It's not that Iceland is a bad place, it's just that it's damn cold and I am not the most over-prepared of travelers.
I knew there were a few hotels in Reykjavik and even a hostel. What were the chances of one not being available? It'll be fine, I told my buddy. "There's even a camping ground there just in case."
Famous last words.
Every hotel in the capital was booked solid for a week and even the hostel wouldn't find room for us. Luckily the camping ground was just behind the hostel so not far to walk.
We set up our little two-man tent in a promising corner of the ground and were happy to see that a few others had also set up for the night. We introduced ourselves as a couple of Aussie idiots and were happy to meet some friendly faces from Finland, Denark, Sweden and a few European countries. Things weren't looking so bad.
Then came time for bed.
We rolled out our sleeping bags, purchased in Australia, that had served us so well in the Australian bush on camping trips and whatnot. 10 minutes later we still weren't warm.
Hmm. No problem, I just need some more clothing. On goes an extra t-shirt and trackies.
10 more minutes, the temperature plummeting, we're still not warm. More clothes!
Another 10 goes by and the shivering sets in. Both of us were now wearing every piece of clothing we had brought.
We spent the rest of the night shivering and getting almost no sleep due to being so cold.
"I don't care much much we have to pay or who we have to bribe, but tonight we are staying in a hotel," were my friends waking comments at 6AM.
I have to say that I wasn't going to take much convincing of that idea.
The whole "get the right equipment" thing is just one of the lessons that we lads from the tropics learnt when going to Iceland (in which the temperature topped out at 10 degrees celsius while we were there).
Who would have thought?
