March 10, 2012

The British Virgin Islands

I never figured out why these islands are called Virgin Islands, but the British Virgin Islands are barely any different to the USVI’s. They are equally beautiful, full of more beautiful beaches, a little pricy, plagued by cruise ships and a lot of boaters and ex-pats escaping the colder north. They’re all connected by ferries, and at points, you could almost swim from the US to the UK without anyone noticing.

Welcome to the BVI’s

Matt from NYC was my new travel buddy, replacing Ursula, now back in NYC. We ferried from St. Thomas to Tortola with a Quebecois couple who was renting a sailboat in Tortola and sailing around the virgin islands for 5 weeks. We settled for our less impressive plan to take public ferries around the islands for 5 days.

anegada lobster

In Tortola, we stayed at the Ole Works Inn, a plantation restored into a hotel in Cane Garden Bay. The beach was lined with restaurants and small hotels, where you could find local Anegada lobster and fresh snapper. Though its caught locally, only tourists seem to eat any seafood, and the locals eat BBQ, so we tried some saucy ribs and wings too, but stayed touristy by pairing it with a bottle of champagne that could have paid for my entire BVI visit (thanks Matt!).

the shipyard

On the west end, we stayed at the Jolly Roger, a pub with 5 rooms above the restaurant for rent. We explored the harbor and stumbled into an eerie shipyard, scattered with shipwreck parts, the skeletons of boats in disrepair, and one sunken, rusted ship. We found a make-shift bar built with drift wood fully stocked with countless bottles of rum, but no one around to drink them. We didn’t dare disturb the place, in case some haunted pirate popped up. Just a mile away was Sopers Hole marina, full of shiny new boats I couldn’t imagine anyone abandoning, where we ate the best seafood pasta (pronounced pah-stah, not with that awful American drawl) I’ve ever had.

White Bay

We only went to Road Town (the capital) for ferry transfers, but found a fresh fruit smoothie stand there that I’d consider going back to just to have another one. We ferried to Jost Van Dyke, home of famous Foxy’s beach bar – the alleged birthplace of the painkiller cocktail. We drank bushwhackers and painkillers on White Bay beach, someplace stolen straight from a picture perfect postcard of the ultimate Caribbean destination.

Josiah’s bay was another dreamy beach, a lazier beach, with a handful of people lying around the only 2 buildings there. Both are restaurants, and one serves a mean chicken roti, and the rest of the coast is deserted for little kids to practice surfing. They caught waves better than I’ll ever learn how to, and it makes me wish I grew up playing in the Caribbean waves with a sun-kissed tan and a 6 pack at age 10.

Josiah’s bay

We daytripped to Virgin Gorda, to see BVI’s number one attraction, “the baths.” I saw pictures and read about this place so many times before actually figuring out what it was, but basically, it’s a beach covered in massive boulder rocks, that you can climb over and through caves, or swim between and snorkel above. Our ferry almost murdered all its passengers with carbon dioxide poisoning as the passenger seating area completely filled with boat exhaust, but we made it, and didn’t even get seasick. Our taxi was flyered with 2002 tourist pamhplets and a roll of kitchen towels that had probably remained unopened for ten years too, but no one seemed to care, much less the driver.

the baths

Leaving Beef Island International Airport for St. Martin was almost painless, except when security insisted I buy a 25cent ziplock bag to store my chapstick and sublock in. We had to leave the security checkpoint to buy one in the airport terminal, and come back through security, strip down and unpack everything onto the conveyor belt, at exactly the same moment when another woman came through security with sunscreen. I watched the security inspector pick it up, put it back in her purse, and wave her through. What’s up with that? So I left Beef Island with some beef… pun intended 😛

March 7, 2012

The US Virgin Islands, Part II

the three virgin islands

St. Croix

Christiansted was our main hub, a quaint town full of ruinous stone buildings and colourful houses hugging a boardwalk speckled with boats and bars. The seaplane terminal is there, as well as private boats to charter and tour boats that take you on scuba and snorkeling trips. I’d recommend the Kindered Spirit for charters, a Buck Island snorkel tour, and Brewpub for some delicious micro-brews and 2for1 drinks on Tuesday eves.

Frederiksted is a cross between a deserted colonial town and one big souvenir shop, since the islands only cruise ship harbor is there. Frederiksted beach is nice, with Coco’s beach bar serving Big Beard Pale Ale, an island local. Rainbow beach is even nicer, Rhythms bar grilling shrimp kebabs which always seem to run out.

Cruzan Rum distillery

Between the two cities is the Cruzan Rum factory, where I went on a distillery tour whose main attraction is the unlimited rum tasting that follows. Estate Whim, the islands main historical attraction, is an old cane plantation turned museum which closes on Tuesdays, when you can still walk freely around the plantation grounds without paying the $10 entrance fee. There’s also a gas station on the main road through the island, but they’re out of gas, as of last Wednesday, yet still open… bizarre.

It was the weekend of AgriFair when we arrived, the year’s biggest event, comparable to a state fair but with much better food. Goat curries, kalaloo and roti competitions are held between vendors, but every stall seems to serve the same, scrumptious menu.

The east side of the island, Point Udall, is the easternmost part of the United States. It’s

Point Udall

commemorated with a strange stone statue that kind of looks like a large sundial or metaphorical compass, but nearby is the hiking trail to secluded Isaac and Jack’s bay –beaches well worth the hike to see and bathe topless in privacy.

On the north side, we visited Cane Bay, yet another beautiful beach, and Salt River Bay, the landing point of Christopher Columbus in the 15^th century that fills with bioluminescent water after dusk. We hiked to the Carambola Tide pools, a seductive little lagoon nestled in black rock boulders that protect you from the splashing waves. The trail head pointed us 2.1 miles to the “falls” which we couldn’t figure out where to find or how to spot in the dry season, but once a few big waves hit the lagoon wall, the rocks poured down water above our heads, turning one side of the lagoon into a narrow cave.

Carambola Tide pools

St. Thomas

We landed in St. Thomas in the east harbor, Red Hook, and flagged down a safari bus for the $2 trip to Charlotte Amalie. They’re called safaris because they’re 350hp+ trucks whose flatbeds have been turned into rows of bench seating, resembling a typical, African safari jeep. We went to a beach somewhere near Red Town whose name I never learned, accompanied by our Uncle who admitted he hadn’t been to a beach in 10 or 15 years. We met 3 Americans there who didn’t think it was weird to try and ‘charm’ me and Ursula despite his presence. Though we expressed some awkwardness, they insisted on buying shots and buckets of coronas, while blaring techno from their portable boom box. Our uncle took the opportunity to make a new friend nearby instead of trying to keep refusing their offers for a drink.

We went to Morningside beach for another day of sun, an extension of the Marriot Resort in Charlotte Amalie where my uncle decided to have my celebratory birthday meal. He also took us to breakfast one morning in Frenchtown, and then stuck by our side for a night out at the Fat Turtle where he sat quietly near by while we danced and drank with crew from Donald Trumps

Estate Whim plantation

private yacht (it probably wasn’t really Trumps boat, but it sounds nice). My uncle then took us on a 1 hour driving tour at 1 am through the pitch black roads which prevented us from actually seeing anything he was talking about. He really liked escorting us around, or so it seemed.

The day we left St. Thomas, we spent the afternoon at the airport-side Emerald beach, where we watched plane after plane take off, and met a South African captain and Quebecois chef from some other private boat. We drank painkillers and bushwhackers, and I indulged in the free wifi at the bar to start reading the flood of birthday wellwishes starting to come in.

St. John

Most of St. John island is a national park, but Cruz Bay is a little town with a pretty nice beach and everything you would ever need including $1 happy hour and amazing barbeque ribs from Candies o little shack. We met a guy there who had been backpacking the tiny island for 4 weeks, and he gave us a map circled with all the important points of interest we had to see in our day or two there. We hitchhiked to all the trail heads, hiking through the rain forest to see some ancient petroglyphs, snorkeling at Waterlemon Bay and bodysurfing waves at Cinnamon Bay.

me and Ursula at Cinnamon Bay

We ferried between St. John and St. Thomas, and had to fly between St. Thomas and St. Croix since they’re about 80 miles apart. We went back to St. Croix for the eve of my birthday, and on the 26^th I had to swap Ursula for Matt, another friend from NYC who landed at the same time her flight departed. Me and Matt then spent a couple more days on St. Croix at his friend’s apartment, before flying back to St. Thomas where we boarded a 45 minute ferry to Tortola, to begin a long weekend of island hopping the British Virgin Islands.

March 2, 2012

St. Croix, part I

Me and Ursula started our trip to Caribbean with a 5 am SuperShuttle to JFK airport and half expected to not make it to St. Croix that day, with the track record American Airlines has with us. We checked in a little sooner than required, luckily enough to find out our flight departure had moved 25 minutes earlier. The flight was overbooked, but we made it to Miami where our connecting flight had also been moved 30 minutes, and took turns sleeping on eachothers shoulders and laps in airport lounges and cramped airplane seats.

Chris' serenades drawing a crown on Cane Bay

There was a shiny-headed bald guy on our flight who sat across from us in the departure lounge in Miami, slightly amused by our antics, and an overly talkative Southerner who sat beside us on our flight. Chris had just finished chemo treatment, and John Boy had left Louisiana to live in Paradise with a job at the Cruzan Rum factory, where his unlimited supply of rum drove him to a life of sobriety.
On the flight over, JohnBoy dictated all the must-do’s and must-see’s of St. Croix, and kindly offered us a lift from the airport straight to Rainbow Beach, where the western end of the island would be the perfect sunset location, accompanied by live music and a barefoot bar crowd all evening. We got a text from our couchsurf host saying that her landlord was being investigated

the view from my grandmothers house

for cocaine possession so strangers were no longer welcomed into her apartment, so watched the sunset with a a new-found feeling of homelessness.
Instead, we did some impromptu and informal couchsurfing, first with Chris, then on a boat in Christiansted harbour, and then at my step grandmothers Grecian house after hitchhiking a catamaran to St. Thomas. Chris ended up being quite possibly the most interesting man in the

me and Ursula on Christiansted dock after securing our boatride to St. Thomas aboard the Kindered Spirit

world, but with a big “sketchy” factor, balanced out by his beautiful, Jack Johnson/John Mayer sounding voice. The boat we slept on was owned by Miles, who took us out on a snorkel tour to Buck Island and gave us private, open-bar access to his closed bar the day of my birthday. The catamaran was called the Kindered Spirit, and the captain resembled Brad Pitt at age 30 and the first mate was a massive Norwegian/Canadian/American named Thor who had Vikings tattooed on both his elbows.
By the time our week ended, we felt like locals walking around Christiansted, running into friends we’d made everywhere we went. We spent a couple days on St. Thomas where we hiked the National Park and hitchhiked between beaches with a guy named Adam and his dad. On St. Thomas, we had our own personal driver named Baldeo, who I called Uncle but

Hiking to Waterlemon beach on St. John

Im still unsure of his relationship to my family there. He takes care of my widowed grandmother, who is recovering from some sort of aneurysm and has to have dialysis three times a week. Only one of her daughters, Pam, who shockingly resembles my own mother, lives in St. Thomas now, and is there to help take care of their restaurant until it sells. I found out my grandfather, Freddy, had 2 families on either side of the river in Guyana when my mom was growing up. In the end, he “chose” my step-grandmother Janet and their 5 children and moved to St. Thomas where he died in 1994 after I had only met him once. He was ¾ Chinese, ¼ black, and worked as a land surveyor for the government. They also owned a jewelry store at some point, and as a parting gift, my grandmother gave me a pair of silver earrings and a 14kt gold pendant etched with a map of the virgin islands.

on the way to Buck Island. This picture is not a dramatization, the water is actually this blue.

The pendant helped us navigate our way back to St. Croix, but more than that, symbolized the return of kindness that my grandfathers two families lacked for many years. My mother had gone to school in the University of the Virgin Islands for a couple years as a teenager and had been refused the hospitality of staying with her grandfathers other family then. It was fascinating to talk to my step aunties and “uncle” about my grandfather I barely knew, and rediscover some history that would have otherwise died with him if it wasn’t for the unplanned decision to visit St. Thomas. My step-aunty Meg and I have now combined forces to try and trace our grandfather’s history even further back, to finally learn where in China our descendants come from. Perhaps there’s a Chinese princess somewhere in there too…

February 19, 2012

Amsterdam

Amsterdam was totally frozen over when I arrived there from the Irelands. The canals were frozen solid, for the first time in over a decade, and people were traveling by circles around the city center instead of weaving thru the zigzagging streets. The weather was +9`C a few days before so I only packed a light rain jacket, but I had to scour the street market in De Pijp for another sweater and some long-johns to layer up against the cold.

The frozen canals

I couchsurfed with a few different hosts the week I was there. The first was a big Dutch guy with curly long blond hair, then a Persian immigrant living in an ‘anti-squat,’ and finally an Indonesian-dutch Phd student. I also spent some time with a Greek guy born and raised in the Netherlands who knew a few squat locations for great eating, drinking and ping pong. I haven’t

My vegan meal at MKZ

quite figured out the logistics of squats and anti-squats, but they both create really interesting, atypical spaces to commune. The Persian guy lived in an abandoned office building with 5 other roomates who each lived in an office room, while the other 30 offices just stayed eerily empty. The squated spaces were a combination or restaurants and bars, one in an old film school campus where people screen movies and train in acrobatics. People from all walks of life and different fringes of society get together for ping pong tournaments with 30 players on one table and 3 course vegan meals for 5 euros. I wasn’t any good at ping pong and didnt bring my own paddle anyway, but the vegan meal was delicious and paired well with a 1 euro organic beer.

I spent my days trying to sight-see but could only bear the cold for a couple hours at a time, so broke up my walks outside with stops to the Van Gogh museum and visiting various cafes. I met

Van Gogh self portrait

a friend for lunch in the Surinamese neighbourhood and accidentally ended up eating Cuban food, and I stumbled upon the redlight district when I got lost trying to find central station.

Besides getting lost a couple times and making a few mistakes with packing (plus a few I made during the trip that I haven’t admitted to), the trip was slightly overshadowed by my upcoming phd interview so I used it as an excuse to sit still and stay inside. I couldn’t capitalize on the rare winter weather since I didnt have any iceskates, and was a little tired of the cold after a 6 week snow storm in Iceland, so I’ve decided I just have to go back to Amsterdam in the spring to really scratch under the surface of the charming, slightly infamous city.

February 11, 2012

Northern Ireland

When I arrived in Belfast, I wondered if I was in a new country. I was advised by my various couchsurf hosts in the Repbulic of Ireland and Northern Ireland that I could safely count each Ireland as its own country, since counting Northern Ireland as a UK visit was like counting Scotland as the same place as England, and saying there’s only one Ireland is opening a whole can of beans that I dont know enough about to defend.

Welcome to Northern Ireland

I had the greatest host of all time in Belfast, Rob, who knew how to play the Irish flute and Irish dance and spoke with the greatest Irish accent. He had another couchsurfer from Romania at his apartment the same weekend I was visiting, and we went out to an Irish pub to listen to a session, a live music night where a bunch of random musicians come together to jam on their various instruments. There was a couple flutists, a fiddler, a guitarist, and some sort of percussionist I think. They played happy, catchy folk songs that made you want to tap your foot and slap your knee, and out of the guinness drinking crown, a guy stood up and started river dancing impromptu.

Later that night we talked to the river dancer, and turned out he was actually a river dancer, having toured with the River Dance show for ten years. He was “retired” from the show, at only 30-something years old, and was actually a Quebecois Canadian descendant from Ireland. Then Rob and him had a dance off as the bar was closing, and the bouncers had to stop their feet from clapping despite the few people left in the pub cheering them on for more.

Infamous Sandy Row

The next 36 hours I basically lived on Robs couch, having contracted some serious food poisoning or some stomach bug that crippled me with bouts of vomiting and the inability to eat for 2 days. He took care of me and checked up on me every hour, making sure I stayed alive and force-fed me some water and white rice. Needless to say I didnt get to see much of Belfast, missing out on a rugby match and an Irish dance social, but on my last day there I mustered up the energy to take a walking tour of Belfast. I strolled through the western districts and saw the politically and historically charged murals of Belfast. I also walked through downtown and Royal Avenue to see the impressive city hall.

Belfast's Murals

Finally I boarded my bus to the airport that took me on a scenic drive through the outskirts of Belfast, through rolling green hills and farms in the countryside, and I couldn’t help but notice how stereotypical it was for everything in Ireland to seem a bit greyish except for the fluorescent green grass that managed to grow everywhere, as lively and vibrant as a summer field in a scene from Green Acres.

February 7, 2012

The Republic of Ireland

The Royal Gardens at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, with the Wellington Monument in Phoenix Park in the far background

I spent a week in the ‘Irelands’, 4 days in Dublin and 3 days in Belfast, split between 3 couchsurf hosts and a handful of other local friends and couchsurfers. In Dublin, I stayed at a couchsurf house full of Irish students, and my host Griffin (what a perfect Irish name) had plenty of time to walk around with me. He worked some evenings at a Yoga studio and let me drop in on an advanced classs to partake in some well overdue detox and stretching. He showed me Phoenix park, and Kilmainham Gaol – a former prison which has played an incredibly important part in Irish history. We tried to go to the Irish Museum of Modern Art, just to discover no exhibits are open until 2013. He walked me through Trinity College campus, where I saw some of the most beautiful and oldest architecture in the whole city.

Kilmainham Gaol West Wing

We visited the famous Porterhouse, and sampled their large but weird array of beers. We had oyster stout, and some red ale that tasted like dirty gym socks. I forgot to sample the strawberry beer apparently so I´ll have to go back for that. I spent some time wandering around by myself, visiting the Guinness Store house and learning it takes 119.5 seconds to pour a perfect pint of that yummy stuff. I spent a day working on my phd proposal at the Art of Coffee cafe house, sipping on a never ending cup of tea on the edge of downtown Dublin.

Griffin´s roomate Hugh worked at Jameson Old Distillery, so I went with my next host Gary and couchsurf friend Marcin to learn about whiskey making and tasting. We tried whiskey ginger, whiskey sprite, whiskey cranberry, and irish coffee, and learned the difference between irish, scotch and bourbon whiskeys. I even got certified as an official whiskey taster, something I never thought or expected I’d achieve so easily.

Jameson certification

I met up with another couchsurfer named Flo who is what I’d call a German Gypsy recovering from extreme nomadicism. At 30, after years of hitchhiking from North America to Patagonia, he settled into a salaried job at Google, and invited me there for lunch to talk about it. Google Europe headquarters are in Dublin, and the 3 googly towers housing 3500 employees (mostly between the ages of 25-30) are full of mac computers, free food and drink, and quirky lounges to nurture creative thinking. I got given a badge and had immediate access to everything, and ate my belly full on what Flo claimed was the best food in Dublin.

119.5 seconds later

We had a lot of laughs to share after realizing our travel philosophies were much the same, but just at different stages in our lives. He had apparently gotten his position after being selected over 2,014 other applicants, and with a facial piercing and dreadlocks, you would maybe guess its the education and character he´s developed from seeing the world that overpowered to make him top choice. He said he got the job by accident, and its impossible to leave with the pay and luxuries he benefits, but after many months there, he´s getting the travel itch bad… ironically I sympathized with him in kind of the opposite way; I’m here trying to settle into a 3 year paid phd position so I can have the comforts and steadiness of a paycheck and a home, but in the back of my head I know I’ll probably be thinking the grass was greener on my side the way I have it now.

February 2, 2012

Glacier Walking & Ice Climbing

I went on a tour offered by Arctic Adventures called “Blue Ice” and had my first intimate encounter with one of Iceland’s glaciers, Sólheimajökull. I´ve seen lots of glaciers, touched a few and chewed some ice off one, but never really played around on one.

arriving to the Glacier

It was pouring rain and grey, but the ice was actually glowing blue. Our tour guide, Valdi, explained that it takes 7m of cubic snow to form 1 cm of blue ice. That´s alot of snow. And Sólheimajökull, “Home of the Sun glacier” is one of the fastest moving glaciers in Iceland, receding about 75 cm and growing 65 cm every year. It is decreasing in size rapidly, mostly from a 10 cm annual height loss, and every day the glacier surface changes dramatically.

cramp ons

New moulins and cones form, with melting ice and lava gravel constantly shaping the topography of it, and lagoons of water and underground streams always thinning the ice layer.

We walked with cramp-ons over the glacier, which makes you feel like a small person with oversized feet, and you never quite trust the ground – the ice looks slippery, and the cramp-ons are supposed to give you adequate grip, but you’re always half-prepared to fall flat on your face. The ice is also transparent, sometimes for a meter or two, and you see the ice bubbles below the surface that could or could not be a thin layer of soon-to-break ice.

Sólheimajökull

Once you get used to stomping around, and figuring out the right angle to place your feet when going up or down hill, you realize you’ve been staring at the ground forever and remember to look up. The view is impressive – a scene from the movie Ice Age. Just blue ice, white ice, and black sand forming a massive landscape as far as your eye can see, disappearing into the grey horizon into what you know to be another, larger glacier.

the ice wall

We did some iceclimbing too, clumsily using two ice picks and the cramp ons to try and crawl up a wall of ice. We went one by one, each attached to our guide by a safety line, and awkwardly tried our best to reach the top while the other 8 tourists looked on. Most of us made it half way or more, but you could see the exhaustion in every person when their legs began to shake (“Elvis legs” our guide called it), and the point when one just had to give up, as they couldn’t muster up enough strength to get the ice pick lodged into the wall for another step. I barely made it to the top, and my hands and toes didn’t feel like they were there anymore. Repelling back down was much easier, and on the walk back to the car, I realized walking on ice seemed like a much simpler task.

January 12, 2012

Sportveiðiblaðið: 8 page article spread

Pick up the latest edition of Sportveiðiblaðið to see the rest of this article. Its an interview with hunter Karl Kristinsson who I guided a horse-back trip for last summer for him and his friends to hunt reindeer in East Iceland.

a glossy 2 page article introduction

pages 7 & 8

January 4, 2012

Flying with the Icelandic Coast Guard

I had never flown in a helicopter before, and I’ve missed so many perfect opportunities before. I should have seen the volcano eruption last year by helicopter, but it was ridiculously expensive, and I could have seen the Hoover Dam and Grand Canyon by helicopter, but the wait was too long. Then, a few days after returning to Iceland, my friend Frikki invited me to walk his dog with him. It was 6pm, dark outside, and we played fetch in Elliðaárdalur. He was bragging to me about how he got to fly with the Icelandic Coast Guard the night before. Then he smiled casually and said, “and I’m flying again tonight. Want to come?”

the pilots

The Icelandic Coast guard rescues farmers, tourists, seamen, and anyone else who gets into trouble when mother nature screws things up. They save injured fishermen from boats and evacuate tourists from glacier crevices – all very heroic, extreme stunts that require them to train full time. The coast guards are a group of manly men, and always fly with one doctor on board since the helicopter functions like a flying ambulance. They wear intimidating uni-suits and helmets fitted with mics, headphones, and some serious night-vision goggles, since they do almost all their training in the winter months after dark.

Frikki is a doctor, not for the coast guard (yet…), and they don’t mind flying with a couple extra people since they can practice mock-rescue situations. We were fitted with some fancy helmets too, and told to do exactly as we were instructed at all times, including the moment when we would get dropped out of the helicopter with just one cable cord as our life line.

After some debate, the pilot decided to fly us to Þórsmörk, a beautiful part of Iceland near Eyjafjallajökull only reachable by foot, horse, or helicopter.

The helicopter they fly is HUGE. Its blades are so long that you’re convinced it’ll fly even though it looks like an immovable tank. I sat in the front of the helicopter, between the two pilots, and watched them flip a bunch of switches, read check lists and make notes, over and over while the blades spun faster and faster. It was completely dark inside, and they had flaslights on their fingers. When it was time for take off, I barely noticed the helicopter lift off the ground, and hoover itself around the building and up into the sky, flying away from Reykjavik city in the most epic way I could have imagined. I put on my night goggles to see better, and everything glowed green.

The goggles are some super tech invention that the most advanced militant forces use, each pair worth more than a car. They transform a pitch black sea into glowing green waves, moving and shining like something from another world. The night sky explodes with billions of stars, and when the helicopter flies full speed, they zoom past the front window like a Star Wars galaxy scene. Lucky for us, the ground was covered in snow, and with the little light that added, our goggles could show us everything. We saw cars driving and people walking, horses running through fields, farm houses glowing with christmas lights, steam rising from geothermal hotspots, and waves break along the coastal cliffs. We saw the city glow of Selfoss as if it was as big and bright as Times Square, and even Hvollsvöllir seemed like an Oasis in the middle of nowhere.

the helicopter

While flying, I became hypnotized by the green world passing under me. The ocean looked possessed, eerily exposed when noone else can see it. The droning sound of the helicopter, almost silenced by my headphones, mixed with the background chatter of the coast guards, sounded like a lullaby pacifying my excitedness. But, my adrenaline quickly returned once we arrived in Þórsmörk; the coast guard put a rope around my body, held down only by my arms, and pushed me out of the helicopter. I dangled like a rag doll, trying to stay as stiff as a board so my cable wouldn’t slip off. On the ground, another guy caught me and held me up against the tornado winds the helicopter was creating, and untied me.

I remember looking up at the helicopter, without my goggles, and watching it like some supernatural, divine object. Without it, I’d be in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night, near an angry volcano, blind, and lost. But, of course, it was thinkable only because I knew it wasn’t true, and the helicopter repelled us back up into its safety in no time. Going up was scarier, since I swung back and forth between the wheels of the helicopter uncontrollably for some time before they could drag me back inside, but I was helpless to scream since noone would hear me, and I couldn’t reach my arms out since I’d slip out of my harness. It makes me wonder how they manage to drag up deranged, hysterical or panicking rescue victims…

I wish I could share a picture from my photo memory, since no camera could capture that narrow, green world I saw through my goggles. But hopefully your imagination does it justice, or else I’d suggest making friends with some doctors who know the coast guards 🙂

December 24, 2011

Little Cayman

Arriving from Vancouver and Vegas to Grand Cayman made it feel like I was flying to a tiny, barely inhabited island, in the middle of nowhere. After a week there, its busyness surprised me, but I started to see the same people, recognize all the main streets, and finished visiting every where there was to visit (some places, more than once). This made it seem smaller and smaller as time passed.

Then I flew to Little Cayman Island, which really is a tiny, barely inhabited island in the middle of nowhere, and it couldn’t really get much smaller with time.

Little Cayman from the air

It has a resident population of 120 people, its about 12 miles long and one mile wide, and only 90 miles from Cuba. To get there, one takes a 35 minute flight in a 12 seater plane, with the luggage stowed away behind the last row of seats. Though there were only 9 passengers traveling, they still managed to forget one of my bags, which was a waterproof dive bag and carried my books and a volleyball called Wilson – three very important things when on a remote Caribbean island (ever seen Castaway?).

Out of the 120 residents, few are Caymanian, and the island blends a mix of ex-pats who refuse to live in colder climates. They host and run an expensive tourism industry, fueled by scuba diving, snorkeling, and most recently, kite surfing. Visitors stay at one of the resorts, enjoying hobie cats, kayaks and hammocks, and add a fluctuating 80 more to the population number.

the ultimate beach pad

Resorting isn’t really in my price range, and the only 2 couchsurfers on the island couldn’t host, but one dive master tipped me off on a fun fact – the bartender at Little Cayman Resort was Icelandic. I asked some questions, found him on facebook, had a mutual friend, and three days later, arrived in his skyloft to crash with Marieke, my host from Grand Cayman.

He was an excellent host, taking us on many adventures. The first was a kayak expedition to abandoned Owen Island, against fierce winds and white water waves. We walked the last 200m after capsizing, but made it back down wind in no time.

We learned how to Hobie cat sail. Well, we watched him hobie cat sail. We

Owen Island by Kayak

snorkeled. We played dodgeball. We biked to the end of the island. We tried to kitesurf, but failed when the wind calmed. I tried fire dancing.

Our biggest advneture was a 2 am mission to Owen Island on his friends boat, which we grounded twice in the shallow water. Or it may have been the excess wait in the boat (we were 8 in 5 seats). Or it may have been the pitch darkness, although there was an eerie glow from the full moon which made everything seem like a Pirates of the Caribbean scene. We tried (and failed) to light a bonfire of wet palms and bamboo, and almost used all our spare gas trying, but managed to avoid getting stranded.

Ingvar was working most days we were there, but it made no difference since we ended up at his bar every evening anyway to hang out. This was also where we had most of our meals, and met half of the Island since people came thru all day long. Some were iguana-walk tour guides, others were kitesurfers, the dodgeball guy and his dog, and even the airport arrivals guy who was better known as ‘ninja’ (he was an incredible fire dancer).

fire dancing by the failing bonfire

When we had to leave the island, we simply walked to the concrete strip of road they cal their ‘airport.’ Noone was there til 20 minutes before our flight departure, and he just showed up with our boarding cards and luggage tags and handed them out to us standing around. He knew who was who, didn’t care what we had packed, checked no ID and didn’t even have a security check for us to go through. It seemed too quick and easy (if only all air travel was that laid back), but, magically, they lost my bags again, somewhere between Little Cayman and Grand in that 45 minute window, on that tiny plane…

I stood in Georgetown trying to make my connecting flight to New York, and when they told me my bags would have to arrive a day later, I begged not to be sent to New York without them. I was wearing flipflops, shorts and a shirt, and had nothing else until getting back home to Iceland, where it was -15 degrees and snowing. They agreed that was tough, so delayed my flight by one day, upgraded me to business class, and let me have one last night in Grand Cayman. I could certainly think of worse places to be stuck…