Troubles in Sierra Leone

As proof that we really are going to Sierra Leone and not just traipsing around the world to while away a year...

The much-anticipated run-off election for the Presidency of Sierra Leone is coming up at the end of this week. Unlike with the first round, which was a stunning success, campaigning this time around has been fraught with difficulty. Twenty people, for example, were hurt in a recent clash.

The two presidential candidates (Ernest Koroma, who took 44% of the vote the first time around, and current vice president Solomon Berewa, who took 38%) are urging their supporters not to resort to violence and have themselves promised the current president not to "use militia"...one wonders what that means. Or whether those promises are true. Meanwhile, President Kabbah has threatened declaring a "state of emergency."

Hard to know what to think of all this...

The foggy bay

In 101 Reykjavik, Hallgrímur Helgason describes a city, and a generation, of idleness, depression, self-destruction, and wanton boredom. His main character, Hlynur, calls Iceland "a wind-beaten a**hole and Icelanders the lice on its edge." The entire story is one of interrupted, failed catharsis (and, despite the negative reviews on Amazon, it´s a fascinating book).

The fact is, I hate to say it, but as beautiful as Reykjavik can be in the sunshine, it exudes the same. The entire town (well, the entire town of our generation) takes gluttonous part in a tradition benignly called runtur. The "round tour" is an all-night pub-crawl that starts in the early evening on Friday night and continues, in some form or other, until the early morning on Monday.

Not that there's anything wrong with drinking, pub crawls, and all that. But there's a sense of desperation about some of this drinking. A sense of doing it because, honestly, there's nothing else to do.

I hate the fact that this post is coming across so, well, supercilious. We've been wracking our brains for a way to describe Reykjavik. So, I'll leave this train of thought. We have met some tremendous people here, including the owner of our current guesthouse. And the food is unsurpassed. Even if you pay $20 for a regular, run-of-the-mill salad.

And in the sunshine, Reykjavik is beautiful. Its dominant church, the Hallgrímskirkja, is gorgeous. Plus, attending an Icelandic church service was amazing. The church sits on a hill. From the pews, you see no ground, only clouds, as if you're in the air.

Tonight's our last night in this amazing (and amazingly contrasted) country. We fly out tomorrow for Helsinki.

Fire and Ice

We´ve done it! Trekked on slippery cliffs overlooking the sea in Snæfellsnes, forded rivers on the F586 shortcut in our trusty Jeep (whom Peggy nicknamed Þór), peered into smoking fissures around Grjotagja in the Lake Myvatn area, almost touched Europe´s biggest waterfall (Dettifoss), and boated among glaciers in Jokulsarlon. Along the way Ryan, Mark´s brother, has chased after multiple sheep in an attempt to get a picture with them, Peggy has become obsessed with Skyr, a curdled milk concoction that tastes like creamy yogurt, and Mark has become an expert in off-road driving. Our Icelandic has improved marginally (Takk fyrir!), we´ve discovered that staying in a friend of a friend of a friend´s apartment/guesthouse found through word of mouth is the best way to go, and we´ve cheered on the impressive reforestation efforts of the country. In four days, we circled the entire island, covering 1700 km.

Iceland sits on the mid-Atlantic ridge, with the national park Þingvellir perched on the rift between the North American and European plates. It´s a country of contradictions, with massive glaciers down south (witness Vatnajokull, which covers 8400 sq km) and boiling mud pits up north near Krafla. It´s a geologically active country, with frequent natural disasters caused by the past eruptions of volcanoes Hekla, Laki, Katla. Perhaps because of this, the Icelandic people seem to be so unflappable. They are able to zoom through gravel roads with 17% inclines in the fog and rain without blinking an eye, and view the sudden transition from sunny day to chilling gray downpours with a matter-of-fact attitude. There seems to be a sense of connectedness with the land that we haven´t seen before.

We´ve been lucky enough to meet some very nice Icelanders, including a guesthouse owner in Egilsstaðir who invited us in for a cup of tea. We were bedraggled and hungry, having been turned away from 3 hotels already, and so he spent an hour calling hotels in the vicinity. Everything was full because a ferry for Denmark was departing the next day, so he offered to let us weary and heavy-laden tourists sleep in the little church he had set up in an upper room of his guesthouse. The next day, on his recommendation, we stopped in Kirkjubæjarklaustur (located, honestly, about midway between Höfn and Hella) for the best pizza in Iceland.

Click on the pictures to get to the album. We haven´t spent much time in Reykjavík yet, so pictures of the capital (a marginally depressing town, really), we´ll add later.