Well, here I am in Iceland. It’s Monday morning, and I’m sitting in a hostel drinking tea. It’s been an adventure so far, though perhaps not kind you’d envy.

Our flight from Atlanta landed in JFK Saturday night, massively delayed, and we stood up, backpacks on, ready to dash to the next gate and beg them to let us on. Time ticked on as we impatiently waited to exit our plane. “They haven’t even opened the door yet!” The woman in front of us exclaimed.

Stephen and Annie instructed me to run ahead and tell the people at the gate to our Iceland flight that there were four more people coming, delayed by a baby, a toddler, and the stroller they’d checked at the gate, and beg them to hold the flight for us.

Right. The doors opened, and off I marched at a Brisk Clip. I did stop to help a man whose bag had hopelessly tangled with the metal railing. But I hurried as much as I felt I could.

“On your left!” Someone called behind me.

I looked back to see Stephen, Annie, the babies, the bags, and the stroller fully booking it through the airport. Oh, we’re running running. So I ran too, rudely pushing past people, and we got to the gate of the Iceland flight as the last two people were boarding.

A woman came up and stood in line behind us. I recognized her from our previous flight. “Oh, you’re going to Iceland too?” I asked.

“Yeah, I think there’s like 30 of us,” she said as more and more people joined our line.

So we all made it on and the mad dash was unnecessary, although I confess I enjoyed the thrill of literally running through the airport.

Five hours to Iceland. We left at midnight, jumped ahead four hours, and landed at 9am. Whatever dubious sleep we got on that flight was all the sleep we were going to get that first night.

Long story short, it wasn’t enough. But we made it to Iceland!

Thankfully Daniel slept, curling up in the storage space at the bottom of the stroller.

Next hurdle: getting the camper van.

This legitimately took several hours. As far as we could tell, there was no shuttle or anything from the airport to the rental place. So Stephen left his luggage with us and took a taxi. He quickly learned that the manual transmission of the van was much more difficult than the zippy little slingshot he’d practiced on.

Anyway. I don’t quite know what all took him hours, bless his heart. Meanwhile, we waited. “By the way, happy Mother’s Day,” I said to Annie.

When Stephen finally showed up, we hauled out luggage into the camper van and encountered the next hurdle: car seats.

I was so out of it by then, and I curled up on the back bed and fell into an almost-sleep as Annie and Stephen sorted out car seats. Long story short, the rental company provided car seats but didn’t give instructions on how to anchor them properly. Much discussion and frustration ensued.

Nevertheless, it got sorted out eventually. And with my almost-nap in the back for the duration of it, I was semi-functional again, and I took my place in the front passenger seat as Stephen drove and Annie sat in the back with the babies.

“Can I call you Chewie?” Stephen asked.

“What?”

“I feel like Han Solo, so you should be Chewie.”

“Okay!”

“We’re gonna make the jump to hyperspace, Chewie!” Stephen called, shifting jerkily into third gear. (We decided that Annie was Princess Leia, Daniel was C-3PO, and Hannah was R2-D2 since she only makes funny little noises.)

It’s funny…I don’t exactly see myself as someone who knows how to drive a manual transmission. But I discovered that I know a lot more than I gave myself credit for as I backseat drove that camper van.

“You need to push in the clutch when you break so you don’t stall.”

“Don’t shift back down to first until you come to a complete stop.”

“Shift into third! Can’t you hear the engine?”

I didn’t yell, but I did adopt “big sister voice” which may have been annoying. Nevertheless, though hungry and tired, we were all determined to have grace for each other and laugh instead of cry as much as possible.

The only thing I couldn’t help with was shifting into reverse. The camper van legitimately didn’t seem capable of going into reverse.

Next hurdle: getting groceries.

We were all committed to cooking our own food instead of going out to eat, so I directed Stephen around the copious roundabouts to Bónus, a grocery store that’s kind-of like the Icelandic Aldi as far as I can tell. We found a parking space we could pull through so we wouldn’t have to reverse, and we spent rather a long time there, as we all had to use the bathroom (our camper had a toilet, there was no water in it yet so we couldn’t use it), change clothes, and freshen up a bit.

Also, there were babies to tend to.

At one point I looked at my watch and realized it was 2 pm already, and I still hadn’t had any tea. Yes, I went through all of this WITH NO TEA. I kept thinking I was going to take a nap soon, and if I drink tea before I nap, I get sleep paralysis. But there was a coffee shop right next to Bónus, so I popped in and got a tea.

Followers on Instagram had warned me about egregious food prices in Iceland. But honestly, considering the fact that they have to import almost everything, I didn’t think the grocery prices were bad at all. And the tea from the coffee shop was about what it would be in the USA. We went around grabbing snacks, supplies for PB&J’s and hotdogs, and a few random things like cans of soup, prioritizing anything that looked “weird and Icelandic.” (And by “weird” I just mean unfamiliar…no shade to Iceland I promise haha.)

Fun Fact: my co-worker had told me that hotdogs were a big thing in Iceland. Sure enough, the grocery store had a large selection of random flavors with no English translation. Hotdog roulette! Fun!

Next hurdle: At the grocery store, we discovered we couldn’t get the camper van door to lock.

Then: when we got to our campsite, Annie didn’t think it looked safe enough to stay with unlocked doors. This caused a great deal of conversation and pro-con lists, until we discovered that you had to press the lock on the key fob before the normal lock on the door would work.

Did it make sense to me? No.

Was I just happy to have a place to stay? Yes.

Now, you may be wondering, “how can you possibly pull into and out of a campsite with no reverse?”

That, my friends, is a very good question. The answer is, you park very wonky, you almost hit a concrete planter box, someone in your party says “look, those people have the exact camper van that we do, maybe they can show us how to use reverse,” and someone else says “yeah but they look like they don’t want to be disturbed.”

It was nearing 5 pm by this point, and we were all tired and cranky and HUNGRY. All we’d had to eat the whole day so far was snacks. Time for real Islandic hot dogs.

The campground also had a hostel onsite, and while there were no fire pits, there was a bbq station and a kitchen area. We dismissed the bbq station as taking too long, and then spent ages waiting for the burners in the kitchen area to heat our food, before realizing that for some reason our particular stove was dysfunctional and I needed to switch to another.

So that whole process burned another…hour? I don’t know. But finally, finally, our fancy Icelandic hotdogs were cook and we adorned them with Icelandic condiments (hey! this one is sweet!) and chowed them down with a side of blueberries and carrots.

And that’s when things finally began looking up.

One interesting thing is that Reykjavik is the main city in Iceland, so while some, like us, were just beginning their Icelandic journey, others were ending it and offloading food and supplies to fellow passengers. One Canadian couple came up with a whole bag of groceries to give us. Then, as we spoke to them more, we learned a key fact: they were the couple from the camper van that was just like ours.

And, yes, they knew how to get it into reverse!

Turns out, there was a ring at the base of the gear shift you had to life up to shift into reverse. They showed Stephen, he practiced a bit, and that giant problem was now solved.

Hooray!

“Wait, but you’re still parked wonky,” I said when I saw the camper van again.

“Yeah, because it’s iconic,” said Stephen.

Honestly that was basically the end of the night for me. I was suddenly nonfunctional tired. But we still had to drive to a place where we could get water. “If I shower while you go get water, do you mind if I just crawl into bed while you do everything else you need to do?” I asked. (There were showers at the campground…we were using the camper van shower for storage.)

“Of course!”

So by 8:45 pm we’d lowered my bunk from the ceiling and I crawled into the sleeping bag I’d managed to bring in my carryon. “I’m about to start my introvert time. Is there anything else any of you need from me?”

“Nope!”

So I put my headphones in and pulled my sleep mask over my eyes. I wasn’t even trying to fall asleep yet, just introverting while the others rattled around the remaining available camper space, but I was out like a light.

Frankly, despite babies crying, adults snoring, and the sun barely setting, I slept amazingly. Earplugs and an eye mask work wonders, I learned back on my train riding days that I never managed to post about on here (although I’m slowly working through the tale on Patreon).

So the first day was a problem-solving day more than an adventuring day, as it turned out. But problem-solving is it’s own sort of adventure, is it not?

Until next time!