The inspirational adventures of a solo backpacker as he travels around the globe, hoping to empower others to realize that they too can travel alone, on a shoestring budget, and learn more about languages, cultures, perspectives, interactions, how to make friends, how to feel comfortable being themselves, how to keep an open mind, how to find and connect with like-minded people, and how people live on this planet than they could ever imagine. Unleash the wanderlust inside you!
Iceland is one of the most beautiful places in the entire universe. The tiny island of 323,000 people contains every landscape from black sand beaches to rocky fjords to lush mossy green valleys to 1,000 meter deep ice caps to giant standalone volcanoes. Due to the volcanic nature of the island, nearly everything is heated and powered geothermally, and nearly every village has its own pool fed by natural hot springs. The capital city, Reykjavik, is incredibly clean and welcoming, and the locals are some of the friendliest I’ve encountered yet. The weather may not be the greatest, but in summer the 24 hours of daylight makes it always possible to wait for the rain to stop without sacrificing precious daylight hours.
My trip to Iceland began with a morning spent in Reykjavik before jumping on a bus into the mountains. My dad was coming home from a conference in London and I was heading back to Europe from the US, so it worked perfectly for us to meet halfway in Iceland.
Viking ship art in Reykjavik
Dried fish, an Icelandic favorite
Reykjavik
The bus took us out of the city and into the back country, eventually turning off the paved road onto a dirt path which appeared completely unsuitable for driving. Several rivers crossed the “road”, which would have been a major obstacle to any normal vehicle, but the bus driver plowed right through the rivers without any acknowledgement of the complete lack of bridges.
"yo fuck bridges," said the Icelandic bus driver
We were dropped at Landmannalaugar, a little hut and giant campground in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by beautifully colorful snowy mountains and hot springs to bathe in. Landmannalaugar is the starting point for the incredibly beautiful and incredibly popular Laugavegur trail, a 55km trail that winds through every landscape Iceland has to offer, with options to stay in huts along the way or carry your own tent. If you ever visit Iceland, you really should hike the Laugavegur trail.
The hut and camping village and Landmannalaugar
The hot creek at Landmannalaugar, which was always either way too hot or way too cold
The types of names you have to remember when hiking in Iceland
Normally the trail is done in four days, but due to the extreme amount of snow still remaining at the first stopping point, and our complete lack of snow camping equipment, we opted to do it in three. This meant doing two days of hiking in the first day, for a total of 23km up to the highest point on the trail and then back down a steep decline to Lake Alftavatn. The trail wound through colorful steaming mountains filled with hot springs and fumaroles. At some points boiling water bubbled out of the mountain and large clouds of steam seeped out of every dip in the rocks.
Looking back at the colorful mountains in Landmannalaugar as we start the hike
Beginning the 23km day
Valleys of volcanic rock, snow, and hot springs
As we continued, the colorful volcanic landscape became more and more white until we were trudging through an endless field of snow. Kilometer after kilometer passed and there was still no end to the snow. We stopped at the hut at the top of the pass for a rest and were glad we had decided not to stay there, as it was very crowded and very snowy. Finally, after saying “it’s just over this hill” about 100 times, we came to a point where we could actually see beyond the snow, and we were treated to the most incredible view of lone volcanoes reaching all the way to the horizon. The trail steeply dropped off and we walked/slid our way down to the hut and campsite at lake Alftavatn, a few kilometers below.
Water boiling out of the volcano
Endless snowfields
The snow finally comes to an end!
backwards flannel: the best way to hike in cold weather
The campsite at Lake Alftavatn
The second day was quite a bit shorter than the first, but was no less beautiful. The trail wound up and down the hills, and we were at low enough elevation that the rivers were no longer frozen. This meant there were several rivers to cross, but similar to the roads in Iceland, hiking trails don’t have bridges either. It was a hilarious sight watching dozens of hikers take their pants off and waddle through the knee-deep water, clothed in warm jackets and giant backpacks but bottomless from the thighs down. Several more kilometers passed as we walked through a barren black volcanic desert, crossed another river or two, and finally reached the campground at Emstrur hut a few hours later.
One of many stream crossings where hikers waddle bottomless through freezing water
Majestic Iceland
A new landscape as we enter the volcanic desert
The gorge near the Emstrur campground
We woke up early the next morning to complete our journey to the end of the trail in Thorsmork. With the giant glaciers Myrdalsjokull and Eyjafjallajokull in sight, it began to rain for the first time yet on our trip. The sun never quite went away though, which meant we found ourselves walking next to a rainbow. With one last river crossing, we saw a peculiar sight: trees. These were the first trees we had seen yet on the hike. We were welcomed to the finish with a walk through the forest, a nice change after three days of beating sunlight.
Rainbow
The final stream crossing didn't even require taking my pants off
That night was spent back in Reykjavik before renting a car and heading out to the east side of the island. We drove straight to Skaftafell, stopping to see a few waterfalls along the way. Skaftafell is a beautiful village at the base of several giant glaciers. From there it is possible to walk up to at least two of the glaciers, which seem small and snowy from a distance, but when you walk up to them you realize they are made up of towering 40+ft blocks of solid ice that carve their way through mountains. Anywhere from about 100m to well over a kilometer wide and up to 1,000m deep, it is absolutely breathtaking to stand next to such a massive amount of ice with the power to reshape entire mountain ranges.
Seljalandsfoss, with two Polish hitchhikers that we picked up
Fields of Lupin. A beautiful, but invasive, species
The glacier Svinafellsjokull
The glacier tongue reaches out into the valley, ending in a large iceberg-filled lagoon
The ice is formed when snow falls on the top of the mountain, and when the snow gets deep enough it weighs so much that it compresses into solid ice. As more and more snow falls, it pushes this ice down the mountain, taking chunks of rock along with it and carving valleys into the mountainside. The glacier tongue extends out from the valley, thousands of feet below the mountaintops where the ice was formed, where the climate is much warmer but the ice is so thick that it still melts very slowly. You can clearly see where the ice has acted as a bulldozer and pushed huge amounts of sand and dirt into mounds in front of the glacier.
Skaftafellsjokull spills down the valley
A closeup view of the white and blue glacier ice, taking rock and dirt along with it as it flows down the mountain
Since the glacier has melted and receded, these mounds have become a natural dam to hold back the meltwater, and a lagoon has formed, filled with icebergs which break off of the glacier. In Skaftafell, it is possible to walk up to the glacier tongue and the icebergs and even lick them, and in the larger glacial lagoons, Jokulsarlon and Fjallsarlon, it is possible to ride in a boat around the lagoon. When nearing the glacier you can feel the cold emanating from it, as if you’re walking into a giant outdoor refridgerator. We took a boat ride around Fjallsarlon, and it was incredible to see the deep blue color of the ice which had broken from the glacier just hours earlier. We also drove to Jokullsarlon, where the lagoon has an outlet to the North Atlantic Ocean, and you can see icebergs bobbing around in the waves. It is truly an incredible sight.
The icebergs appear bright blue just after the break from the glacier, and they turn white as they melt
Standing on an iceberg
Icebergs bob in the waves
Licking an iceberg
Fjallsarlon glacier lagoon
boat ride in Fjallsarlon
After our adventures in the Skaftafell area, my dad had to leave to go catch his flight, so he dropped me off in a town where I met up with my friends Clayton and Marisa, who happened to also be traveling Iceland at the same time. We found puffins, swam in a hot pool on a mountain, casually shotgunned, and I slept on the couch in the common room of their hotel that night. The next day was my last day in Iceland, and on the way back to Reykjavik we stopped at a river in Hveragerdi to swim in. The river was fed by hot springs and the entire valley was filled with steam. Like all hot springs, it was either too hot or too cold with no happy medium, but it was still an amazing experience in a beautiful location and definitely worth a visit.
Columnar basalt
Puffin!
Clayton, Marisa, and I at Skogafoss waterfall
A hot pool in the middle of nowhere
Hot spring-fed river
The hot river from above
That wraps up my experience in Iceland. So, if you weren't already planning a trip to Iceland, I hope you are now!
I was welcomed to the Boston airport by the wonderful aroma of Dunkin Donuts as I walked out from the baggage claim. This was the most intense culture shock I had experienced yet in my year of traveling. The whine of loud American accents complaining about something or other rang in my ears like the most horrible siren that wouldn’t stop. I looked around for a sign telling me where to go for connecting flights and opted to walk the 5 minutes to the terminal rather than follow the hoards of people rushing to get on the bus (yes, they have a bus for those too lazy to walk 5 minutes). Two hours later I was in Washington, D.C., on my way to see my family for the first time in six months. The next couple weeks consisted of nonstop family reunions, which was incredible after being on another continent for so long and separated from my family.
Family
The next day was my grandma’s funeral ceremony. Though sad, she had a great 93 year life and it was a wonderful way to bring together the extended family that I hadn’t seen in years. All of the cousins gave speeches, sang songs, or read passages written by my grandma, and I presented a poem that I had written on the plane. It went like this:
Once there lived a beautiful soul,
who refused to eat an unhealthy cereal bowl.
She was my grandma,
but I called her Nana,
and the family she raised deserves the utmost praise.
For 93 years she graced the Earth,
and to my father she gave birth.
She left behind some great memories,
like time spent with Choo Choo and Cinder, her two doggies.
She used to have a house at Bethany Beach,
an hour past the fruit stand that sold pies made of peach.
Those family reunions I’ll never forget,
Kayaking and canoeing into the sunset.
We planted flags on newly discovered islands,
and played whack-a-mole at the boardwalk, going home with several wins.
One time I fell in the jellyfish-infested canal water,
and Nana was there for me, as was Rondell, her daughter.
Later in life she wasn’t so mobile,
but a quality that remained is that she was always noble.
One time my Nana had a great fall,
but a broken leg didn’t stop her from painting pictures for my bedroom wall,
and then she got shingles and could no longer paint happily,
so I taught her Sudoku with giant numbers that she could see.
The last time I saw her was one year ago,
with my dad in her Riderwood home.
I read her a book but I don’t think she understood what I said,
because, unfortunately, she was on her deathbed.
But though she was no longer with us mentally,
I could tell that she knew it was me.
That day is our last memory together,
and it’s one that I’ll remember forever.
She left behind a family, perhaps her greatest gift,
Aunts and uncles and cousins whom I hope to never lose touch with,
So let’s keep reuniting year after year,
It’s what Nana would have wanted if she were still here.
All of the Fergies, next to Nana's paintings
After the memorial service we all piled into cars and headed to Bethany Beach, Delaware, where we would stay for the next week in two rented houses, one of which had been owned by my grandparents when I was a kid and brought back great memories. My grandparents’ old house had kayaks and canoes which we could use and the other house had an elevator inside, which was pretty ridiculous. It was amazing to reconnect with my cousins, including Eric, who has been playing D1 baseball and may be on his way to the professional leagues, Ryan, who I had nearly lost contact with for a few years but he has been traveling in and out of South America for the past 3 years, having very similar experiences to me on my travels, Andrea, who is finishing chiropractic school and moving back to Taos, NM, and Claire and Helen who I have seen much more than the others but was still great to see them again.
The Fergies, before and after. 1995 (?) to 2015
Fergie cousins at the beach house
Beach chillin' with a wine bottle of water and one shoe
For the week we swam every day in the waves, had morning yoga sessions on the beach, and cooked some amazing meals. Some highlights included a night canoe/kayak ride to discover Big Whale Island--an “island” in the middle of the bay, jumping around in the waves, watching dolphins corral thousands of fish up to the shore and then feast on them while occasionally jumping out of the water and giving us a show, improvising a video (which you can see below, or here) and bonding with family members who I had lost contact with for a few years. We also went to the crab shack for dinner one night, a yearly tradition of my family in which we order all-you-can-eat crabs and spend the next 3 hours downing beers and cracking crab shells until we go home reeking of a fish market. It’s always one of my favorite meals of the year.
Beach yoga, led by Ryan
On an adventure to big whale island
A tradition
Mickey's Crab Shack, complete with a beer tower and hundreds of crabs
An incredible work of art (click here if it doesn't load)
After Delaware, we returned to Washington, D. C., for my grandma’s burial ceremony and for another big family reunion, this time with my mom’s side of the family. Since my grandma had been a marine in her youth, she was given a full military ceremony complete with American flags and fully-uniformed marines shooting their guns in the air in the Arlington Cemetery. It was something I had only ever seen in movies, and was really cool to see my grandmother receiving this kind of recognition for her service.
Later that afternoon, Beckwiths from all over the east coast gathered in Arlington, Virginia, for an afternoon and I got to see even more family that I hadn’t seen in years. It was incredible to see so much family, and this trip really reminded me of how important it is to keep in touch with all of my family members, even those cousins who live far away. That evening, my mom and I headed to the airport for the last of our family visits--Florida to see my other grandma, uncle, and aunt.
Beckwith cousins
Our time in Florida was spent mainly at the beach and eating fancy meals with my grandma. Delicious home-cooked meals and nice restaurants were very welcome after living on a backpacker’s diet for the past year, so I indulged on my eating experience as much as possible while with family.
Dinner with grandma
The Florida trip was quick, and three days later I already found myself on a flight back to D.C., where I would spend two more days before returning to Europe. The date was July 3, and the next day would be the first time in four years that I had been in the US for Independence Day. I stocked up on American flag Budweiser cans and headed over to a party with some Pomona friends to enjoy the day off and watch the many fireworks displays over the nation’s capital.
the only photo to come out of DC, two sexy models
I didn't take this, but the fireworks looked something like this
I woke up the next morning on Henry’s floor with a terrible headache, stoked that I was finally within reach of some classic American hangover food. Another highlight of my trip was brunch that morning/afternoon: Chipotle. Though I was never the biggest fan of Chipotle before I went to Europe, spending a year without burritos had made me crave that delicious Tex-Mex more than ever before, and it lived up to every expectation. It was so good that I got Chipotle again for dinner that evening, at the airport as I headed out for the next stage of my journey: Europe round 2! I excitedly boarded the Icelandair flight to Reykjavik and passed out immediately, waking up again at 6 AM with a gorgeous view of the volcanic island spread out below me. This trip back to the US had given me an amazing sense of belonging and made me think a lot about how lucky I am to have such an amazing, supportive extended family, and now I was ready to hit the road again and fulfill my dream of exploring every remote corner of Europe and beyond.