The Amazing Race 35, Episode 2

Bangkok (Thailand) - Nakhon Pathom (Thailand)

I wasn’t in Thailand this week. I was representing the National Writers Union and the International Federation of Journalists at a conference in Reykjavik, Iceland, where it wasn’t easy to watch this episode of The Amazing Race — at least not legally.

[One of my presentations to the IFRRO conference in Reykjavik. Inside the meeting rooms, as is often the case at such events, there was no way to tell where in the world we were. Photo by Dorien Kelly, used by kind permission.]

When I wasn’t in meetings or conference events, I had better things to do than sit around in my guesthouse watching “reality” TV.

[Houses in central Reykjavik.]

My one free day in Iceland was unusually windless, dry, and even partly sunny. So I rented a bike and went for a 50 km / 30 mile ride, mostly on paved and well-signed cycle tracks, out to the Grótta lighthouse and then south along the coast past the Gálgahraun lava field to Alftanes and back.

[Along the Reykjavik shoreline.]

Reykjavik Bike Tours is open only by appointment during the winter, but when I called, they were happy to have one of their staff meet me at their “shop” (a pair of shipping containers) on the waterfront by the Old Harbor at the arranged hour and set me up for the day with a bicycle, lock, pump, spare tube, tire levers, multitool, and helmet. The bike was in excellent condition, and the price was reasonable relative to the high cost of doing business anywhere in Iceland. There are mountains overlooking Reykjavik from just across the bay to the north, but the route I followed along the shore was flat and easy riding. I had a great day, and it would have felt like a waste of such good weather to spend my limited time on a tour bus just to get further out of the city.

[As good as it gets for a bike ride in Reykjavik: dry, windless, and partly sunny.]

The Amazing Race has visited Iceland three times — more than it has many larger countries. My own visit this week was a chance to see how tourism to Iceland has continued to grow and change.

When The Amazing Race first visited Iceland in 2004, the producers had trouble finding enough hotel rooms for all of the cast and crew of the TV show. There are many more hotel rooms than there were, and still more under construction, not to mention conversions of long-term housing for local residents (including the immigrants who fill many of the jobs serving tourists) to short-term rentals for visitors, and cruise ships that bring more visitors to less populous ports (article also available here to non-subscribers) than could possibly be accommodated in lodging on shore in some of these small communities, overwhelming local infrastructure and services.

Construction cranes, mostly building new hotels, are ubiquitous along the highway between central Reykjavik and the airport at Keflavik. But tourism has increased so much and so quickly, and continues to do so, that hotel rooms remain in short supply. You can find a place to stay in Reykjavik on short notice, but it might cost more and not be as nice or as well located as if you plan ahead. In the rest of Iceland, you may have trouble finding anywhere at all to stay without advance reservations.

In 2018, when The Amazing Race again stopped over in Iceland, I noted that, “Foreigners visiting Iceland as a stopover en route to or from somewhere else still far outnumber those for whom Iceland is the primary destination, but that is changing. I know some people who’ve gone to Iceland and back recently from the U.S., without continuing on to Europe.” That shift has continued, and the balance has clearly flipped in the last few years. A significant percentage of through trans-Atlantic travelers on the two Icelandic long-haul airlines, Icelandair and PLAY, choose to stop over in Iceland for at least a night. But of the tourists I met in Reykjavik this week, those for whom Iceland was the primary or sole destinations for their holiday far outnumbered those on a stopover en route to somewhere else.

Few countries have experienced such an overwhelming tourism boom as Iceland in the years since the financial crisis of 2008 and the devaluation of Icelandic currency turned Iceland from an expensive to an affordable destination for foreigners. The boom has continued even though prices for foreigners have gone back up. If foreigners don’t like current prices in Iceland, which are roughly comparable to those in Switzerland, they should keep in mind how expensive all imported goods and services were for Icelanders after the bank failures and the crash of the Kroner.

The population of Iceland is small, especially outside the capital region where two-thirds of the total population lives. The environment is fragile. I’ve wondered about the impact of the tourism boom; how Icelanders perceive foreign tourists and tourism; and the risks of active and “adventure” tourism — including some of the activities showcased by The Amazing Race when it returned to Iceland last season — in what can be unfamiliar, unforgiving, and remote conditions.

I found a fascinating exploration of these issues, relevant to visitors to other countries and not just Iceland, in The Little Book of Tourists in Iceland by Alda Sigmundsdóttir. Don’t mistake this for a “culture shock” guide to what not to do to avoid offending local mores (although there is some of that in the book). This is a superlative case study, plain-spoken, insightful, and balanced, of the economic, social, and environmental impact of tourism — for better and worse — on a “First World” country. It’s well worth reading whether or not you are going to Iceland.

The other local book I bought was an English translation from the original Icelandic of The Atom Station, a 1948 novel by Halldór Laxness, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1955. While this novel has more to do with corruption, class, gender, and the divide between Reykjavik and rural Iceland than geopolitics, it’s set in the context of the debate over Iceland’s role as an outpost of the U.S. military and NATO in the Cold War.

Icelanders’ acquiescence to cronyism and corruption, explored by both Halldór Laxness and Alda Sigmundsdóttir, remains an issue as well. A few days after I left Iceland, the Minister of Finance resigned as a result of a scandal in which shares in a government-owned bank were sold below market value in a private offering to secretly-selected investors including the minister’s father.

The single most important development setting the stage for the development of mass tourism to Iceland was the construction of a U.S. military airfield at Keflavik, near Reykjavik, as a refueling stop for U.S.-made aircraft being ferried to Europe during World War II. That base and its supporting infrastructure, which Iceland might not otherwise have chosen to build or been able to afford, became the international airport that enabled the growth of Icelandair and that remains the gateway for almost all visitors to the country.

Until it was surpassed by tourism, fishing was the largest industry in Iceland. Use of Keflavik Airbase by the U.S. military and NATO was a key bargaining chip for Iceland in its successful expansion of its territorial waters and its victory in the Cod Wars with the United Kingdom over offshore fishing rights.

[Icelandic cod makes for some of the best fish and chips I’ve ever had.]

The military significance of Iceland’s location and its relationship to the U.S. military, NATO, and nuclear weapons remain important issues today. Just down the street from the guesthouse where I was staying, I passed a local peace center with a poster in the window calling for “Iceland Out of NATO!”

[Peace House and office of the Campaign Against Militarism, Reykjavik. “Ísland úr NATO!”]

There are no direct flights between San Francisco and Iceland, and the least expensive connections for me this time were on Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) by way of its principal hub at Copenhagen Airport, Kastrup (CPH).

This was my first long-haul flight on SAS or connection through CPH. But based on this one experience, I may have found my new favorite trans-Atlantic airline and hub — all else including price being equal — for flights to and from the many places in Europe that don’t have direct flights to and from SFO.

A pet peeve for me, and an even more critical problem for my friends with allergies and chemical sensitivities, is the typical airport layout in which passengers have to pass through the perfume displays and sample-sprayers of a duty-free shop to get to their gates. CPH is the first airport I’ve been in with a signed fragrance-free shortcut that bypasses the duty-free shop entirely: Take a left just after the “security” checkpoint. Other airports should take note and do likewise.

In the photo below, the doors are closed, with no door handle visible, which might make you think the “fragrance-free route” is unavailable or perhaps requires an escort. But these are actually automatic doors that that open if you approach them.

[Fragrance-free shortcut from the security screening checkpoint to the departure gates, Copenhagen Airport.]

I was pleasantly surprised that nobody checked my ID (or, so far as I could tell, tried to identify me by facial recognition) for my SAS flights from Copenhagen to Reykjavik (KEF) and back. The Schengen Agreement is supposed to enable travel without government document checks within the Schengen area, which includes Iceland. But many airlines and airports insist on checking passengers’ IDs for their own (typically unspecified) purposes, even for flights within the Schengen area.

Even more pleasantly, there was no extra “security” check for passengers boarding flights from CPH to destinations in the U.S. At many foreign airports, including in Europe, passengers who have already had to partially undress and partially unpack at a “security” checkpoint to get into the terminal have to go through a second, more intrusive search before being allowed to board flights to the U.S. The absence of such a secondary screening checkpoint at CPH spares passengers from some gratuitous nuisance and delay, and makes possible significantly shorter minimum connecting times, even when you have a long walk between gates.

A further advantage to flying SAS to and from SFO is that they usually use an Airbus A330 on this route. The A330 is the smallest widebodied long-range plane currently being made by Airbus or Boeing, and is typically configured with 2-4-2 seating in coach/economy class, rather than the 3-3-3 or 3-4-3 configurations more often used on larger aircraft. The difference may seem trivial, but it’s not. The seats in the center section of four — the only middle seats in this layout — are typically taken by families wanting to sit together. So it’s fairly rare with this configuration for a solo traveller to be stuck in a middle seat rather than a window or aisle.

[Planespotting at Copenhagen Airport: Air Greenland’s only jet plane, this Airbus A330, is used on the flights between Kangerlussuaq (SFJ) and Copenhagen (CPH). The rest of the Air Greenland fleet are turboprops or helicopters, and these are the only year-round direct flights between Greenland and Europe. Connections between North America, Europe, and several other airports in Greenland are available via Keflavik, Iceland (KEF).]

The type of plane used by some airlines, even on the same route, varies seasonally and/or according to what’s available in their fleet and maintenance cycle. SAS isn’t the only trans-Atlantic A330 operator at SFO, but it’s one of only a few. Other airlines that regularly fly A330s in and out of SFO on trans-Atlantic routes include TAP and Aer Lingus, which also tend to be among the cheaper options from SFO.