It's Not Always Smooth Sailing

So while in Iceland I guess I wrote down little mishaps throughout our travels but never published them. While a majority of the trip did go according to plan (miraculously), we definitely had a few little hiccups along the way. Of course on social media I only posted about how wonderful and amazing the trip was so I think it's good to share that nothing always goes according to plan. In fact every time we've ever traveled I don't know that anything has ever gone 100% according to plan. So, seven months later and at 3:45am (I can't sleep), here are five things that definitely did not go according to plan while we were road tripping Iceland:

1. I asked Michael to stand in front of a huge chunk of glacier on one of the black sand beaches for a picture. Neither of us were paying attention, he was looking at me and I was looking through my camera, and a wave came and hit him from behind. Like, freezing cold Arctic temperature sea water. Fortunately his body stayed dry due to his waterproof hiking pants and insane rain jacket but unfortunately water got in around his ankles and the inside of his boots and socks got soaked. We had to run back to the car and take his boots and socks and try to blast the heat to dry them because we had plans to hike next. The cherry on top? I didn't even get the picture! Bless his heart, he didn't even get mad or upset about any of it.

2. We broke the wifi at one of our AirBnbs. So the first day we were at the AirBnb we didn't even know the password so we didn't have any internet or means to text our host and ask. The next morning we found a cafe (most cafe's have free wifi there) and messaged our host. After getting the password we got access to the wifi but the connection was literally horrible... so I asked Michael to reset the router. He did what would normally be a reset but on the weird European router it completely turned the wifi off and we could not figure out how to get it back, leaving us without wifi for the remainder of our stay there. It wasn't the worst thing in the world, but it was still irritating.
3. Also at the AirBnb mentioned above we attempted to do laundry because it was the only place we had rented thus far that had a washing machine. All the directions on the front of the washer were in Icelandic and the pictures made absolutely no sense and because we broke the wifi we couldn't google how to use the washer correctly. We managed to get all the clothes soaking wet and spin them a few times before realizing we seriously screwed up the laundry settings and it wasn't doing what it should have been doing. We ended up having to pull all the clothes out of the washer and lay them out to dry. Of course they weren't dry in the morning and to make matters worse it happened to be all our underwear and socks- the essentials.

3. On our biggest travel day (from Vik to the Westfjords) a big storm was hitting the west side of the island. We experienced 30mph winds with rain coming at us sideways while crossing long ocean bridges (the wind was picking up the sea water and hurling it at the car) and driving on THE SKETCHIEST narrow, curvy, dirt-gravel roads.  Side note- we had absolutely no idea that the roads weren't paved in the fjords so that definitely took us by surprise. At one point we were riding along the top edge of a 900ft tall cliff and below were ferocious waves crashing against a very rocky coastline. Of course I was riding on the side of the car closest to the cliff edge and was literally dying. Nervously laughing, staring down at my death, heart dropping into my stomach, not thrilled overall with the situation. But Michael didn't seem to mind and we tootled along until we reached our little seaside AirBnb. Instead of taking 7 hours it took us close to nine, needless to say it was a long, long day.
4. I kept thinking I was hitting the record button on my camera but it turns out 50% of the time I was just pointing my camera at things and not recording. After the first 15 times doing this I started to get really pissed off. At one point we got stuck on a back road because a local farmer was herding their sheep and they were SURROUNDING the car. Hundreds of them. I was totally geeking out because they were all "bahhhh BAH bah bah" and we couldn't move and had to wait for their fluffy little butts to walk by, it was so hilarious and cute. I thought I was recording the whole ordeal but about an hour later when I went back to watch the video it wasn't there. I never actually hit the record button. This continued to happen for the duration of our trip, and I continued to be very irritated with myself.

5. When we flew into Iceland we were supposed to get our fly fishing gear disinfected in Customs. We were so excited when we arrived that we totally spaced out and forgot to get the gear disinfected but remembered the day before we had planned to go out with a fly fishing guide. We were staying in Reykjavik and knew there was an airport there so we figured we could pop over in the morning and get it disinfected before we went about our day. It turns out that airport didn't do disinfections and we had to drive all the way back to Keflavik Airport. Michael had to ask about half a dozen people where to go- none of them knew what he was talking about. Finally he was pointed in the right direction and he got the gear disinfected but it put a huge dent into one of our sightseeing days and we missed out on three waterfalls.