How does it feel?

6 June. 7.55 light snow.

Is it fun? Am I enjoying myself?

No to the first, yes to the second. I didn't come here for fun. The starting point was to embrace the solo traveller experience. It was to be just me, the birds and the wilderness. I knew I would enjoy being alone if I had the van as a bolt hole, but I also knew that I would feel the need for company some of the time. My plan was at one extreme to walk for hours carrying the camera gear to the places where the really wild birds are - the Gyr Falcon and the Sea Eagle. So far I have not done much walking. That must change, even if there is no avian destination. At the other extreme I would be socialising in hostel or campsite common rooms with lots of young and not so young people from the three main demographics of Iceland tourism - America, UK and Germany. I expected to find more travellers around the north-east coast when actually there have been hardly any. I'm now at Myvatn, one of the hot-spots on the tourist route, and it's snowing. I arrived in fine, but cold weather, just before 6pm  and was not surprised to find very few people here. That has been the pattern at the campsites I've stayed on so far. The season seems not yet to have begun.

Then the hire cars started arriving. They would pull up and one or two couples in their twenties, all the men with beards, would jump out and start putting up a tent. This went on until 10.30. They all had the same clothes - rain jackets, woolly hats, scarves. I couldn't tell what nationality they were, and I didn't want to try to speak to them when they were battling the wind and the tent pegs.

After I had eaten, I went to have a look at the lake and at the supermarket over the road. It was shut. A young man (with a beard) approached me, asking in very broken English where he could get food.

"Where are  you from?" Always my first question.

"Argentina"

He had a strong Hispanic accent, but at least I could hear him, and understood that he had been working on a farm and now was doing a bit of travelling. At first I said I couldn't help him, but then thought - I've got plenty of basic foods; I will give him some. On the way back to the van he showed me the food that he had in his tent - a packet of noodles, an apple and some rice. It seemed it wasn't food he needed but something to cook it with. How can anyone go camping in this climate with so little preparation? I cooked up his noodles for him and lent him the pan and a bowl. I had a feeling that if I sat him down to eat in the van I would never get rid of him.

This morning I spoke to another one of them in the shower block and he was French, so it seems this is a prime destination for the international gap year traveller.

There are 4 huge white mobile homes parked together in one small space. Is this where the older people are? 

8:30 Still snowing.

Most days I've slept well, and felt very positive. My main worry is when the gas will run out. I'm not  using it to heat the water and I actually find washing with cold or heating up a kettle a real pain. I didn't work for 3 months on the van to wash with cold water! I would have bought two cylinders, but was worried I wouldn't be able to sell them when I got home, but it may be worth another £50 to get rid of that anxiety.

Most days too I've had periods of elation:

When the kind man towed me out of the grass; when I walk out into the wild country with my camera; when I capture a perfect image of a bird I've not seen before, (or a familiar one in an interesting setting, or in breeding plumage); when I watch birds which are rare at home but common here, and see them hopping round the van feeding or defending their territories - behaving as if I wasn't there.

Then there's the driving - on the sealed roads it's a real pleasure - fantastic views all round, huge flat wastelands with dramatic snow-decked mountains, gently winding smooth roads with almost no traffic. The van purrs along nicely now it can breathe properly with its new German "air pipe". On the gravel roads it can be very tiring. Some of them feel like you are driving on an endless cattle grid where the gravel has become corrugated. Some are smooth for long enough to give you false confidence and then hit you with pot-holes.

Then there are the times when I retire to my little  warm bolt-hole and go through all my photographs deleting, editing, cropping: the thrill of the capture relived in the editing.

It's hard keeping this blog up to date, but it's creative and I get a lot of satisfaction from it, especially if some of you appreciate what I am doing and find it interesting.