14
Location: Reykjavík
The gang woke up a little bit earlier to get some much-needed coffee a couple of doors down to get ready for the big work day ahead of us. We brought our drinks back to the house, had some “eggcellent” scrambled eggs, and were off to bus stop #10 just like the first time we were in the city. Except for this time, instead of Jammi, Magnus was picking us up.
He took us to a gas station in Grindavík, where we would be meeting Tommi, the founder, and leader of the Blue Army (Blái Herinn in Icelandic), the organization that we would be joining for the beach cleanup. Tommi told us a little bit about himself, including all of his amazing accomplishments, such as starting Dive Iceland before the Blue Army, being on the cover of Time Magazine, and even working with actors such as Ben Stiller and Clint Eastwood. He started Blue Army from nothing more than a vision and the will-power to dedicate himself to protecting mother nature. After the introduction, he lead us to the beach, and we got started collecting the absurd amount of trash that was there.
We all worked hard for an hour and a half, had our delicious leftovers as lunch, and then worked for another hour and a half. By the end of it, we filled up three huge bags full of trash pieces and amassed a gigantic pile of ropes that were entangled in the rocky shore. We took some group pictures and went home feeling very accomplished. After a quick shopping session, we got ready for our nice, final dinner.
We walked to Íslenski Barinn, also down the road, where we tried our first hákarl, traditional Icelandic fermented shark. Everyone tried it, and we quickly realized the rumors were false; it did smell horrible, but it tasted soooo much worse than it smelled. We all tried to choke it down. Then our dinners arrived, and we ate actual tasty food while laughing and remembering all of the great memories we made over the last two weeks. We talked about all of the different places we had stayed, sights we had seen, and organizations we had helped. But more than all of that, we had been hanging out with only each other for two weeks, and random strangers had become as close as family. After dinner, we walked home to enjoy our last night all together in Iceland.