Food during the flight had been too much to hope for from our budget airline. For those with a recent fried brunch setling in their stomachs this was no problem. Hugh's abstinence was coming back to haunt him. Since there was nothing we could do it only remained to remind Hugh periodically how good a feed it had been. We're proper friends like that. Prior to landing in Iceland we had been scared by stories of extortionate prices for alcohol. So it was not possible to ignore the duty free shop in the airport on arival and indeed a lady came over to tell us just how much more it would cost once we had left the arrival hall. So began a lengthy debate on the most advantageous form of alcohol. Spirits obviously carried the day and we soon had a litre each of vodka, snaps and a menthol drink. Feeling pleased with ourselves we made our way to passport control only to feel less pleased when we discovered that it was shut as everyone else had already gone through. We eventually got the attention of a chatty security guard who made a joke at our expense and then let us through without any checks other than to ask which football team we supported, the right answer being his favorite Wolves. With another joke shared with the guard at customs we were glad to be clear of the building before someone decided that the third and final joke started with the snap of rubber gloves.
Boxes. This is what we had carefully packed our bikes into and there were several theories in how we were going to stash them for the return journey. Whilst building our bikes, contrary to a growing body of evidence, we obviously became more optomistic about the gentle handling metered out by baggage handlers and decided that we had no further use for them and binned them. This must have been brought on by the flush of success of having four working bikes in our possession. This optomism only lasted as until it actually came round to flying home: cue desperate searches of Reykjavik for any scrap of cardboard to protect our bikes with only faint memories of those perfect specimins we had thrown away.
Our first welcome to Iceland proper was in the airport car park where the vehicles appeared to have been on a serious course of steroids. Everything was supersized and we spent a while inspecting a couple of off road touring trucks, not aware that these were soon to become almost the norm. Having checked out the local cars we set out straight for the highway over our first bit of off roading. Once on the tarmac we could enjoy the even surface and the sunshine while doing our best to ignore the traffic thundering past. With bikes heavily loaded the slight back wind was welcome and it was an easy roll into Reykjavik through rocky lava fields.
As we entered town we stopped to fill up our fuel bottles. With the first one eventually full, and a puddle of unleaded spreading around us we took the nozzle from Duncan and handed it to Steve. At the same time a local advised us that the unleaded would burn very dirty in our stoves and advised us to buy 'SBP' if we could find it - a very clean fuel for stoves and lamps but not widely sold. He even filled up one of our bottles from his own supply to prove how good the stuff was! Pleased we went inside to pay for the first bottle where we were greeted with our first 'hotdog honey'. Unknown to us at the time every garage in Iceland sells hotdogs but only this one employes highly attractive staff to do so. When we had been asked for a third time if there was anything else she could do for us, anything at all, with increasing emphasis we had to assume that either Iceland was glad to greet a good potential addition to the gene pool or we were happily mis-reading the situation.
The campsite was large and very full. It was pleasing to note the number of unlocked bikes outside tents - security obviously wasn't going to be much of an issue. Once the tents were up we rode into town in the setting sunlight in search of food. A Domino's pizza takeaway was the first semi-credible establishment and soon three large pizza's had been ordered. Not much longer after they had been finished we were besides an abstract statue of a Viking ship overlooking the harbour grub in hand.