Ten days. Almost three thousand kilometers. One camper van with no heater, no wifi, and a rented sleeping bag she almost said no to.
I met her in line at FlyOver in Reykjavik and I dragged her back to the apartment I was staying in so you could hear this.
She's from the Netherlands. She worked non stop for years, lived for the job, and hated it. So this year she decided every euro she made was going into adventures instead of things. She answered a Facebook post from a stranger, got on a plane after one Zoom call, and spent four weeks in Iceland training Icelandic horses for free room and board.
Then she rented the cheapest van she could find on Google and drove the Ring Road backwards from the way everybody tells you to do it.
In here: how she found campsites for 15 to 21 euros a night using nothing but flags on Google Maps, why she skipped the wifi, how she got popular spots to herself, what she did on the one day the weather went bad, and why her hiking boots have holes in them after ten days. Paragliding. Ice climbing. Snorkeling between two tectonic plates. A mountain she climbed clipped to a rope the day before her flight home.
She bought one magnet the whole trip. Everything else was an experience. And then her mother saw the bank account.
If you've been sitting at your kitchen table thinking Iceland is for other people, start here.