The Svalbard Triangle – Disembarkation / West Iceland – Day 30

Our final Daily Program:

Disembarkation is never fun. No matter the cruise line or how luxurious it may be, you will never hear someone say, “Sure, it was nice seeing polar bears. But you know what I really enjoyed? Disembarkation.“

The thrill of a new beginning is always overshadowed by the mechanics of moving an inordinate lump of luggage from one place to the next – as well as the dreaded transfer, for which we seem to be forced to choose between unreliable or inordinately expensive.

A reluctant ‘Góðan daginn’ (good morning) to the port of Hafnarfjörður

Up at 7:15 am this morning, owing largely to my wife’s incredibly thorough packing efforts the day before. It’s mostly a matter of putting away toothbrushes. We’re out of the room well in advance of the 8 am deadline, though still travelling with our carry-ons. We needed some place to keep our laundry bags – to say nothing of the camera gear and our travelling pharmacy.

It was not a particularly stellar breakfast this morning, nor did we expect it to be. My wife’s eggs are boiled rather than poached, and her green tea may still be lost somewhere inside the galley. The Grill is closed this morning, so the Restaurant’s table cloths have seen twice the traffic as usual. You get the idea.

We were given an 8:30 am deadline for breakfast, but the staff are bouncing on the balls of their feet by 8:20 am – understandably eager to get us out the door. And it’s worth noting that 8:30 is not the final call for orders from the kitchen or a last browse of the buffet, they want you exiting the restaurant no later than 8:30.

We head up to the Lounge where there are miraculously still seats available. We plan to disembark by 8:45 am, but something starts to nag at me – the creeping feeling I get when a transfer looks like it will go awry.

I check in my Taxi Hreyfill app, and see that our driver does not yet seem to be assigned – and that our pickup seems to be roughly 30 minutes later than ordered. Neither bodes well.

I call in to their main line and – after almost 5 minutes on hold – manage to speak to someone who confirms that the taxi is indeed expected at 9:15 am, and that they have the proper location. Phew. (And another win for the Airalo global e-SIM, as otherwise I would’ve paid CAD$18 for the privilege of that single phone call.)

Meanwhile, Cruise Director Luana occasionally enters the lounge to let various passengers know that their vehicles have arrived. It all seemed very civilized, and I momentarily regret not having booked one of their extortionate private transfers.

We’d initially been told 9 am for disembarkation, which was later updated to 8:50 am. We hadn’t paid too close of attention to that as the Silversea disembarkation always seemed to include something of a buffer. But then 8:45 am rolls around and we are gently but firmly ushered towards the door.

The port is… not what I was expecting. We don’t actually go into any buildings. Icelandic Customs had a mobile van – sort of like an ice cream truck, but for passport stamps – and there is no waiting. Our bags are immediately beside the gangway. So much for leaving 30 minutes for clearing the port – 3 minutes would have been a better fit.

Gradually, the crowd of passengers dissipates until there are only three groups left – ourselves included. We attempt to call in to Taxi Hreyfill to move up our timing, and they offer to pass the message to the driver. Hardly a guarantee.

Final two groups left standing – and miraculously, a van pulls around the corner! Except he’s for someone who has already departed – despite having pre-paid his taxi.

It’s also a Hreyfill vehicle, so I ask the driver if he can check on the status of our taxi. He pulls up our app and says, “I can take you. Want me to cancel this?” We nod, and he simply taps cancel on the app.

I feel for the driver whose booking was just cancelled but A.) they were already running 10 minutes late, B.) there’s a very good chance someone had already poached our ride and C.) it was clearly a free-for-all in terms of taxis.

I receive no frantic calls from irritated drivers, so we’ll count this as the universe looking out for us – and for our new driver who now gets to collect double fares, one from us and the other from whoever had pre-paid him.

We enjoy a relaxing drive into Reykjavik, joking about the presence of a “tourist wheel” along the waterfront. (This is the Australian term for the ferris whee in Freemantle, and it has stuck in our vernacular.) Though our driver has actually been on it! He reluctantly agreed to take his 10-year-old daughter and enjoyed the expensive experience.

Our driver also tells the story of being asked by an American tourist, “Are you worried about being drafted?” His reply: “Into what?” He further notes that the first time he went up into the Hallgrímskirkja church was when tourists asked him to come along and tell them about it. He shrugged and obliged – happy to do so, so long as he could keep the meter running.

We soon pull up alongside the Blue Car Rental in Reykjavik. Our bags are disgorged, and so ends another painful-but-inexpensive transfer. All-in-all, we spent perhaps 30 minutes standing out alongside Le Lyrial – 20 minutes of which were our fault. It felt painful at the time, but my best guess is that savings worked out to an hourly wage of 600 Euro per hour compared to the cost of a private transfer.

But we are far from scot-free, as we now have a rental car to pick up – and we have a less-than-stellar record when it comes to rental cars this trip.

I go into the main office, where I am told that my key is in the keybox. So I go to the keybox, where I discover that our RAV-4 has been replaced by a Hyundai Tucson.

They swear that it’s a similarly-sized vehicle. Only one way to find out:

Okay – could be better, could be worse.

Unfortunately, while loadmastering we notice this sticker:

We will be travelling along F-type (gravel) roads, and may encounter some shallow rivers. So this sticker is something of a concern. (Along with – you know – the risk of our hybrid battery system shorting out in the middle of nowhere.)

Back in to the Blue Car Rental office, where they swear up and down that the RAV-4 is also a hybrid and so we’d have the same issue. Just go carefully into the river and we should be fine. At this point I think they’d tell us that the Hyundai was capable of interstellar travel if it would get us to just take it and leave.

But what can we do? They’re swearing they don’t have any other similar vehicles available – despite the presence of several similar vehicles in the parking lot – so we can either dig in for a long fight or head on our way, and we choose the latter.

It’s nice to be driving on the right hand side of the road again – despite multiple high-speed roundabouts on the way out of town. (Remembering that the person on the inside lane has the right of way.)

But soon we’re on open road:

And it’s a beautiful scenic drive:

We debate stopping early for lunch, but our current ETA is close to 12:30 pm. So we might as well carry on through, and eat when we get to Grundarfjörður – our base for the next four days.

The scenery continues to impress:

Moss-covered lava fields

Segue into sweeping blue sounds

And – a little less than three hours after we set out – we reach the Harbour Cafe, our chosen stop for lunch:

Photo Credit: Harbour Cafe Guesthouse Facebook Page

The owner is a real character, who insists we take a piece of candy before we receive a menu.

And we are required to order like a true Viking – at the counter:

I have the Arctic char:

My wife gets the seafood bisque (which the owner refers to as “sea monster soup”):

Our son gets the chicken breast:

And our daughter has a shrimp cocktail:

We’re lucky we got there when we did – there is an Oceania ship in town, as well as one of the Ritz-Carlton vessels. We manage to grab the very last four top.

It’s all quite tasty, but – like most restaurants in Iceland – quite expensive. Lunch for four works out to over USD$170.

During lunch, we receive the most wonderful message that anyone checking into an Airbnb can receive – your rental will be available early.

A quick stop to pick up groceries. Meals for the next few days include our usual list of favourites – pizza, spaghetti bolognese, chicken curry, and beef fajitas. After weeks of cruise fare, we’re glad to be cooking for ourselves once more.

We arrive shortly after 2 pm. No issues with the lock box, and everything looks spic and span:

Separate rooms for each of the kids, which they always appreciate:

And a sizeable master:

We have a whale watching trip and some hiking planned over the next few days, but in the mean time we’ve decided to take a day just to relax and recuperate. The last week of this trip will unfold at a breakneck pace – meanwhile, several of us feel vaguely as though we’re still at sea.

I take a walk back down to the grocery store to pick up a few more odds and sundry (read: wine), and encounter a Citroen 2CV rally:

While the natural beauty here is even more striking here than Skye, we’re also in the middle of town. It’s an interesting combination and – while we miss the quiet – we’re enjoying this small slice of Icelandic life. Some of the local teens spent most of the afternoon playing basketball outdoors, and riding their bikes. It feels strangely at odds with the sweeping, fog-covered cliffs – and yet why would it be any other way?

I later head down to Kaffi 59 – the closest that Grundarfjörður has to a bar – to have an unnamed local draft beer (simply referred to as ‘draft’ on the menu) – and to read a little more military SciFi. I’m reading Light Brigade at the moment, and it feels like Starship Troopers meets Slaughterhouse 5. It’s almost 10 pm, and the sun is only starting to set over the nearby mountain:

Eventually it’s time to head back to our rental and call it a night – and while we’re all ready for relaxing day, I do perhaps wonder if we might be able to sneak in a hike to a nearby waterfall.