January 9, 2016
Taking the ferry across the North Sea from Iceland to Denmark in the middle of the winter. Yes, it was almost like a ghost ship, yes, there was a bit of a storm, yes, I got seasick...
It might seem like a weird idea to start in Iceland when the plan is to overland Africa, especially as Iceland is an island. The main point of overlanding is however not necessarily to go by land, but rather to not fly. The important thing is to see places instead of flying over them.
Not flying is still quite an effort though when it comes to leaving Iceland, especially during the winter. The only way to mainland Europe is to get a ferry from Seyðisfjörður on the Icelandic east coast to Denmark, a ferry ride that takes a 2.5 days with a few hours stop in the Faroe Islands. That is, if the ferry even departs at all due to the weather. The North Sea tends to have quite a few storms over the winter.
Even though the weather was uncertain our ferry did depart, but there were not many passengers. 15 passengers on a big cruise ship gives a bit of a ghost ship vibe. We had our own group though and enough to drink for a party night on deck. Conclusion: alcohol does help against seasickness, but only temporarily, and a hangover on a rough sea is not that fun…
Due to the weather we got delayed to Faroe Islands which meant only one hour off the boat instead of six hours. I was hoping to have time to see something in Tórshavn, but with the limited time and the seasickness we didn’t get further than the closest fast food joint. It was definitely not long enough for me to be able to say that I’ve been to the Faroe Islands, but I’m tagging the post with it anyway.
While on the boat the plans were changed again. Due to the current situation with a lot of immigrants traversing Europe and talk about extra border checks it might be a bad idea to cross the entire continent with a truck full of people in the back, especially since we’d already gotten stopped once once in Iceland. It would be a pretty shitty trip if (worst case scenario) the truck would have gotten confiscated before we even got to Africa. Better wait until we get to countries where peolpe don’t really care as much about road safety.
Once we arrived in Denmark the drivers started driving the truck south, while the rest of us took a train to Copenhagen to take a flight to Malaga the next day. A bit unfortunate that we won’t overland all the way, but probably for the best.
The upside though was that we got a bit of time in Copenhagen, enough to meet up with my friend Jesper for a few beers in the evening, and some sightseeing the next day just before the flight.
Next stop, Malaga!