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| Not my picture. I am no way near talented enough to take this. |
As anyone who follows me on Instagram may know, I have recently been away to Iceland for a few days. I apologise now for my somewhat excessive 'grammin over the last week. Sorry, not sorry.
I'm going to write some posts in the coming weeks about what we got up to, but for now, I feel like it is time for an honest post. A post that makes you want to laugh in my face. A post that really shows how different the reality of travel can be from the pictures we share on social media. It would be a bit of an understatement to say that visiting Iceland has been something that has been very high on my Bucket List since day one. Why? So that I could freeze my nuts off in the baltic wilderness in February? So that I could spend the equivalent of £40 on a takeaway? (Iceland is HELLA expensive, guys. Be warned. My bank statement looks like its gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson.) No, the real reason I have always wanted to go to Iceland was to see the Northern Lights.
I distinctly remember getting an atlas one Christmas when I was very young and staring at the photo (note: singular photo) of the Northern Lights for hours on end and just wanting desperately to see them myself one day. This said two things about me. One, I didn't have a lot of friends growing up; this was true. And two, that travelling the world and seeing all of its wonders has been something I've always longed to do; this was true, and still is the case today.
Needless to say, when the opportunity to go on a Northern Lights tour in Iceland came up, I grabbed it by the balls. Or at least I would have grabbed it by the balls if our tour hadn't been cancelled on the first day. Turns out cloudy weather = little chance of lights = no profit for tour companies = they can cancel whenever they feel like it and not bother to let you know until you've already been sat waiting 45 minutes for the tour bus. BUT WHATEVER, I'm not bitter.
We rebooked the tour for the second night and as if by magic, the tour bus actually showed up that time.
My hopes weren't about to get dashed to pieces again. Well, technially, they could have been. I mean there's never any guarantee you'll see the Northern Lights; they don't run like clockwork. However, I was not mentally ready to face that possibility yet. We got on the bus before they could cancel it again and sat on the first two seats we locked eyes on.
This was our fatal error; little did we know it then but we were sat behind a woman who would have made quick work of Margaret Thatcher. A woman who could have knocked out Rocky Balboa with just a look. A woman who for the purposes of this blog, we shall call Steph.
The first words we heard out of Steph were of her telling her boyfriend it was "tough shit" they were on a coach trip. Was the sound-scape to my long-awaited Northern Lights tour about to be that of a relationship on the rocks? No. It was going to be much worse than that.
Not long after setting off, to my amazement and delight, the Northern Lights started flickering above us in the sky. I couldn't believe it. This was a dream come true. I was here, in Iceland! Watching the Northern Lights! A tear was just coming to my eye when I heard the following noises:
"LOOK, BABY. LOOK!! WOW. BEN, BABY, LOOK!!"
(note: when I use capital letters, I am emphasising volume)
It was Steph.
Never in my life have I heard someone seriously refer to their other half as 'baby' before and never in my life do I want to hear it again. It was sickening. Just as my nearly-formed tear of joy was wrenched back into its socket, a vein in my skull popped with disgust.
But hey, she was only excited. I mean, it was pretty damn exciting. It was an absolutely breathtaking scene.
No more than a tenth of a second I'd had this thought it happened again.
"BEN, BENNY, LOOK!!! LOOK AT IT!!!! Wow. WOOOOOOWWW."
Ben was looking.
"LOOK, BEN. LOOK!"
Ben was still looking.
I'm not even going to try and pretend that I'm not easily irritated, because that would be a blatant lie. But this, THIS, was taking the piss. Ben was sitting right next to her. Ben had eyes. Ben could see what was going on through the window.
"BEN, LOOK AT IT. LOOK AT IT. WOW. WOW. wow."
JESUS, THANKS STEPH. PLEASE KEEP THESE PERIODIC UPDATES COMING.
Surely, I thought, surely this was going to stop eventually. It couldn't go on forever. Ben would speak up at some point and tell her to shut up.
I was wrong. It didn't stop. It did go on forever. And in all that time, I never heard Ben speak once.
I tried with all my might to block out the incessant "WOW" and "BEN, LOOK" noises coming from the seat in front, but it was impossible. Every time I thought I was getting lost in the beautiful green hues of the night sky, I heard a "BEN, BABY" and once again found myself gagging.
Poor Ben.
My advice to Ben would be this: run, run for your life. No sane human being on Earth could put up with Steph's overblown levels of response every time anything remotely exciting and unusual happened in life. It would drive them mad. Hell! It was driving me mad and I'd only been near it five minutes. I was one of the lucky ones.
Finally, and I do mean finally, we pulled up at the stop where we were allowed to get out of the bus and watch the lights from outside. Two key things gave the fact we had arrived away: one, I have fucking eyes; and two, because Steph was huffing and puffing so loudly about how long it was taking to park up that I'm fairly sure people on the other side of the globe, perhaps on the Southern Lights tour could have heard her.
As much as I am sure that standing near Steph and Ben looking up at the night sky would have capped off the experience nicely, we took a miss and walked as far away as we possibly could without running the risk of being yelled at by the tour guide (yeah, remember her! The lady actually employed to tell us facts about the Northern Lights! Not that she could really get a word in edgeways...)
I must say that looking up at the stars and the lights was every bit as magical as I wanted it to be. It really was a dream come true and there is no one I would have rather shared that moment with than Callum. Soppy, I know, but true.
When we got back into the bus after an hour or so (after we'd practically turned to ice), Steph, who was clearly done attempting to get any kind of words out of Ben, turned around and started speaking to me. ME!! What must have I done wrong in a previous life?! She wasted no time in telling me that she had sent Ben out into the cold to try and capture the lights on camera. This, for anyone who may not know, is a bloody difficult task; getting your camera to focus on ANYTHING is nigh impossible unless you are a professional photographer. Again, poor Ben.
When Ben stumbled back into the bus, shivering from the cold, Steph reviewed the pictures he'd taken and sent him back out to take some more.
Poor Ben. Guy deserves a fucking medal.
Going back to the title of this blog, I definitely wouldn't say our Northern Lights experience was ruined. Let's face it, it was incredible and we were very lucky to see them; after all, hundreds of people go and just don't end up seeing them. I just think its funny how different reality can be to the pictures we see. I mean, I for one am never going to be able to look at a picture of the Northern Lights again without picturing a Steph and a Ben having a little domestic in the background. I guess these are the little parts of travelling that really shape memories and make everyone's experiences unique and special.
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