THE PEOPLE ON THE BUS

There were twenty-eight people on our tour from all over the world, the United States, Canada by way of Romania, Portugal, Finland, Hong Kong, Australia.

I talked to perhaps half of them, but four of them stood out.

Maria, me, and Luz.

Luz is from Lisbon. She's a retired college professor who loves to travel and talk about her adventures. Early on, she confessed to having been married often. I asked her how many times.

"Oh, six or seven," she replied.

"Wow," I said. "You're in Elizabeth Taylor territory. Did you marry any of them more than once?"

"No. Even I'm not that stupid."

Maria, Luz's traveling companion, understands English but doesn't speak it nearly as well as Luz. Maria is Luz's straight man. The two have been best friends for decades. Maria is the sister of Luz's first husband. Maybe blood isn't thicker than water!

Sunita and Suresh.

Sunita just passed the New York State Bar, and going to Iceland was her way of celebrating. When Terry told her she looked like an Indian but sounded like a valley girl (she was born in New Jersey), she smiled.

"I get that all the time," she said.

She played basketball in high school but turned down an athletic scholarship to Columbia, where she got her bachelor's degree. She graduated from Duke Law School.

Suresh, her father, is a child psychiatrist. He moved to New Jersey from Hyderabad in the early eighties. His wife, also a shrink, was not on the trip. Suresh changed my attitude toward nuts as a healthy snack forever. One day at lunch, I was happily munching on my unsalted almonds.

"You know, your body only needs three or four of those a day," he said. "The rest is just waste." His semi-polite way of letting me know I was making myself fat.

"Uh oh," I said, slamming the bag down on the table. "I just ate three months worth!"

"Dad!" Sunita shouted. "Cut it out."

Stina.

Of course the tour wouldn't have been what it was without our guide, Stina. She's originally from Sweden but moved to Iceland with her husband, a native citizen. She has four children and teaches school during the rest of the year. But summers she spends doing what she seems to love most, guiding visitors around the country she has adopted as her own.

She's a historian, sociologist, archeologist, expert on literature and culture, and a wonderful singer to boot. She brought the whole experience alive with the breadth and depth of her knowledge, as well as a wealth of anecdotes, legends, folktales, and songs. I learned so much from her and had a great time doing it. Huzzah!

Last but not least was our intrepid bus driver Gymynur. That's how his name sounds to me. I have no idea whether I've even come close to spelling it correctly. Many apologies for that.

Gymynur (sp? big time).

Gymynur maneuvered our big, honkin' bus over narrow roads with wispy thin shoulders and nearly zero margin for error. He was always there when we needed to get from point A to point B and moved our luggage around with aplomb. I complimented him on his driving once.

"It's nothing," he said, with characteristic Icelandic understatement. "Once you get used to it."

"There's the rub," I said.

"Oh, you could do it."

I seriously doubt it!


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