He listened sympathetically to my tale of woe concerning lost luggage. From his attitude I could tell he had heard this story before. Frankly the fact that a taxi had been sent to the airport yesterday specifically to pick up luggage should also have been a clue. It would arrive he assured me. In the meantime I would just have to put up with filthy clothes. Or rather everyone around me would.
“Everyone around me” grew significantly larger just after 9am when a man with a minibus arrived looking to take me on a tour. There were four other passengers who crowded to the other end of the vehicle when I boarded.
Our journey would take us to the island of Vagar, I was already vaguely familiar with it as my plane had landed on it. It was fair to say I hadn’t been able to fully appreciate it at the time. Torshavn where I was based was on a different island. This would ordinarily involve a bit of sea travel but the Faroese have dug tunnels between the main islands so the chances of sea sickness are slight.
Vagar has one major attraction (if you discount an airport which has the world’s busiest lost luggage office). A lake which stretches to the ocean. The lake is prevented from being part of the ocean by the fact that it’s thirty metres higher and separated by a very narrow cliff.
Our journey took us past a low collection of buildings with a spectacular view of the harbour. This, our guide informed us, was a prison. A single low fence separated us from the no doubt desperate felons inside. I took a photo of their miniature golf course and we headed on. Our guide further informed us that serious offenders are punished by being sent to Denmark which probably keeps the crime rate low.
Of course we couldn’t just drive up to the lake. You have to earn it by traipsing through several kilometres of countryside first, oh the horror. Usually I’m keen for a walk through nature but usually I’m not wearing urban footwear designed for nothing more arduous than strolling around the shops. Nervously I enquired as to whether my shoes would be acceptable and received greasy assurances from a guide who had no intention of leaving me alone with his minivan while they did the walk.
We set off, our guide promising that the scenery was lovely. We had to take his word for it although the mist was very photogenic. There was a trail which was easy to walk except where there was mostly mud. I say “mostly mud” because the one thing you can’t get away from in the Faroes is sheep. Therefore there is a certain sheep component to pretty much everything you step in.
Slowly the scenery revealed itself and it was pretty impressive. Grey fields and a grey lake gradually took on colour as we advanced trying not to slip in the mostly mud. I photographed the scenery, sheep, the lake, sheep, rivulets trickling down the hillside, sheep and the occasional picturesque farmhouse.
As we progressed the weather got better and the thin clothing I was wearing shifted from inadequate to too much without any noticeable mean point. An aircraft thundered overhead. It turns out that if my pilot had overshot his landing we would have wound up in this very lake. Finally we arrived at our destination, the ocean all towering cliffs and shrieking seabirds. Cliffs and sea caves abounded and now we were able to see the full beauty of the lake, so close to the ocean they almost touch and connected by a waterfall which drops the thirty odd metres to the sea.
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| Lake above, sea below |
I was entranced, my issues with luggage forgotten as I took photo after photo until both my camera and my phone reminded me that my adapter plug was in my missing bag as well and they both ran out of battery.
I was delirious with delight or possibly sleep deprivation and returned to my hotel on a cloud. The helpful (and definitely not undead) man behind the counter informed me that my luggage had arrived, my day was complete. Also the Burger King in Torshavn shits all over the one in Edinburgh.
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