The Bizarre Truth Read Free Page A

seaport boasts a lamb hot-dog shack that is a must for any food lover’s Icelandic itinerary. I swam and spa-ed at the geothermal hot spring the Blue Lagoon. I availed myself of the local public bathhouses in town, which are very popular, and made a host of new friends courtesy of our larger-than-life host, Svein Sveinson. Svein, a filmmaker, bon vivant, and legendary lover of the good life, introduced himself to me online by sending me a picture of himself, stripped to the skin, after he’d stuffed his enormous six-foot-five-inch frame into the teeniest hot spring he could find.
    After four or five days of cruising around town, I was itching for a change of pace, and I was also looking forward to my first taste of puffin, those cute little black and white birds with big orange beaks. Before you get yourself all worked up about me eating this cute ‘n’ cuddly creature, consider the fact that only 300,000 people call Iceland home. The puffin population, on the other hand, runs between 8 and 10 million. Icelanders could eat puffin at every meal for now until eternity and they would never make a dent in that region’s population. As a matter of fact, they urge people to eat them as a point of civic duty because there are just so many of them. The country even hosts giant puffin-centric food festivals, where everyone eats smoked puffins and grilled puffins and drinks to the wee hours of the morning. It’s a strange food concept that few people outside Iceland really understand.
    But to eat the best puffins, and to hunt them where they live, you need to head south of Reykjavík. There, you’ll find the Vestmannaeyjarare Islands, a cluster of smaller islands that make up one of the region’s most famous fishing communities. This area’s other claim to fame is the 1973 volcanic eruption on Heimaey, the largest island in the chain. It’s Iceland’s version of Pompeii, but only a few decades old. Lava flows crushed half of the town, and when you see the end results of something that destructive and realize that it happened within your lifetime, it gives you great pause. You see homes buried, and cars half frozen in black, porous rock. Luckily, everyone was able to get off the island in time to save themselves, but my fantastically negative, cynical mind kept telling me I was trapped on an island without much of an escape route.
    Millions of puffins call the Vestmannaeyjarare Islands home, and the local restaurateurs take advantage of this ample source of food. The rest of the citizenry are devoted puffin eaters or hunters, or both. Once our six-seat puddle jumper landed on Heimaey, we tried to negotiate our way over to the far side of Vestmannaeyjarare, tooling through the small town, lunching at a teeny fishhouse on steamed cod and brown bread. With its simple harbor, occasional spouting orca, seals and numerous birds, it was perfect for shooting a little b-roll. Along the way, we ended up running into a guy who claimed he could arrange to have us picked up by boat on the far side of the island and taken to an uninhabited island to experience a puffin hunt firsthand. Without hesitation, we piled the crew into our van and headed over to the far side of the island.
    It’s a bright, beautiful summer’s day in Iceland, and in the sun it feels like it’s in the low fifties. Perfect sweatshirt weather. We pass alongside a huge half-moon bay, complete with breathtaking views of the ocean and the outer isles, which include Surtsey, and start unloading our gear onto the mile-long black sand beach. There isn’t a trace of human imprint as far as you can see. Not a jet contrail in the sky, not a footprint in the sand, not a boat at sea … it’s just empty and desolate. You know for sure you’re at one of the ends of the earth, a feeling I find so satisfying I could have sat at that beach all day.
    We lock our vehicles, thank our new friends, and wait for our guide by a giant piece of driftwood that had washed up on the beach.