There’s vacationing and there’s traveling. Vacationing is when there aren’t that many decisions to make.  You’re in a resort and the biggest choice you make in the afternoon is what color your umbrella will be.  (In your drink hopefully, not over your head.)  Traveling (for pleasure) is a whole different animal, at least for people who take travel as serious fun, for people whose stated goal is to wring every bit of experience out of each trip as possible.  That’s how I am…and it is a double-edged sword.  I love the wildly diverse experiences I’ve had by going the extra mile on a trip – whether it was running with the bulls in Pamplona while I was studying in Europe, or rock climbing above the beach cliffs in southern Thailand, instead of lying there on my towel.  On the sharp edge of the sword is the fact that there are always decisions to make, usually comfort isn’t the leading consideration, and when you’re trying to squeeze the life out of a country, sometimes you get tired and cranky with your traveling partner.

I love the fact that Angel likes to plan travel. It’s one of the (many) reasons I fell in love with him so quickly.  On our first date, we could barely get a word in edgewise as we each talked about travel destinations we loved and where we wanted to go next.

I’ve usually traveled with people who abdicated 95% of the decisions to me.  Which sounds great for a Type A personality, but it can be exhausting.  When every decision is mine, I have serious anxiety about whether my travel buddy is having the best time – after all, it’s all my fault either way.  It’s a recognized flaw of mine (among many, yeah yeah.)  I get anxious if they don’t tell me they are having the best day of their life, every day.   (I’m exaggerating.  A little.)

Unfortunately, Angel is also used to traveling with people who let him make all the decisions.

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I took a nine hour, happily mediocre $500 flight on Icelandic discount airline Wow.  Angel met me at Keflavik airport at 2:30pm.  He arrived 36 hours earlier from Madrid.  We sound very jetsetter global gay, right?  Well, except for the discount airline part.

I haven’t seen Angel in almost 3 weeks, because of my work travel to NYC and his visit to Madrid to see his grandfather.  I’ve missed him like crazy.  It’s been too long to be apart from him.

The Ghost of the Mud Pool

We decamped immediately for the Reykanes peninsula, one of the least touristed areas in Iceland.  Wide plains of desolate volcanic rock and black, broken dramatically by red cliffs or wide swaths of muted green moss carpets.  Outside of Grindavik, the geothermal steam vents and bubbling mud pools are named after the ghost witch Gunnuhver.  Behind every place name in Iceland is a story or a myth, which is half the charm of the indecipherable and barely pronounceable names.  Every corner has a magical Viking history.

The witch Gunnu had a fight with the local sheriff (over rent apparently), and she died before it was resolved.  The day after she died, the sheriff showed up dead, bones broken.  A priest stopped Gunna from dragging the sheriff’s soul to hell.   Gunna got pissed and she made life on the entire Reykanes peninsula unbearable for months.  Finally, two farmers, with the help of another priest, knotted a rope and dragged Gunnu into the earth, trapping her inside the hot springs now named after her.

To this day, Gunnu still gets angry.  A few months ago, she blew her lid and destroyed part of a viewing platform where unsuspecting tourists came to gawk.  I can confirm that part of the legend.

The viewing platform, destroyed.  See?

In our normal lives, Angel definitely gives me my space to be a (slightly) bossy Type A personality.   He likes it (mostly), but when it comes to travel, he’s used to making the decisions.  So, we butted heads.  On the daily. The first week of this trip was actually one of our most challenging weeks together as a couple.