seemed to always be up to something. I was always going out and exploring, always meeting people and taking advantage of where I was. Here I just stayed home a whole bunch. It was perhaps my most boring workaway in terms of how much I did. 

I remember I didn’t have a whole lot of energy. I guess it’s just a testament to the fact that you can be tired, even though you’re in Iceland. Even though I had the opportunity to go do stuff I chose not to. I chose to just hang out, and spend time with Rosa, and a little bit of time with Rosalyn. We talked about going fishing on Peter’s boat, but we ended up not doing that. Bummer. I’m still sad about the fact that we didn’t do that. 

Eventually, my trip ended just like it had started. Rosalyn and Rosa dropped me off at the airport, and on June 13th, I got on the airplane to go to New York. My time in Iceland came to an end, and my time in Iceland concluded my three month long trip through Europe. 

Finding My Muse

This trip changed me forever. It set me up to have a job abroad, it set me up to have real friends abroad, and it set me up to become truly fluent in German. Most importantly though, it set me up to become the man I want to be, and that is priceless. This trip was, in a sense, a muse, a sort of call that I felt. Indeed, I answered the call and my life is so much better for it. 

I wonder what your muse is? What is calling you to go and seek it out? Yes, going on an adventure is scary, and it is also so worth it. I am so proud of the stories that I have to share. Imagine if you had some of your own! Imagine the kind of person you would be if you went out looking for it. 

• P. S. This is the last post in a series of my first trip through Europe. The stories go in the following order:

Traveling for Revenge in Italy

The Coolest Thing that Ever Happened to Me

My First Workaway Experience: Donkeys, Gardens, and Lumberjacks. 

My Workaway in the North of Germany: Fences, Barns, and lots of Ice Cream. 

My Workaway in the South of France

My Workaway In Iceland

• P.P.S. Trips like this one and the other two times that I’ve been to Iceland inspired me to write Peter The Brave Little Puffin and my upcoming film script about Vikings. Keep cheering me on! 

I hope this story is encouraging to you. If you know somebody that you think this might be encouraging to as well, go ahead and share it with them!