I purchased Garmin’s maps of Scandinavia and eventually managed to load them onto a micro-sim card (the download only works using MS Explorer for some obscure reason), and they are working fine. I forgot to pack the windscreen mount however, so by the time I get from Reykjavik to Borgarnes, about an hour from Reykjavik, the GPS is driving me crazy falling off the seat. I also find I have to adjust my driving style to driving on the right hand side of the road. I’m used to driving a right-hand drive car on the left hand side of the road, and find that I’m trying to stick to close to the far right hand side of the lane on the road – two wheels off the road into the ditch is not a good thing. It must be commonplace though as there are signs everywhere indicating that two wheels off the shoulder of the road isn’t a good thing.
Iceland has engineered its roads to get from A to B – there aren’t any road shoulders to pull over on, and the number of roadside lay-bys are few and far between. Try to pull onto the road shoulder and you’re either driving into the ditch by the side of the road, or dependind on where you are, off for a roll down the side of the mountain.
Traffic conditions, particularly outside Reykjavik, are very light – and get lighter the further away you are. By the time I reach Borgarnes, there is very little traffic in either direction. I go hunting for my two must haves for a road trip – an Icelandic sim card for the phone in case I end up in the proverbial ditch, and a holder for the GPS. I find the sim card in a Siminn reseller in Borganes. 2000 kronor for the card with 2000 credit. Not so much luck with the GPS holder – the camera store has Garmin holders, but not for the model I have. The advice is that the most likely place to find one is back in Reykjavik.
Borgarnes is difficult to get a feel for. The wind is howling in off the sea, and it is grey and overcast. So I decide to drive back to Reykjavik to hunt for a holder. I’m getting the hang of the car, and so far have only tried to change gears with the door handle twice, and okay, I kept too far to the right on the way back to Reyjavik, and whacked the right hand wing mirror on one of those moveable roadwork bollards. No harm done, but made me stick closer to the centre line on the road.
Back in Reykjavik, I walk back to the camera store on the main street I noticed yesterday. No GPS holders, and no idea where to find one. A quick lunch at Café Paris, and it’s back in the car to find an alternative. Kringlan mall is a short drive away, and I decide that’s probably the best bet. It’s a small, busy mall, with all of the phone shops that aren’t evident in the main shopping area of Reykjavik – Vodafone, Siminn, and Nova. No GPS holders though. On the way out, I decide to check if the small department store (Hagkaup I think) sells electronics. Well, they do, but not many. In a last ditch attempt, I look around the two small car and bike accessory aisles, and lo and behold, a generic one size fits all phone holder that will fit the GPS unit for 1999 kronor.
All set now, so it’s back to Borgarnes. There are a lot of t-shirts for sale that read ‘If you don’t like the weather, wait 5 minutes”. If you wait a couple of hours, the wind in Borgarnes has blown itself out, and other than the occasional gust, the sky has cleared and it’s a nice, sunny afternoon. The Hotel Borgarnes assign me a room that’s a vast improvement over its higher rated predecessor, and the only downside is that there is a charge for wi-fi.
Just down the road, I stumble into a fabulous café, thinking it’s an art gallery. The café at Eddu Verold has a lovely view over the tidal estuary, and the best cakes in Iceland! It’s also open until 11pm in summer, and I suspect does a roaring trade on the weekend. At 5pm though, there’s only a few customers.
