Iceland: Horse trekking in Þórsmörk
8/26/09: Gearing up in Reykjavik, then Horsey Hotel
After spending too many days cold and wet, canyonwren and I decided to get on a city bus and take a little trip to the Kringlan shopping center to forage for a few more essential items along the lines of merino wool baselayers and fleecy warm midlayers. I've no doubt that this had a direct causative effect and produced such fantastic weather for the duration of the horse trek. In any case, the prices were comparable and good gear is always worth it. Back to the little downtown area, we got all of our gear packed up and checked out of our guesthouse, then trundled around downtown Reykjavik in search of food and encountered a delicious fruit bowl, lobster cream soup, and yummy saltcod. We also decided to buy matching "Lost in Iceland" t-shirts because, well, we'd certainly earned 'em. We also found a Pathfinder "runes" t-shirt for trolleypup that supposedly protects the wearer from becoming lost. Certainly, if he'd been along, we would not have gotten so lost. Although we would've had to listen to him complain about all of the wet rain, so maybe it's for the best.
Towards evening, we headed over to the BSI bus terminal to be picked up by the horse trekking company. While waiting, we happily ran into Giovanni, who had been worried about us when we didn't show up for the ferry because of that storm in the Westfjords. It was very nice to run into him again, exchange contact information, and reassure him that we weren't in fact dead. He boarded a bus bound for the Westmann islands and we were eventually collected by the Eldhestar horse trekking company. They whisked us away to their gorgeous horsey tourist paradise compound, consisting of a delightful hotel with nearby stable and paddocks. We were greated by the cult leader, a large charismatic guy with the trademark "middle aged Icelandic male" unruly mop of dark blonde hair, wearing a business suit and sandals after he had switched out of paddock boots. Each room was named for a horse and had a placard by the door describing the horse, and the dining room and hallways were all decorated with all manner of interesting tack and equine artwork. After a tasty dinner, we were summoned to a conference room to have a Horse Meeting, complete with powerpoint presentation. I think I could enjoy meetings a lot more if they were all like this! While there, we all introduced ourselves and it turned out that we were a nice small 10-person tour group. Most tour groups in the high season were as many as 18 people, but the season is winding down and we lucked out. All female, all fairly experienced riders, and aside from one dutch woman and ourselves, the rest of the women were all scandinavian. Total Team Helga!
After dinner we went back to our room, nervously repacked some items, and did some hair maintenance. Oh, and we went a little crazy taking goofy photos of ourselves in the "Lost in Iceland" shirts with trolleypup's missing Pathfinder shirt as a prop. There might have been some Bailey's involved too, but I'm not sure. Ahem.
8/27/09: Riding to Markarfljót (and hey, Happy Birthday to canyonwren and yayskittles!)
The morning was spent in a state of confusion. We knew we should be ontime to breakfast, but little more about what was supposed to happen after that. After a certain amount of confusion and time spent faffing about the barn picking up rain gear and nervously milling about, we finally decided to head back to the front of the hotel where we found the rest of the group waiting for us. Gah. After some more sorting gear, we were transported out to the Skalakot farm, where the horses and guides were actually located. More time was spent here, wandering about the farm grounds, looking at the picturesque "did you know Bjork was married here?" church, and watching the three farm puppies chase and attack eachother around with relentless energy. They used their tractor and a honking car to herd the horses up to the corral and started sorting them out. All of the riders picked out saddles and helmets, and lined up inside the arena to wait. It felt like some sort of odd dating game as one of our guides Martina picked out a horse for each of us hoping to make a good match. I was brought a pretty bay mare named Ilsa, who was a little nervous about being tied up with the hyperactive farm dogs running around. Because she'd panicked and broken a bridle while trying to escape from the Killer!Doggies a few days earlier, she needed to be hand held while tacking up. When I walked up to her in my rain jacket, she kept jumping and glaring at it every time it rustled. I decided to remove the vetoed article of clothing and switched to a nice quiet fleece. Ah yes, much better, she approved of that.
Eventually everyone was all tacked and saddled up and Martina led us all towards the coast to ride around the Markarfljót river delta. We tried to ford over the widest and shallowest part of an inlet to get to the actual seashore but the water level was too high for the horses to maintain footing. Even with my heels pulled up towards my butt, my knees and the toes of my boots dipped into the water. Martina tried leading her horse, the brave and beautiful Runni, in at a few more places but each time she had to turn back as the water reached flank-high, eek! So, we had to turn back earlier than expected, so when we got back to the farm we got a bonus jaunt up around the hills above the farm, overlooking the whole picturesque valley. There had been a tiny sprinkling of rain on the ride home, but sunset was a rich golden color over the Westmann Islands and Surtsey. We stuffed ourselves silly on lamb meatballs, then took an after dinner waddlewalk to go visit the horse herd. Later, a thorough session in the "hot pot" (which is how Icelanders refer to hot tubs when they speak English) and sauna finished me off for the night.
8/28/09: Riding into Þórsmörk, With the Herd
The next morning, we all fled the overheated bunkhouse for the cool breakfast room and gorged on breakfasty sandwiches and cereal and the non-stop supply of drip coffee with mjölk. This would be our first "real" trek day, riding our own horses and herding along a group of remounts all the way to the Thorsmork Nature Reserve. Except, in yet another non-intuitive step, they wanted us to saddle up a few miles down the road. Guðmundur and one of his elder daughters moved the herd down the road using a honking car as motivation, and the rest of us were piled into passenger cars and driven down to a corral near Paradísarhellir (aka Paradise Cave). We hiked ten minutes over to the base of the cave and a few of us climbed up the chain to look inside it, and then we were treated to a retelling of the story of some young outlaw dude who used to hide out there because he was sleeping with a much older woman and getting run out of town for the scandal. Or something.
I have a feeling the cave detour and story was just to stall for time while waiting for the horses to arrive. Which they eventually did. For convenience, we all started out again on the same horse we had ridden yesterday, so I was on Ilsa again. Only this time, we had the complication of a herd of horses to guide along with us. Guðmundur advised any of us with "more powerful" horses to stay up in the front leading, and the "less powerful" horses could stay behind and to the sides of the herd of loose horses to keep them collected in a bunch. It had less to do with power and everything to do with each horse's personality of wanting to be in the lead or not. I wanted to get more views of the herd and take photos, so I tried riding in back for a while but Ms. Ilsa was excessively displeased with this arrangement. After a while I got tired of braking so I let her gallop on up to the front which is where she prefers to be. We made a scenic stop at Seljalandsfoss where I think we were all tempted to run down a few tourists who didn't seem to understand that a horse was tolting at full speed in their general direction. We were riding along a highway running down a wide valley, fording over several glacial rivers along the way. Eventually came to another roadside corral where we stopped for lunch. Thank gods, I was starving. I have no idea how I could be so hungry after last night's meatballs and this morning's breakfast, but I was. Guðmundur's wife Johanna pulled up in the car and cracked open a vat of tasty little sandwiches. I think we all inhaled 3 or 4 apiece and washed them down with thermos coffee and instant cocoa. Oink.
After lunch, I decided I'd like to try another horse. Ilsa had been lovely to ride, very well behaved as long as she was getting her way in the front, and she did have a particularly nice tölt gait. But, I wanted to experience as much variety as possible unless I absolutely fell in love with a particular horse. The next horse was not that horse. I was given a tall chestnut named Albert who was an obsessive headtosser. He was responsive enough, but just constantly bouncing his head and pulling at the bit. I tried to keep him in hand and he was pretty cranky about this, even bucking once or twice. At the next stop, we discovered that he'd thrown a shoe, which might have explained some of his antics. So, time for a third horse. I don't remember her name but her gaits were extremely hard and jouncy. Instead of staying reliably in tölt (and when I say "staying" I mean "never getting into") she would switch back and forth between trot and piggy pace, neither of which felt good on my tender sitbones, inflamed from two days of riding. Further down, I was increasingly unable to ignore a burning pinching sensation on my inner calves. Later that night I examined them to find that all of the coarse leg hairs had been ripped or broken off and what skin was left behind was Quite Angry Indeed. To make matters worse, the light headache I'd had all morning gathered in force after lunch. So, I just endured and hung onto the Bumpiest Mare In Iceland, sniveling too pathetically to appreciate the gorgeous blue glacier that tumbled down into a minty silty green lake on this last leg of the ride into Thorsmork. Which did not not actually end at Thorsmork, strangely enough. We stopped short a half mile before at a big river dismounted. The horses were herded into the river, while the riders were herded onto a bus which drove us through the river and for the last half mile.
Once at Thorsmork, we checked into a reserved hut for our entire group. It was nice, with a bunk room for all of the riders, the tour operating family was upstairs in the loft, and we had our own bathroom. There was a whole complex of camping grounds, cabins for rent, other huts, a dining hall, and a bathroom/shower/sauna complex. Sadly, the hot spring at Thorsmork was on the warmish side of tepid. It used to be much hotter but after a recent earthquake the source volume was cut down to a third and reduced in temperature. Hilde, one of the other riders, and I went for a soak anyways. After enduring a lukewarm soak for all of ten minutes, we relocated to the sauna, which hadn't finished heating up yet either. After bluntly telling an obnoxious drunken man in the sauna to just fuck off already, we relocated to the shower which was finally blissfully hot. Then, back to the hut and the smell of crispy fish frying in a hot pan. Mmmm, now that's more like it! We gorged on fish and potatoes and salad. Afterwards, canyonwren and I went for a post-dinner walk up to an overlook above the campground with gorgeous sunset cloudporn. I slept very well that night.
8/29/09: Riding In Þórsmörk, a Daytrip
In the morning, we all walked down to the corral and it was time to pick out new horses again. I told Martina to roll the dice for me, surprise me. She must've noticed my wincing and grimacing at the end of yesterday, because she brought over a placid dark dappled bay mare named Dukkar. She was buttery smooth in her gaits, but for the first time on the trek I was surprised to experience riding an Icelandic horse that wasn't 150% forward and willing. She actually needed some nudging along, and would eventually end up at the back of the pack just ambling along. We rode up into the park, crossing the Laugurvegur trail a few times. I felt great pity for all of the backpackers who were grimly rolling up pantlegs and removing heavy boots to wade through, staring up at us in envy as we all just plunged into and clattered through each braided stream of the river. Iceland is much more comfortable on horseback, I must say. We rode up to one area, stopped to let the horses rest and listen to more cultural speeches from Guðmundur, and eventually rode back to the hut for lunch.
After lunch, we went out for another ride to the Stakkholtsgjá Gorge. We rode all the way to the end of this beautiful deep and long gorge and then scrambled in to the waterfall in the deep. This time I was aboard Mistel, canyonwren's favorite chestnut horse with a white blaze. I found him to be very plucky and responsive, but there was something non-intuitive to me about the way he moved and I could never quite get comfortable riding him. Riding up the gorge through nonstop boulders and rocks was very tiring on all of the horses, and I think he was quite annoyed by this terrain. Another woman was riding Runni, a gorgeous dark blue dapple dun horse that I'd had my eye on since day one. She liked him quite a lot too, but agreed to let me ride him on the last day. All in all, it was a very pleasant day of riding. My sitbones were finally starting to toughen up and since all the hair had been pinched off my inner legs already that pain had also stopped.
Dinner consisted of incredibly tender barbecued lamb with potatoes and bearnaise sauce. I tried to hold back and not gorge myself, but it was all so delicious. After dinner, canyonwren and I enlisted the help of Martina for a secret mission. Martina had been asking curious questions about my hair for the whole trip, which was staying in permabraids. We confided in her our desire to take some nude Lady Godiva style photographs, and she was willing to assist in the horse wrangling side of things. So, with an uncomfortably overfull-by-way-of-lamb belly, we all traipsed down to the horse corral. Martina wandered into the herd and came out leading Vallebronka, a pretty dark brown mare who was - most importantly - very calm and quiet. I feel completely comfortable managing the more lively horses, but... not naked, barefoot, and bareback. Unexpectedly, the youngest daughter of the family, a girl of about 13, had tagged along. Not wanting to traumatize any impressionable minds, I did make sure to tell her what the plan was, and asked if she would be OK with this. She just shrugged and rolled her eyes. Weirdo grownups!
I took out my braids and tried to fluff out my cranky dry tangly hair, then stripped off clothes and got clumsily boosted aboard Vallebronka's bare back. Riding naked bareback on a horse was actually not as weird as I'd been fearing. Many photos were taken, most of which are gorgeous and a few that might need to be permanently deleted. A few selections will eventually get posted to the nekkid filter, so stay tuned. It took the better part of an hour to get my hair almost detangled enough to rebraid neatly after dinner, but I managed it eventually.
8/30/09: Riding back to Skalakot. Well, almost.
It's a very tiny gripe, but I have to say one of the weirdest things about this trip were how many times the itinerary varied. It was never a bad situation, but there were many "This isn't what I thought it was!" moments. There was never that sense of fullness that comes from really starting at a beginning and going all the way until the actual destination. Our dear guide Martina was gone in the morning when we got ready, having been called off to go lead another tour starting right away. No rest for the wicked, I suppose. Also missing that morning were canyonwren 's prescription sunglasses. We all looked high and low and eventually came across their crunched skeleton in the driveway near the horse corral. Damn. Another entry on the tally of Things Which Did Not Survive Iceland.
Today, I finally got to ride Runni. I'd stared longingly at his gorgeous coloring the whole first day while Martina rode him, then continued to ogle him endlessly over the next few days as Kerstin and others got their turn on him. And it was just as I'd feared... I absolutely adored riding him. He was completely willing and forward, but also completely obedient and responsive to the most gentle suggestions. His tölt was smooth and fast and he loved to go for miles in that gait. When I would switch to canter it was so relaxing to bounce and roll forward in. Riding back along that long open glacial valley, we moved together intuitively, chasing after strays and rounding them back into the herd. He loved to go fast and could certainly lead, but he didn't have a temper tantrum if he wasn't the lead horse all the time. In a word, he was thrilling.
Fortunately for my pocketbook and life complications, he is 15 years old and therefore not available for sale and export. They care very much about their horses in Iceland and refuse to export them past the age of 10, out of concern for the horse's emotional well-being. I'm not sure exactly when I decided that I will own an Icelandic horse someday, but I have. The next decade of my life is particularly bad for logistics, though, so I need to just file that desire away for a little while. I am so glad for the experience with riding this horse Runni because he's really raised the bar that any other Icelandic horse will have to measure up to. Every other horse I rode was interesting, some were certainly better than others, but none of them really clicked with me like he did. What was surprising to me was that when I traded with canyonwren for a short section so that she could experience riding him, her impression of riding him was just "Meh". Horses, just like people, are all so different.
Anyway. *sniff* It was a fast and hard ride back towards the home farm, as the herd knew they were on their way home. We finally reached the stopping place (which was, of course, not quite not all the way back to the farm) where we dismounted, hugged our horses goodbye, and watched them all frolic away and go roll in the mud. Eventually a van containing the charismatic Mr. Eldhestar arrived and we were driven back to the Horsey Hotel palace place where they plied us with cookies and coffee and satisfaction surveys. And then we were trundled back to a hostel in Reykjavik. After narrowly avoiding committing homicide upon one member of the group who spent about 15 minutes holding the clerk hostage to rearrange her own personal accommodations as the other 9 of us stood sweaty and horse-grimed and luggage-overloaded glaring at her through a haze of hostility, we were finally checked into our floor of the hostel. We despaired of ever getting a turn for a shower in the shared hostel bathroom and thus opted to go wander around stinky and grumpy knowing that this wonderful trip was winding down to a close. We met up with a bunch of the women from the horse tour at an overpriced fish buffet that couldn't even hold a burnt out match to the incredible Tarhouse fish buffet up in Isafjordur. Oh, well.
8/31/09: Flying Home
Our last morning in town, we wandered around doing some fluffy touristy type shopping. I managed to limit myself to only two books on Icelandic horses, one of which was an encyclopedic tome that weighed at least 20 lbs in all of its full-size-glossy glory. The other selection was a really neat catalog of coat color genetics, which was fascinating to see as the foals often change color dramatically as they mature into adulthood. I spent most of the flight home leafing through it wistfully and making various mewing and sighing noises. Our flight chased the sun the whole way, departing at 5pm and arriving at 5pm. Despite having provisioned ourselves with snacks and sandwiches in the Keflavik airport, about halfway through the flight we were starving again. But at least this time we were mentally prepared for the concept of having to pay for an in-flight meal. If I didn't mention this before, Icelandair prints all kinds of cute language and culture notes all over things like napkins, seat covers, etc. The box for the vegetarian sandwich thingy had a little text box all about Hrútspungar. Err... I'm not sure if that was intentional or not but I thought it was pretty funny.
At SeaTac, I waited around with canyonwren until her ride came to fetch her, and then checked into my flight back to Portland. I had the amazing good fortune to find an internet business center with a line of sight to my gate where I killed a few more hours, and then after a 45 minute deafening prop-plane ride I was home.