The sound of sheep munching on the grass outside my tent wakes me from my slumber. That and the tent rocking from side to side as massive gusts of wind smash into it. I gently pull back on the fabric of my tent entrance and contemplate capturing and eating one of them. My plastic cutlery would struggle to break skin, so I boil up some noodles instead.
The wind is nasty today, but for once it is working to my advantage and gives me a huge tailwind up the narrow trail leading to Lake Myvatn.
50km of bumpy gravel later and I’m on a hill overlooking Lake Myvatn. From here it looks like a forgotten pre historic valley. In the distance an ash black volcanic crater looms over a small lake that is in some parts lush with vegetation, and others a completely barren rocky wasteland.
Suddenly the empty little parking lot I was loitering in became full. Bus after bus rolled in. But out poured not middle aged tourists armed with cameras, but kids donning cycling gear. As dozens of them left the buses, trailers with bike started rolling in and they gathered together for some sort of photo shoot. I snuck out while I still had the space. My bike was 45kg and mostly steel; I’m fairly sure the carbon bikes zipping around me would be the losers in a collision.
I coasted down into Myvatn, and in the distance spotted a few cyclists heading north. I decided to follow them and eventually came upon a family on rental bikes who were just finishing up a loop around the lake. As I passed them, a small pelaton of road cyclists in turn passed me. It was the kids from before. Not being one to be wasteful, I sprinted up behind them and drafted for a while. It was hard work keeping up, but worth it. The pelaton stopped at a waiting bus and I continued on to the final turn into town. Here the wind smashed me head on, and the last 4km was a struggle.
The campsite was just outside town, but upon seeing the price and the way the tents in the area were completely exposed to the wind, I decided to try the other two campsites further in town. The first, on the other side of town, was even more expensive, so off I went to the final camp in the town itself. It started to rain heavily as I made my way there so I was ready to settle for anything. At this campsite, however, I ran into a receptionist who seemed to believe that the way into a customers heart is by playing hard to get. Her conversation with the people ahead of me was sharp and short, perhaps a centimetre short of being outright rude. When it was my turn, she took my bank card, tried to insert it into the POS machine, and when it failed informed me that I must have an illegal card. I informed her that the card had worked just fine for the last several weeks, and so she sighed and gave it one more half arsed go before demanding that I give her another card to use. I had plenty of cards, but had no intention of giving her my custom so I left and returned to camp number one.
I was soaked at this point, and I did my best to pitch my tent as safely as possible against the wind. As I finished up a cyclist pulled up and introduced himself as Dom, hailing from the UK. I helped him with his tent and we spent the evening chatting about our experiences over dinner inside a big blue leaky kitchen tent. It was packed full of camp goers, being the only place that was still relatively dry. I mentioned to Dom my experience with the camp on town, and he told me I should have read the reviews
Apparently the camp had gained some infamy as a terrible place run by terrible people. According to some reviews, the owner was a creep who would stalk tourists going out to do some late night photography, then threaten to call the police and claim he had caught them trying to camp illegally (Lake Myvatn is a conservation area where camping is illegal outside of the campsites) unless they camped at his site.
After a few hours of huddling inside the kitchen tent the wind and rain died down and I had an overly long warm shower before heading to bed.
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