The Bizarre Truth Read Free

fixer Josh Berman was continuing the chat and I was curious, since I don’t speak Spanish, what our new friends were saying. Josh was reticent to share, but I kept the pressure on and he confessed that the locals had told him they also call me El Chamboavaca. That means “he who eats like a pig, lurks like a snake, and shits like a cow.” Someday that privilege may be yours.
    So read on, and hopefully we can all take something from reading this volume, and I hope you are entertained by it. I will have been successful if just one person out there will be inspired to see the world, one human story at a time. One of the great lessons I have learned in my travels is that the most important thing we can ever share with each other are our stories. These are mine.

Andrew arrives at Iceland’s
Alsey Island after a treacherous voyage through
the freezing cold, raging sea
.

Modern Day Vikings
Puffin Hunting in the Land of
Fire and Ice
    celand looks and feels like no other place on earth. As our plane touched down just outside Reykjavík, I was almost convinced we’d landed on the moon. Not surprising, given that NASA astronauts trained in Iceland prior to the first moon landing. In much of the country, the barren, rocky topography looks otherworldly in the extreme. Iceland is roughly the size of Ohio, a moss-covered, glacial, rocky expanse born of the volcanic womb. Treeless mountains, sweeping fields of arctic grasses waving out to the horizon, awe-inspiring geysers, raging rivers, spectacular ocean vistas, and therapeutic hot springs fueled by boiling, underwater volcanoes are stunning but make much of the island uninhabitable. Iceland is called the land of fire and ice, yet despite its staggering natural beauty, the overwhelming majority of the population lives in the capital city of Rekyjavík. Everyone else is a farmer, or works in either the thermal energy business (booming) or the greenhouse gardening industry (emerging).
    The country is changing and growing all the time—literally. In 1963, a volcanic explosion just off the southern coast of Iceland created an island one square mile in size. This landmass, named Surtsey after Iceland’s mythological god of fire, grew to official landmass status in only three and a half years. I was fortunate enough to travel to Surtsey by boat one day. It’s a phenomenal thing to see, an island that is as big as it is, that is as new as it is, and freakishly almost exactly as old as I am.
    I knew the food in Iceland would be wonderful. As a chef in New York and Minneapolis, I’d always been floored by the quality of Icelandic lamb, dairy products, and seafood I’d run across from time to time. Icelandic animals drink the cleanest water on earth, eat the freshest grass, and breathe the purest air. Everything, from the horses to the sheep and cows, is genetically pristine and raised not only for their meat but for their milk and cheese products. Skyr, for example, the addictively cheesy yogurt product you see everywhere in Iceland, comes from cows that eat sweet grass for such a brief period of time, then silage for most of the year, which gives them a unique flavor profile that is distinctly their own. Sweet and white, devoid of the yellowed and grassy notes that conventionally raised cow’s milk contains for much of the milking year.
    I spent much of my time in Rekyjavík puttering around town and enjoying the beautiful summer weather. Summer temperatures climb into the forties during the day, maybe fifties in the sun. We got a lot accomplished thanks to the globally famous amphetamine effect of the short nightfall. Occurring between 12 A.M . and 5 A.M. , the mid hours of the night are mostly dusky blue and never really deep black.
    The food scene in Iceland is vibrant. Small cafés like the Sea Baron serve up steamy bowls of chowder and lobster bisque, elegant eateries like Vox and Siggi Hall would be great restaurants with huge followings in any city in the world, and the local